Macro Practice

It's not spring anymore, so the bud season is almost over, but if you know where to look, you can still find nice little buds. I have a whole garden to look for buds, so I thought it's time to practice macro and close-up photography.

A few years ago I used to post gardening quizzes. Took some photos of the vegetable flowers and posted those on Hive. Then people took a shot at them. Those who have never seen the plants growing had no idea, what flowers those were. it was a fun game. However, today I'm not going to put you through this torture. I'm going to tell you directly, that this is the tomato flower.

It's a tiny, hairy flower, that can't be called beautiful, but it has it's purpose.

These are the buds. It's always a joy to see them as the next phase is the tomato, the fruit itself.

Yesterday I noticed this pioneer, the first tomato this year. It's so tiny, but growing fast.

Cucumber leaves are a beauty, when they are this tiny. This is a macro photo, so the leaves are not big. That light green is lovely and the texture of the leaves are lovely as well. However, they can be a real enemy, once they grow old. The leaves are stingy, the young cucumbers are stingy as well.

And here it is, the first cucumber flower and the first cucumber. This is so tiny, I think it's barely 1cm long, but it's still a cucumber and cute as a cucumber.

There's no day without admiring the raspberry leaves. I'm doing this every single year, till these light green, wrinkled leaves grow big and become dark green. At that phase I'm not interested anymore as this is what I like.

These are unedited photos by the way.

This is a huge mystery and an anomaly as well. These are also raspberry leaves but nothing like the one I posted above. I don't know what's causing them to be different, but it's not good.

Grape leaves are still growing. I mean you can still find a bunch of buds, small leaves, perfect to photograph.

These leaves are from the same branch. I loved how they looked.

Raspberries. After taking theses photos and downloading them to my laptop, saw that the fruits are starting to turn red, which is a good sign. In a month I'll be busy harvesting and making jam, or juice. I need to decide till then.

And here's the beast. I've never gotten so close to one till now. I prefer to keep my distance as they are dangerous, I know first hand how painful a close encounter with them can be. However, I said, now or never and tried my hand at taking close-ups.

This was the other one. This photo is not sharp enough, but I wanted to show you what it is as I've never seen anything like this. At first glance I thought it was a ladybug but it's not. It's an ugly creature and I'm sure it's up to no good. Ok, I Googled ladybug and turns out this is pupa.

A pupa is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. Insects that go through a pupal stage are holometabolous: they go through four distinct stages in their life cycle, the stages thereof being egg, larva, pupa, and imago. The processes of entering and completing the pupal stage are controlled by the insect's hormones, especially juvenile hormone, prothoracicotropic hormone, and ecdysone. The act of becoming a pupa is called pupation, and the act of emerging from the pupal case is called eclosion or emergence. source

If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides:

• Communities Explained - Newbie Guide
• Cross Posting And Reposting Explained, Using PeakD
• Hive Is Not For Me
• How To Pump Your Reputation Fast - Newbie Guide
• Tips And Tricks & Useful Hive Tools For Newbies
• More Useful Tools On Hive - Newbie Guide
• Community List And Why It Is Important To Post In The Right Community
• Witnesses And Proposals Explained - Newbie Guide
• To Stake, Or Not To Stake - Newbie Guide
• Tags And Tagging - Newbie Guide
• Newbie Expectations And Reality