The End

I'm not sure but my husband might be elated that the sunflowers are all pollinated and the bees have moved on. Each night when he came home from work the first thing I made him do was look at the latest photographs, always bees and sunflowers.

Wouldn't have been so bad but day after day after day. Yeah, a bit much I agree but with nothing but sunflowers and squash blossoms to photograph my skill level in that limited field rose dramatically.

For me it became an enchanted time of the day when clad in my pajamas I'd position myself amongst the flowers. Holding still, I became a part of the scenery and soon the bees flew in to work. I found myself sending telepathic messages there way. "Please land on that flower. That's it. Now turn. Lift your head just a little. Good job!" You'd think they were fashion models and in a way they were for the flowers became more interesting when there was a bee to show them off. Kind of like a Vanna White of sunflowers.

The models may have made the shots more interesting but they were like working with a room full of hyperactive toddlers. The Bee Fly was the most challenging to photograph. I had to aim for a flower I thought it might head for, focus the camera, and wait. IF I was lucky I got a quick shot. The depth of field was narrow with the macro setting and I couldn't make adjustments if it was wrong for the fly was already gone.

When I had a couple shots I was quite proud of, especially considering the difficulty of the task, I e-mailed them to my oldest daughter who has a photography degree. "There kind of fuzzy." was her reply.

"Maybe, but they are fuzzy little flies." I told her. I kept trying but this is as good as it got.


Some flowers I fell in love with and I shot without models like this stubby little sunflower. It was one of my favorites.

The more pictures I took the more my curiosity was peaked. What were these insects and what did they do with the nectar and pollen? None of the models were honey bees. Some day, I'm getting a book about different kinds of bees, the Girdled Ground Bee, and the Carpenter Bee and the... They don't make honey so how do they survive the winter? For instance are these hornets or yellow jackets? Or are they the same thing with two different names?

Most of the photographs I took I erased but some like this one I couldn't bring myself to for the flower is awesome but Vanna-the bee- isn't cooperating. She had her telepathy receiver turned off.

Just writing this blog gives me a mixture of emotions. Withdrawals since this morning Kirk eliminated the sunflowers with the skid steer so he could clean up the scrap metal pile and a need to photograph, but what? The prairie is brown and I can't take a trip to photograph autumn leaves because they are just beginning to turn.

Just so you know, I have an obsession with leaves in autumn, pine cones and pine needles too. My house is decorated in them. But, the kitchen is going to be devoted to sunflowers, as soon as I get done canning that is. I'm going to fill the room with photographs of them and then I'm going to scour the catalogs for sunflower seeds for next year. I like the burgundy ones and the orange ones and the yellow ones, and well, I just like sunflowers.