The Dandies

When I wrote, two days ago, of my dismay that the dandelions had disappeared just when I decided to photograph them, well they were back the next morning, or at least another bunch had opened up. Maybe dandelions close up at night? This is something that I have never considered and haven't learned in my 72+ years. It's true; Canadians are a dumb lot.

So, I did have a chance to experiment on the next day. My idea was to get low with a wide angle lens to get the flowers/weeds in the foreground and trees in the background. It worked somewhat, but I made the choice to crop away some of the immediate foreground dandelions, for the ones that were really close to the camera looked too patchy with too much space between them leaving too much detail of grass and ground, which were not photogenic in this case. Live and learn.

This photo ↑ was taken in the field just opposite us, the one attached to a school and a daycare centre. It also serves as a community soccer pitch on summer evenings, but not this year, of course.

From there, I drove into the outlying area of the town to look for trilliums one more time before their blooms withered for another year. It was buggy, so I shot from the roadside and across the ditch down to the flowers. The results were horrendous, and I deleted all of those photos almost as soon as I uploaded them to the computer.

After my futile session with the trilliums, I spotted another field of dandelions with a tree along the same country road. I made a stop and took a very quick photo with my long lens fully zoomed out to 400mm.

Why so quick, AC?

Because I have never encountered so many mosquitoes to descend on me with such rapidity. Swarmed, I tell ya. I couldn't even get back into the car without letting a whole slew of the rascals in to hitchhike.

I drove home with all of the windows open, hoping that the hitchhikers would been blow away. When I got home I closed all of the windows. If there were any of the wretched biters remaining, surely they would cook. Whether it was the open windows of the drive or the closed windows in the driveway, something worked, as a later drive revealed that they were gone.

That's the story behind these two photos, and I am quite pleased with the results. While there seems not to be much to photograph locally, it is good to come up with a new idea.

And . . . it's another day, so here's another selfie.