Peonies
All of the rain and cool weather this June not only gave us a big Cottonwood “snow storm”, it also gave us an enormous bounty of Peony blooms. The RainyDayGarden was just bursting with huge blossoms this season. We had to cut many of them all at once because most were too heavy to stay upright.
After we ran out of room for arrangements inside, we started placing them outside (front porch, back deck, etc…). About a dozen of them were on the entry way to welcome the package delivery folks (USPS, FedEx, etc…). They all seem to appreciate the floral greeting and the heady scent.
The many floral arrangements was also a great opportunity to practice in taking close-ups with the D90. Our original intent was to do some experimenting with the Lensbaby, but got distracted by the various bugs which kept coming out of the crevices of the blossoms.
One particular ant had a great time posing for us. We spent about 30 minutes working with this ant. It climbed and wandered all over the petals, stopping at various points for us to get a few shots and then moved on to new petals and new poses. The high contrast of the dark ant and the pink petals made for some interesting combinations. The Nikkor 18-200mm zoom did a fair job. We found the focus was a bit soft. Someday we are going to have to spend a little more time comparing the manual to auto focus and see if we could get pull a little more sharpness out of this zoom.
That wasn’t just a random ant. Peony blossoms won’t open (from their initial golf ball form) without the intervention of an ant, probably a specific ant.
I discovered this in my Washington D.C. flower shop (where imported peonies cost $8 each). I tried recruiting ants from the sidewalk without success. They wouldn’t talk to the peonies and the peonies paid no attention to them.
Politics as usual.