Macro Monday - Mellow Yellow Monday

Thank you to Lisa of Lisa's Chaos for Macro Monday and Drowsey Monkey of Mellow Yellow Monday who organise these memes.

Macro Monday - Mellow Yellow Monday

Thank you to Lisa from 'Lisa's Chaos' and Drowsey Monkey from Mellow Yellow Monday who host these weekly memes.

Macro Monday

Thank you to Lisa from 'Lisa's Chaos' who organises and hosts this meme. Click here 

to see more macros.

If you don't like spiders or their webs now is not a good time to venture outside, particularly in the forest. Gossamer abounds, strung three to four feet above the ground between tall grasses and small trees where myriads of insects fly in the warm early autumn sun. The sun's rays catch the morning dew and make it sparkle.

A web in the garden

Fragile webs, so easily destroyed by unseeing animals, human and wild, blundering through them are nonetheless surprisingly strong, resisting heavy downpours of rain. The supple silk is weighed down until the nets resemble necklaces of precious jewels but as it dries it resumes its intended purpose of netting tasty small morsels for hungry arachnids.

Madam Spider in the forest waits at the top of her web in this young Scots pine or maybe she is too hungry and has started to weave another trap.

Another web, spiderless this time, suspended between the needles of a sapling.

Macro Monday and Mellow Yellow Monday

Thank you to Lisa from 'Lisa's Chaos' who organises and hosts this meme. Click here to see more macros.

Here are more shots of the Southern Hawker that visited our garden to find a place to lay her eggs.

 For Mellow Yellow Monday I selected some nasturtiums. 

To see more yellows please click here.

100th Macro Monday

Thank  you to Lisa from 'Lisa's Chaos'who organises and hosts this meme. Why not visit her to see more macros?
I thought finding 100 things to post would be difficult and then I looked around.

Dalmatians and Ocicats have hundreds of spots. We used to challenge our young children and grandchildren to count the spots on a Dalmatian. Bethan enjoyed dot-to-dot pictures and tried joining up the dots on our first Dallie.

An allium has at least one hundred flowers.

The pyracantha flowers of spring have been replaced by the scarlet or yellow berries of late summer.

Hundreds of ceanothus flowers provide plenty of nectar and pollen for visiting bees - and the bee has hundreds of fine hairs on its body.

At least a hundred blackfly are gathered here to feed a hungry ladybird.

Macro Monday

Thank  you to Lisa from 'Lisa's Chaos'who organises and hosts this meme. Why not visit her to see more macros?

Macro Monday

Thank you to Lisa at 'Lisa's Chaos' who organises and hosts this meme. Click here for more participants.

Little frog - spawned this year - on aquilegia leaf

Same little frog next to blade of grass

Macro Monday and Mellow Yellow Monday

Thank you to the organisers and hosts of these meme. To see more entries, please click here and here

Marigold in shade in the front garden

Nasturtium - the flowers and leaves add colour and interest to a salad. They're quite peppery, particularly the leaves.

Cucumber flower with visiting black beetles.

Macro Monday

Thank you to Lisa of 'Lisa's Chaos' for organising and hosting this meme. Click on her name to visit and see more mesmerising macros.

Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) or wild geranium is a very common cranesbill, seeding itself freely around the garden. I suppose it is technically a weed but I love to see it growing with wild abandon in nooks and crannies and next to snootier plants.The flowers are pinkish-mauve and the stems turn a beautiful red as the plant ages.  It can easily overshadow other plants, developing height and spread according to the space in which it's growing so has to be controlled. It roots very shallowly so is easy to pull up and, like all geraniums, the foliage has a pungent smell which I like but many don't.
Strictly speaking, this photograph is not a macro shot as it has been cropped from a larger photograph.

Macro Monday clematis and rose

As is so often the case I've lost the labels to these clematis so have attempted to identify them using books and the internet.Neither of them are fragrant.

The closest I've found to this one, climbing through the trees in our front garden, is Clematis 'Athena' but our clematis lacks the darker veins on the reverse of the petals - any clematis experts out there? Please?

I'm almost convinced this one, climbing over one of the arches in the back garden, is Clematis 'Pille'. At this time of year it is rampant, a mass of blooms, buds and colour.

These are buds from the old climbing rose 'Mermaid', though I think it behaves more like a rambler. It has very many sharp thorns and though the buds and blooms don't seem susceptible to damage from insects, something has been munching the leaves! It was introduced to the UK in 1918.

The buds open to pale creamy-yellow single  flowers which fade to white. I seem to remember this rose having a beautiful perfume but the scent is barely discernible this year.

Thank you to Lisa of 'Lisa's Chaos' for organising and hosting this meme. Click on her name to visit and see more mesmerising macros.