In the Golden Hour – Thistles and Bumblebee – Forest Park – St. Louis, Missouri

Pollinating the Prickly Pear – Bee and Bumblebee – New Braunfels, Texas

Busy as a Bumblebee

Not everyone was off work this 4th of July holiday. These bumblebees were industriously covering themselves with pollen as they went from bloom to bloom. The trick to taking picture of bees, aside from hoping for a good deal of luck and serendipity, is not to follow the bee about as it enters the flower, but to be ready to take the shot as it exits. This gives you time to find a focus point, and often you will get a pretty cool shot. This trick also work for when one is taking pictures of folks who are hugging. Did you miss the happy look they gave one another as they embraced? Wait for it, and often they will do the same at the end of the hug.

 

An Afternoon with Finches – Delmar Sunflower Project – St. Louis – With a Thought on Vincent Van Gogh

I think that there is a reason that the artist Van Gogh was so fascinated with sunflowers. They present so many shapes and textures and colors; they present an ever changing subject, as they grow from seedlings, to presenting vivid green buds which bloom into flowers of such astonishing yellows, sometimes flecked with white, which then dry into a palette of sunset oranges, and finally to the brown hues of autumn and decay. The face of a mature sunflower, itself, bears long contemplation with its cover of tiny flower like structures which hide the seeds, so precisely and concentrically packed.

I do not know if the finches appreciate their geometry, but they sure do appreciate their seeds, sometimes using the back of a sunflower as a makeshift table, leaving the empty shells strewn upon it. I only have pictures of male finches here, but there were females as well and some doves, dragonflies, and a sighting through the viewfinder, though not a photographic capture, of a hummingbird. It seems the time of the bees has largely passed but there were several still, well, busily doing their duty for the hive.

Delmar Sunflower Project – Beauty Along the Divide – 10,000 Splendid Suns – St. Louis

Photographically speaking I feel about sunflowers much the same way that I feel about the Gateway Arch in St. Louis: that it is hard to take a bad picture of either and I never tire of trying to capture their simple elegance. And when it is a whole field of sunflowers in the middle of a city and thousands of bees and bumblebees are buzzing about and the setting sun is dipping down out of a bank of clouds on a humid summer’s evening, well then it all becomes a veritable Eden.

That is all to say that there are a lot of pictures here! I hope you may enjoy them. Be sure to catch the one of the cheeky bee sticking out his proboscis. And look for the moment when the hour truly became golden when the sun peaked out from behind the clouds. To learn more about this project, see the last picture or check out their website. And here is a story on the project from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Finally, the great numbers of bees were so heartening to see because they are really in trouble and that may be bad news for all of us. Finally, finally, apologies to Khaled Hosseini for the modified plagiarizing in the blog title. It was just too perfect not to steal.

Why I Never Seem to Get Much Yard Work Done – Backyard Photo Ops

Goldenrod and the 4-H Stone – Goldenrod in Forest Park, St. Louis – Sufjan Stevens

The title of this blog post comes from the beautiful but heartbreakingly sad song “Casimir Pulaski Day” from Sufjan Steven’s Illinois, which in my opinion is his masterpiece. Having wandered through the goldenrod on Sunday, I can easily see how one might take these to a heavily burdened friend to brighten their day. Curiously, though, while I thought a quick Google search would tell me what a 4-H stone is, there is no obvious artifact to which this might refer other than one guess that perhaps it refers to different types of precious stones that 4-H leaders get for for certain numbers of years served in the organization.

At any rate, if you like Casimir Pulaski Day, you may enjoy more Sufjan. And I should note that much of his work is far more exuberant and energetic. My favorite albums of his in order are: Illinois, Seven Swans, and Michigan. Oh, and as the season is quickly approaching, I cannot forget to mention Songs for Christmas. There will be a moment this Winter when I will be driving in the dark and listen to this and weep and be joyful.

At any rate, that is a very long introduction to these pictures with goldenrod either in the foreground or background, which will hopefully make you joyful.