Spring Has Sprung

I have the weekend off and enjoyed a beautiful Saturday outdoors.  My fiance and I drove to the very rural area of Hawthorne, FL to visit a friend of ours.  While they worked on piecing together some found items to make our own practice disc golf basket at home, I walked around the yard taking pictures.  There were several Rhododendron bushes in full bloom around the yard.  They were just beautiful.


The bees were really enjoying the flowers as well.


All of their animals were enjoying the warm day outside with us.  The spring chicks were pecking around the yard.  There were several hens sitting on nests of eggs and the roosters were pacing around.  Their feathers were beautiful in the sunlight.  The chickens stayed near us, but they stayed just a little farther away then I wanted them to take their picture.  I spent a lot of time chasing those chickens around to get the photos that I wanted.



Another animals that joined us was Lelu.  She is my dog's mother.  She is a sweet dog, the chickens weren't worried by her at all until she went into their nesting area to drink some water.


I saw several unopened buds of a Spiderwort.  It is one of my favorite springtime flowers because of its vibrant color.  I was so happy to finally find one that had opened. 


It was a nice, relaxing day in the country before we headed back to our city-life park oasis.

Thought of the Day #89
Some flowers are difficult to photograph.  If I use the automatic settings on my camera, many flowers will appear washed out or too bright in some areas.  I have to change several settings to get the exposure just right.  This is because of Ultraviolet light.  Many flowers reflect UV light which is visible to bees and other insects but its just outside of the visible spectrum for us.  The UV light attracts the insects to the flower, the insect feeds and the flower gets pollinated.  The attraction to UV light is what makes bug zappers work.  I don't know for sure, but I think that Spiderworts must be a type of these reflective flowers.  I always have a lot of trouble photographing them.  Quite often they are washed out or the wrong color completely when I take the photo.  My photos of the same flower range from pale purple to deep blue.