Gesundheit! A perfectly round yellow ball of flower that is used in bridal bouquets, the Ranunculus is also available in pink, white, and orange. Its flower looks soft enough to use as a pillow! When I returned to the nursery the next day, all the Ranunculii had been sold!
This gallery contains 2 photos. The latest sparrow to mug for the camera. After (proverbially) chasing around this male White-Crowned Sparrow (in full breeding plumage) for a couple of weeks, he finally obliged by alighting on the pear tree and let me shoot, albeit through a pane of glass in the setting sun.
It’s an Ichneumon wasp (Enicospilus species). Svelte waistline, super-long antennae (which can probably pick up some OTA signals, too), six-legged, and very orange. Two were spotted in my backyard on adjacent leaves, seeking some shade and warmth. Had to search high and low to finally ID the alien-looking creature. It’s actually useful for controlling flies and beetles.
The misnamed spurge laurel is for the birds (like American Robins who love to eat and poop out the seeds), but hands off for humans. Considered an invasive species, the dainty yellow flowers of spurge laurel may be pretty to look at, but the entire plant is actually poisonous for us.
This gallery contains 4 photos. In a bid to use up a Groupon coupon, we went bowling on a Friday night, only to discover that it was cosmic bowling night. The neon cast given to many ordinary objects made blacklight photography irresistible. Unfortunately, the same adjective could not be used to describe my many failed attempts to produce a single strike.
This hoverfly, photographed pollinating the Shiro plum flowers, looks very much like a tiny bee, but its short antennae and (purple) compound eyes give it away. The syrphid fly is a quiet and beneficial insect; its larvae eat (and control) aphids that destroy fruit and flowers.
This gallery contains 3 photos. With their round, oversized heads, the cute-as-a-button Polar variety of these English Daisies remind me of cotton puff balls. Some yellow geraniums snuck into the first photo, but I won’t hold it against them.
Here’s a closeup of a Yellow Jacket wasp pollinating the fragrant white flowers on a skimmia japonica bush. The hint of red you see to the left of the wasp is one of the very round, very red berries (which are a tasty treat for wildlife, but we have never seen the birds nibbling on them).
Spotted at one of our local nurseries. Sunnyside Nursery isn’t the biggest nursery in Delta, but with this one and an Eastern Island head sculpture that’s almost the same scale as the original, you’ll stop and smell the azaleas. Yes, that is a palm tree to the left — face + palm, get it? A little rebus joke.
W.H. SIM PHOTOGRAPHY 
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