Time to reflect and regroup

A trio of Prickly Pear blossoms against a fence post.

Last week, after taking care of all the estate stuff I could, I started to feel that I needed to  move past the last few weeks.  I headed out last Friday morning for a walk around our park with my camera gear to check out the amazing cactus bloom that is currently taking place, and to clear my head. I can just get lost in my subjects and that was exactly what I needed.

Santa Rita Prickly Pear.  I love the purple/reddish contrast to the yellow flowers.

I spent a couple of hours out that morning playing with a couple of new, to me, techniques and working through some 'blocks' in my creativity.  I'm not sure if I really felt like I got past my hurdles, but I was pretty pleased with some of the images.   The close up images were taken yesterday, the ones with more in the image are from my new techniques day of shooting.

Tom and I had headed off for a couple of days of camping at Mt Lemmon on Easter Sunday afternoon.  A first for us, and yet I didn't feel compelled to document it. A pretty good sign that I was in a bit of a funk!  When we returned on Tuesday afternoon, he wasn't feeling 'right'.  He couldn't put it any more definitive than that.  Wednesday, Thursday and Friday he spent most of it in bed, with some stomach issues.  By Saturday it still wasn't better, and in fact, he seemed to be getting worse.  By Sunday it was time to put up the white flag.   A trip to a nearby urgent care facility, an abdominal X-ray and an exam got him a do not pass go, go straight to the ER prescription to the local hospital.  Diagnosis, a partial intestinal blockage!

An Ocotillo blossom at knee level!  Usually they are way up high!

As it was his first time ever under the spotlight at the hospital, he was nervous, and anxious, as was I.  A CT scan, and an ultrasound showed that he did indeed have a partial blockage and an infection in part of his intestine.  Lots of fluids, and close observation showed it was 'breaking up' on it's own. A two night stay, no surgery, thank goodness, and we headed for home.  A pot of chicken soup and a soft diet for a couple of days, and he's now on the mend.

After all that has happened lately, I sort of feel like my world is slightly off- kilter. So, yesterday I took my close- up lens out for another walk in our park.  The cactus' are crazy pretty right now.

Rambling Ragweed looks fierce when viewed up close.  The white parts look like teeth! The blossoms are 3cm!

One of many Saguaro Cactus in the are that are starting to bloom.

I got very engrossed, lost, in what I was doing that about 2 hours later Tom came out to find me!  I was having a great time playing with the lens, light and cactus.  I like being able to take a photo of my subject that perhaps allows a different view of it.  A flower can be very pretty from a standing position and 4 or so feet away, but what does it look like mere centimeters from the inside of it?  

A prickly pear 'vase' of buds, complete with bee.

So, 369 images later, I returned to my computer to sort through them.  208 of those were tossed out, mostly due to my subject not being sharp.  Out of those 161 images that I kept, several you are viewing here.

Aunt Bette has had lots of collections of some unusual and interesting things.  We had been discussing this 'collection' issue in the past couple of months before she passed away.  To share my 'collections' with her, I started to put some of my images together in collections of sorts. Living on the boat and now in the trailer, it's still hard to gather things. there just isn't any room for it.  Good thing digital images don't take up much more space than an external hard drive, or four or five!

My collection over the past couple of shooting excursions is the petal edges.  It's amazing to look at a prickly, gnarly cactus and then to look at the silky, translucent quality of the individual petals.  But then that's another reason why I like my macro lens.  Even if it's old school, manual focus and settings, it's one of my favorite lenses!

Taking time to get my balance back through photography is helping. Today I also spent 90 minutes in our gym, had a longish shower, followed by some quiet time on our patio.  I'll find my balance again soon.  In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed the images.