Macro Monday - Rosehips

     These are the hips of Golden Showers rose, one completely dried out and one a little more fresh.  I don't know why it never occurred to me to cut one open before to see what it looks like inside.  I think the fibers between the seeds are really wild-looking.  Rose hips are edible, and a good source of Vitamin C, but I've never tried them.  I suppose there must be differences in palatability from one variety of rose to another but I have to say these ones don't look too appealing as food.  I have had various flavored teas with rosehips as an ingredient, and I find them appalling, but I bet I would like the taste more in jam.  Varieties with smaller hips are good for attracting and feeding birds.  In fact Rosa multiflora is too good at attracting birds, and has conscripted them to spread it into natural areas where it tends to strangle out native flora.  Sad though I think this is, I have very fond memories of a road trip once while the feral roses were blooming.  What a treat to smell roses while coasting down the highway doing 60 mph!  
     Today I'm joining Lisa's Chaos for Macro Monday.

Macro Monday - Make a Wish!

     Today I'm joining Lisa's Chaos for Macro Monday.  I found this backlit dandelion seedhead so I had to shoot it.  Only problem is, I'm not sure which version I like best.  Maybe this one ...

     But in this one, you can see right into the inside, and I think that's cool too.

     This is another dandelion that has lost a lot of its fuzz, but that makes it easier to see individual filaments.

     Yes, I leave dandelions in my garden.  There's not much else blooming in January.  It was an unseasonably delightful 57 degrees on Saturday with bright warm sun (and how lucky to get it on a weekend!)  On days like those, there might be some active bees or butterflies who are going to need a snack.  I like the jolt of color myself, too.  And finally, you never know when you might need to make a wish.  Here's wishing you light and warmth wherever you are.

Oxalis - Macro Monday

     Another dreary January day, so I look to my neglected houseplants for a little color.  Hey, that's interesting, this is a green oxalis, not a purple one...  This plant shows up in the garden store every year around St. Patrick's day and I always fall in love with it's adorable green shamrocks and delicate white flowers, and its charming habit of closing up its leaves every night at bedtime.  There's a burgundy-leaved version but it's the fresh green that appeals to me.  They can live outside here (I think) but I don't really have anyplace suitable to put it in the ground and I usually don't bother keeping it.  However,  this one stayed in its impossibly tiny pot all summer in a tray with cuttings so it got more watering and attention than most of my plants usually do.  In such a tiny pot, I thought it had a slim chance of also getting through the winter, so I brought it inside.  After a very brief winter's nap (too brief?), it's now putting on new growth.

     The purple on the new leaves' undersides caught me by surprise more than once, not just because the tops of the leaves are green, but because the purple is more or less intense as the viewing angle and light angle change.  It's like an outlandish hat worn by the outlandish wife of Mr. Elton in the movie Emma (in the scene where she tells Emma that she plans to throw a party for Jane Fairfax).  Mrs. Elton is wearing a green dress and a green hat, but as she swirls around Emma to conspiratorially take her arm as they walk, the hat changes color remarkably from green to red and back again as the satiny sheen catches the light from different angles.  Or, it's like the colors on some bird's feathers, grackles and starlings most accessibly -- take a good look next time they settle in your yard and gobble up all the seed in your feeders.  Or the spot on a mourning dove's neck as libido awakes in the early spring.  (Really! Make a note to look if you haven't seen it.)

     I just watched Emma again for the upteenth time.  The dialog in this movie always makes me laugh (like Miss Bates's line "it left us speechless!  Speechless, I tell you, and we have not stopped talking about it since.")  More than that, it's a great garden movie.  Once you have watched it as many times as I have, you won't need to pay so much attention to the plot anymore, and you may find yourself absorbed by the gorgeous flowery places, indoors and out, images from a gardener's fantasy.  I just wish I could stop the movie and jump in.  Click here for a trailer, including glimpses of some of the beautiful garden scenes (the colors in the movie are lush and vibrant, despite the trailer looking washed out) and even the outlandish hat very briefly at about 0:34.

     For today's post, I'm joining Lisa's Chaos for Macro Monday for the first time.  To see what other people are looking closely at, visit Lisa's blog.