"Yeah, My My Such a Sweet Thing"

"... Give Me Your Answer Do."

More of the flahrs of Thursday.

I guess these are daisies of some kind. They're kind of daisy-ish, at least.










One thing that really becomes striking when you go in close like this is the way they're sort of flowers within flowers, like each flower is its own garden or something. Fractal flowers. A kind of neatness hidden at the center of the everyday.

Here's a couple of smaller dudes. Or dudettes. Whichever the case may be.



Okay, one more post on this subject to go.

"Stop draggin' my heart around."

So, more from Thursday's flahr session.

These guys would be snapdragons. Blue snapdragons, apparently, though they ain't blue.

The desaturation thing is hitting these as well, so again, if there's any you'd want, let me know. This is also making it seem almost sunny in these photos, when it was overcast, and about to start raining again. (Was raining again, for the last couple of photos.)








Most of them were doing some water catching, which is cool:




This one seems like a little cartoon character:


Maybe that's his little posse in the background:





There he is again. It'd be cool to use this as the basis for some bit of computer animation:



Anyway, back to business.





Apparently, the genus name, Antirrhinum, comes from the Greek for "like a nose." So I guess I should have called this entry "Mighty Like a Nose," if I wanted to be really obscure.

Okay, not too much else to say about those, except they sure look purty.

Game... and Match

Nothing special. Just like the colors on these.

"It Started Raining. It Started Raining."

Continuing on from the previous flahrs post, here's a bunch of these sorts of pictures.

There aren't any actual flowers in this set. Just think of them as existing in off-screen space.

Which they do.

The drops were fairly large, and still. Surface tension was holding them in shape, I guess, which is cool. (I wish tension held me in shape, instead of wearing me down, as it has.)















An additional note, not that anyone needs to know this, or cares, but I've been cropping these (when they're cropped) at 1.85:1, and occasionally, like in the last one above, 2.35:1, so... kind of a flat and scope thing. Not sure if it's worth doing or not, but what the hey.

More to follow.

Them. Again.

"My Sweetheart, My Complete Heart"

Was walking by the University Club between rain showers today. The flowers were out, grabbing drops, and doing the things that flowers do. Took a bunch of macro shots that'll take up the next few posts.

Unfortunately, there's something odd with blogger, where uploaded photos become a little desaturated. I guess I should bump up the saturation of the photos before I upload them. So if you one or two readers who like wallpapery things want any of these, let me know and I'll email you higher quality versions, I guess.

Looking at these, I realized how little I know in terms of names of flowers. I guess these ones are... violets of some sort. I guess.














In other news, whilst doing a little googling to try and figure out what these were, I came across info on the Wisconsin State Flower, which is the Wood Violet. Which is also apparently the state flower of Illinois, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

Shouldn't each state get its own flower? Aren't there enough to go around? I guess people dig the wood violet.

I also discovered, via the Wisconsin Legislature website, that, in addition to the obvious state symbols (the badger, the dairy cow, milk), the following is the law of the land:
- the state bird is the robin
- the state fish is the muskie
- the state dog is the American water spaniel
- the state insect is the honey bee (cue Tom Petty song)
- the state rock is red granite (also the name of a town in central Wisconsin)
- the state dance is the polka (no surprise there)
- the state soil is Antigo silt loam (which really is surprising)
- and the state fossil is the trilobite, which is awesome, 'cause trilobites are awesome.

Someone should do a bad Sci Fi Channel movie called "Night of the Trilobite," with tons of the little buggers just swarming over everything. And it should be set in Wisconsin: "Give the order, Senator. We have to kill them now." "I can't do that - they're the state fossil! I'd be breaking my oath!"

And then maybe they could stop them by unleashing a horde of angry badgers.

Also, someone should start a band called "Flock of Trilobites."

Speaking of which, in addition to the state song ("On Wisconsin"), we apparently have a state ballad ("Oh Wisconsin, Land of My Dreams"), and a state Waltz, called "The Wisconsin Waltz," which can be heard via the state's website right here, as performed by Gary Kuchenbecker's Old Lager Orchestra of Tigerton.

I'm picturing a bunch of trilobites doing a Busby Berkeley number to this now. This could be the closing credit sequence for "Night of the Trilobite." Also, maybe Jimmy J.J. Walker could be part of the advertising campaign for the film. ("Tri-lo-bite!")

The other state songs are available here, if you're curious.

Okay, that's it for now.