Zen and the art of lawn maintenance

Some of my best ideas come when I’m avoiding work. The lawn is a perfect example. Instead of mowing, I stuck my homemade macro lens on the camera and started stalking in the long grass.

My own interest in this tiny world happened accidentally. I found that a cheap viewer I had for looking at old 35mm slides would fit over my digital camera’s lens. With it I could get close, ridiculously close to things. Cool, I thought. I wonder what’s lurking in the hayfield that used to be my back yard?

As it turned out, there was a lot more going on down there than I thought! My first surprise wasn’t that there were bugs. Everybody expects to see bugs in their lawn, but the variety! And the most delicate little flowers, overshadowed by the petunias and peonies.

Even the dreaded dandelion, uncovered a world of delicate structure.

Some of my “discoveries” were comical. From ungainly looking critters stuck at the top of a blade of grass,to a colourful caterpillar, in his “happy place”.

It certainly made me look more closely at what was happening, literally at my own doorstep. For instance each of these little spiders was about the size of a rice grain. Getting in close, then only colouring one spider, produced one of my favourite shots, an individual among many.

The big guns of the garden usually draw all the admiration from neighbors, but the amazing little blossoms and creatures I found were what drew my interest. And they quickly disappear when you’re contemplating the lawn from the seat of the Yard Master.

 

 

 

 

To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.

-William Blake