My surprising little visitor catching bright, but meager sun rays at the end of the season. 🐞🍂
Lilac Haze
I'm Climbin', I'm Climbin'
"Look, Ma, No Dots!"
Polka-Dot T-34
T-34s now come in polka dot!
As you can probably tell, I can't get over these little tanks.
Cute AND carnivorous!
Life and Death
I love observing Nature's decay this time of the year. Yellowing leaves, at times damaged by insects and disease, form intricate patterns resembling lace.
And sometimes, amidst all that slow death, life can be found:
Yellow under Red
Why do I always come across ladybugs, those "God's little cows," being cute and dainty rather than their engaging in a murderous rampage of hate and dismemberment against enemy aphids?
;)
God's Little Cow with a Terrible Secret
Of all the creepy crawlers, ladybugs might be one of the most benign specimens: they don't send us shrieking like a little girl, when they use our arm as an airplane runway of sorts. In fact, some cultures even consider the latter good luck. Indeed, the etymology of its common name reflects this reverent attitude: a dainty ladybug in English is known as god's little cow in Russian and other Slavic languages. All in the diminutive, of course!
So, when one of these chosen insects landed on my arm, I took it as a sign from above that I must macro-photograph immediately and carefully transferred it to my balcony (temporarily!).
Yet when I zoomed in on this embodiment of kawaii of the insect world, I realized that my little cow had a GHASTLY SKULL PATTERN on its head. Then I recalled that gardeners loved them because they dismember and annihilate (chomp-chomp!) pests like aphids.
It was at that moment that I realized that the ladybug I caught (I said, temporarily!), might, in fact, be a member of a secret cult! The kind that appears in Ben Wheatley films. So the photoshoot was cut short (the official story is that it got too windy). Just in case.
