21st Century pre-schooler

21st Century motherhood at its best. Taking your 3 year old out for a coffee and giving them the ipod touch to entertain themselves whilst you play with your DSLR.

It's another one of those in focus/out of focus shots where it's hard to decide which works *best*. I like the second one most.

Beautiful Bees

'Bzzz bzzz bzzzzzz' is the predominant sound in my front garden at the moment. Yesterday whilst the sun shone brightly all afternoon, there was a hive of activity around my pretty little purple flowers. I have no idea what they are called, but they are definitely purple and they are very pretty; they smell nice too. I guess that's why the bees like them so much.

This calls for my camera and most importantly, my macro lens!!

I really love Bumble bees. They are so cute and fuzzy and I have fond memories of them as a child in my grandparents' garden. I recall they lived in the cracks in the dry stone wall rather than the hives that my grandfather cared for. At the time it was a little confusing to understand why only the honey bees made the honey that we ate...

Although the bumble bees are adorably cute, they are *very* busy active little things and consequently a complete pain to capture on camera and even harder to get in focus without movement blur. The above two pictures were the absolute best I got in my brief 15 mins. I did get a number of empty flowers with little bee legs sticking in at the corner having just flown off!

These two bees were much more camera friendly and stayed still, but the wind was blowing and I kept getting in the way casting a shadow over them so whilst they were easier to get in focus I still had movement and lighting problems! I absolutely love the intricacy of detail on their wings and legs and furry little bodies. The top picture the bee was just taking off!

Now I'd love to know if this following shot is actually of a bee or a fly pretending to be a wasp/bee or perhaps it is of the wasp family but not a 'bee'? Who knows. It was very different to the others, it buzzed differently and it moved differently and, most importantly, it stayed very still for a long time so was much easier to capture. It was also on the pink flowers not the purple ones....

Bee bottoms are particularly cute don't you think? I couldn't decide which of the following two photos I liked best and thought as I was putting far more on than normal I may as well show both and let you decide.

This last shot is by far my favourite. I know you can't see the bee very clearly but it's the most artistically satisfying for me.

Froggy!

When we moved into this house last year we had a bit of a wilderness at the bottom of the back garden with all kinds of wildlife living amongst it. Over the year we've cleared out and tidied up the garden and we were just talking about whether or not we'd see any frogs or hedgehogs again this year and what a shame it would be if they'd all moved out.

The next day whilst mowing the lawn Nathan almost ran over this little thing! We popped it into the padding pool to keep it safe whilst cutting the grass and of course I took the opportunity to take pictures....

It seems our fears of having no little creatures at the bottom of the garden was unnecessary!

Woodland Wildlife - Warning, it's a bit grim!

In our recent woodland walks the children have shown a great fascination not only for live bunnies and birds, but dead ones. On one particular walk they started looking for them and wanted me to take pictures...

Then then endless questions and enthusiasms about death begin:

'How did it die, is it old?'

'Will I die? Will you die? When will we die mummy?..... Not until we're really old?'

'Why's the baby bird dead? Where is its mummy?'

'Who killed it? Did a fox get it, or a dog, or a farmer with a gun!?'

'I bet a fox got it and ripped it's head off!'

'Where is it's head?' *Run off looking*

'Oh I've found it mummy it's here!'

They were particularly excited when they found the dead rambler.....

Buttercups in Bungay

We've been camping this weekend. The weather was very good to us with only a little rain one night. We stayed in the same field last year and I decided that I wanted to make sure I got at least one nice photo of the girls in the meadow surrounded by buttercups.

Little Squish was rather uncooperative and at one point she was pushing the others out of the way because not only did she not want me to take *her* photo, she didn't want me to take a picture of "nobody" as she put it.

I was very pleased with the first shot of Big squish though. She rather enjoys the attention I believe.