Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: Spring Whitlow Grass

(+6 insets!) This morning when I went out for my walk I couldn't help but look for signs of spring. They were there all around me but nothing was obvious except for the bursting green grass and sprouting plants everywhere. It's still too early--but how can that be? It's March already! I mentioned the other day that it's been cold enough this winter that spring has been delayed by as much as an entire month. On our property, we have a tiny little flower which announces to me that spring is just around the corner. I've been looking for Whitlow Grass buds for weeks now and I FINALLY found some yesterday! After I finished my walk I grabbed my camera and came out to get some proof that spring is officially on its way. Locating these flowers is both easy and difficult. Easy because they are all over the place…but difficult because Whitlow Grass blossoms are ridiculously tiny. The buds are no larger than a lowercase letter "o"! To see them, I must get my face right down at the ground and peer carefully at the tiny plants in front of me. Grass glistening with rows of droplets are everywhere to admire and distract. Tiny globes of water clinging to the ends of glowing green blades grab my attention. But I keep my eyes scanning for tiny white balls…and…THERE! Itty bitty buds, drizzled with dew, peek out shyly from the shadow of grass surrounding them. Then I can see more and more tiny buds…some opening, some tightly closed. I take many pictures at many apertures because I know how tough these little flowers are to photograph well. I cross my fingers for some useable pictures. Once I was satisfied, I stood up to return to the house when I realized that I should show you how tiny these flowers are! After all, it's one thing to explain how small something is. It's another thing to actually show how small it is. So I kneeled down and took a picture of a blossom which was a mere speck at that distance. Then I stood up and positioned the flower between my feet. I had to laugh…you can't even see a flower from my towering 5'4" height! At one point Steve and I were outside and I showed him some of the blossoms. He couldn't believe I'd ever found one to begin with! :) Along with my main image is another flower that has a friend on it! What a surprise…I had no idea it was there! And, as I'd promised, I'm including a couple of pictures of the inside of our trailer! They're not great photos but will give you an idea of what it looks like in there. Two bunk beds in the rear and a bathroom, a large bedroom area up at the front. Dinette, sofa, kitchen with sink, oven, stove, and microwave. The bathroom has a separate door outside so you don't have to track dirt through the coach to get to the bathroom. Outside there is a very nice awning over a small outside kitchen which will be great for barbequing. Oh yeah, this trailer has one "slide", which means the side slides out to create a larger space. The dinette and sofa are the area that slides out, and that's why it's so roomy in there! :) (If you've been in an RV without slides, you'll recognize how cramped they are in comparison. We would not consider a trailer without a slide!) Pam, since I photographed a tiny flower today, I did a search for "tiny" on your stream and came up with an itty bitty, teeny weeny bee that you photographed! So adorable and so very small!! Sending *HUGGGGGZZZZZZZ* from southern Oregon! Explored on 3/09/19, highest placement, #1.

One of the tiniest flowers that I know of grows all over our property, and it's also the first flower of spring. It's called Spring Whitlow Grass, and its blossoms are only about 1/4" in diameter! Here are what the budding flowers look like. So tiny you can hardly see them, and yet, with a macro lens, I can show you their elegant perfection as they strain to rise above the moss around them.

These are among the very first flowers that bloom in spring, and they are also some of the tiniest! The blossoms measure about 1/8" in diameter and look like white smudges if you're standing up and looking down at them! Here you can see how these buds are nearly dwarfed by the moss they are growing in...that's tiny indeed! :) If you would like to see some open blossoms and the lovely seed pods including seeds, please visit these search results from my stream: Janet Brien: Whitlow Grass

Two days ago I posted a picture of the lovely crocus that are growing in our front yard. However, they were not the first flowers to grow on our property! A couple of weeks ago I discovered itty bitty blossoms that were popping up where the moss and mushrooms grow in our granite valley. If you can believe it, this tiny flower measures about 1/16" in diameter! When their tiny little faces are closed up, you can hardly see them at all! Here then, is a promise to show that Spring is just around the corner!

The very first picture I took for my Flower of Spring & Summer set was the impossibly tiny Spring Whitlow Grass. I was so surprised when I saw something weird about one of the flowers and kneeled down to take a nose-close look. Such a smile I made when I saw that a seed was emerging from the fading blossom, looking to me just like a miniature snow pea pod! Can you believe it's just 1/8" long?!!! Talk about tiny!! :D I've uploaded two other pictures today and I hope you'll visit them too! Thanks to all of you who have visited and have left comments and favorites! I try to go to all of your pages within a day or two and is a highlight for me to see your beautiful photography! :) NOTE! I have finally updated my profile and I hope you'll take a look to find out a little more about me and how important all of you are to my experience here on Flickr! Janet's profile (sfhipchick)

Today I went outside and made a beeline for the granite valley, where I know the first flower of spring will appear. However, I didn't find any and figured I still had another week to wait. As it happened, I found a tiny spider web with droplets, and when the pictures didn't come out, I returned with my macro flash. After I got those pictures, I looked on top of the rock above the spider web, and look what I found!! THE FIRST FLOWER OF SPRING!!! HOORAY!!!! This is "Spring Whitlow Grass", which measures only 1/16"-1/8" in diameter! They are tiny little jewels and a great challenge to photograph well due to their size and white petals. Last year I went through countless pictures to get any that worked. I'm very happy to say that I had no trouble this time around! YAY for experience!!! :) (you can see last year's picture below!) William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". Although he lived in London for all but three years of his life, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself". Wkipedia: William Blake

This is my alternate image for today, showing just how tiny these flowers are. They are perhaps 1/16" in diameter, and the seed pods are about 1/8"-1/3" long! :D

Today was one of those days where nothing turned out as I expected! I had plans of taking pictures of a new flower I found but in the end, I couldn't get the image I wanted! I took so many pictures and finally decided to choose another subject. Just outside we have zillions of tiny Whitlow Grass blossoms, so small you really can just barely see them! I discovered last year that they make a magnificent seed pod, so I thought, "OH! Let's take a picture of one of those!! And I guess that's what I was supposed to be taking pictures of today because of the dozen or so pictures, almost every subject turned out nicely! This is my favorite because of the fun bokeh, but I have another shown below too! Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970) was an American author in the area of the new thought movement who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature. He is widely considered to be one of the great writers on success. His most famous work, Think and Grow Rich (1937), is one of the best-selling books of all time (at the time of Hill's death in 1970, Think and Grow Rich had sold 20 million copies). Hill's works examined the power of personal beliefs, and the role they play in personal success. He became an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1936. "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve" is one of Hill's hallmark expressions. How achievement actually occurs, and a formula for it that puts success in reach of the average person, were the focal points of Hill's books. Wkipedia: Napoleon Hill Explored on Flickr on March 6, 2013. Highest position: #148.