Last week we found ourselves outside after work, releasing ladybugs around our apple trees (for aphid control. Who knows how well it works? We’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the ladybugs since. Yeah, we just got played for fools by Big Ladybug, but what gardener hasn’t?), and attempting to document the event with the first camera Pookie grabbed. As it happens, it was the camera with the 50 mm lens on it. The pictures of the ladybugs were uninspiring…
…but when Pookie took the Fiddy around to the side of the house where the hanging baskets of flowers are, she rediscovered what’s so great about this lens.
Even though the Fiddy is our smallest and lightest lens, we tend not to use it in the garden because it doesn’t do wide angles and doesn’t do super-duper, eensy-weensy close-ups like the 100mm, but after seeing those flower pictures, we decided to spend the weekend undertaking a Fiddy Challenge. It was time to document how our garden was coming along while taking baby steps toward mastering that lens.
The marigolds are all still just wee seedlings, with funky textures abounding when seen through the Fiddy:
The garlic is bustin’ out all over, and we’ve been harvesting it to make into green garlic pesto, which is crazy delicious:
The onions finally look like bona fide plants instead of scraggly little green strings:
The peppers are ever so close to being planted in their forever beds:
The tomatoes are in the ground and growing away:
And the potatoes are, once again, trying to be the plants that ate Maple Hoo:
Also, our overwintered pots of sage are bolting:
And we’re completely indifferent to the encroaching weeds creeping in through the fence:
Of course, just as I was falling deeply and irrevocably in love with the Fiddy, Pookie went and took this picture with the 100, with all the awesome fuschia bokeh. Oh, macro lenses — how can we choose which one we love best?
[Posted by Schnookie]
5 Comments
May 20, 2009 at 9:31 pm
The fuschia and Dandy Lion pics rock.
May 21, 2009 at 5:36 pm
the 50mm takes awesome pictures, but it sure has its limitations. You wouldn’t know it, looking at these photos!
psssssst! you don’t have to pick a favorite, since you have two cameras and two awesome lenses! ha!
May 21, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Thanks so much, Sarah!
And you’re right, elizabeth. Heh. Of course, it’s so tough to drag BOTH cameras all ten feet outside the front door into the garden. I mean, that’s a lot of work! Heh. (And the 50 is such a strange creature. There’s so much it can’t do, but so much it does so well, and it seems like it will take a lifetime to master. I thought I was getting into an easy relationship when we got it! :P)
May 23, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Mmmm…fuchsia bokeh…dreamy! Your garden is excellent. Huzzah for the fiddy!
May 24, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Great looking potatoes. Actually, everything in your garden looks good. I finally got my garden planted yesterday. I took a week off from work two weeks ago, expressly to prepare the soil and plant the garden. Then, it rained almost every day. But now, the garden’s in — tomatoes about 40 percent of it — but also, swiss chard, beets, lettuce, kale and collard greens (in descending order of space alotted). I’m hopeful. Some 310 square feet, and I dug all of it by hand.