Spiderwort, or Tradescantia, can be any shade from purplish pink to this royal purple. We have two species of it native to the region; one actually grows on Cactus Flat with prickly pear cactus.	Playing with the new macro lens, I tried this shot straight down the "throat" of an Indian paintbrush.
One of my favorite understory plants in the creek woods is the rusty blackhaw viburnum. In spring, it produces fresh white clusters of tiny flowers, like this, against shiny green leaves. In summer and early fall, it has darker, but still shiny leaves, and blue berries that birds enjoy. And in late fall, its leaves turn brilliant shades of red. It's one of the native plants often cleared by ignorant developers as "just brush"...it's a very slow grower, and an old plant may be only a couple of inches in diameter at the base.	Oxalis flowers are very small, and this little fly was smaller still...so I had fun with my new macro lens. Other flower pictures with this lens are the Indian paintbrush and the spiderwort.
When I spotted the little red dot on the mistletoe leaf, I photographed it just for the pretty color contrast. Once it was enlarged in the computer, I could see that this ladybird beetle was enjoying a buffet of aphids and tiny flies.
The Dot-winged Baskettail, Epitheca petechialis, is new this year--or this is the first year I've been able to photograph and identify it. It flew past me and landed on these dead leaves at the margin of the west woods while I was trying to photograph hummingbirds...it looked almost solid black at first glance. Clearly it's not--it has a mustard yellow face and yellow spots on the sides of the abdomen.	What defines it is this row of black dots on the leading edge of the hindwing. I didn't see those in the field--but when I got the image into the computer and enlarged it, there they were. I like the chevron shape of some of the dots.
Bee-flies sometimes look a lot like bees--this one didn't, but that long proboscis and tongue looked pretty scary. I took a lot of pictures of this fellow and this is the only one that came out clear at all.

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