My Cute Little Diplolepis Rosae

No this isn't a post about Fizz, it is too dark to photograph her.

For the very same reason I am not going to show you this next picture.

This weather has got to break soon, I don't need bright sunshine just a little more than midnight at midday and a little less rain. Then I will attempt to do this beautiful tree justice. I just know that I can do it better and there is no point in trying to do it today.

So I am stuck indoors, except for walking Poochy. I have been working on my Easy Wildflowers project. That has been on the back burner for some time because I anticipated a down turn in the weather and thought that it would help to fill the winter months. It is nearly that time.

Do you remember our Rose Bedeguar Gall? Robin's Pincushion?

Well, I found myself writing about roses and one thing led to another.

The little Diplolepis rosae larvae should be going to sleep by now. In late October they stop feeding and go into a prepupal stage (a sort of stage before they become a pupa) and they over winter like that. Then around about February they moult again and become pupae.

Well I wanted to have a look inside a pincushion and this is late October so it seemed like a good time to do so.

This is the one that I left behind (a bit wet and bedraggled)...

and this is the one that I brought home to live with me.

Then I cracked it open to look inside.

Wow! Little animals!

This one with the pretty face is my favourite :)

They are not supposed to do anything now until February. I have put their Gall back together and wrapped it in leaves for now and I have put them in a flower pot in an outbuilding so that they know it's winter.

I haven't exposed all of the cells, most of them don't even know that they have been captured. I want to photograph the adult wasp, it is only 4 mm long and I don't have much chance of finding one in the wild and so I have borrowed some larvae.

In the Spring I will bring them back indoors and put them in a jar and I shall watch them every day. I haven't figured out how I am going to photograph the wasp yet but I would really like to see one and so I have to try.

So this is my plan for Easy Wildflowers. On our dull winter days I shall work on it and then I shall do a sort of resume of my days work for Tramp and it will look like this.

Hi, today I have been writing about the Town Hall Clock, Adoxa moschatellina and it looks like this...

Have you ever tried to get all five faces into one shot?... because I have and it is not possible.

Anyway I am not going to show you that today but I am looking forward to a bit of summer sunshine on those dark winter days.

I want to get the design right before I invest months of work into it and I am not very confident. What I have done looks good on my PC but everyone sees something different.

I have used thumbnails quite a lot and I don't really know if this works on other devices. I don't want to learn CSS so I might just have to abandon the thumbnails.

If you have time then please have a look and tell me if it is any good before I spend months creating a massive pile of ....stuff that doesn't really work. I may still have to rethink the layout. Say and I shall listen :)

Easy Wildflowers

When the sun shines I shall photograph this beautiful tree for you and for me.