It's been a rather busy week but I found something in the garden that surprised and confounded me at the same time. I was busy tidying up the planter box and found the most intricate lacey skeleton of something that at first I thought may have been the remains of a devoured Petunia. I was wrong though. When I first picked it up it was covered almost entirely by the tiniest little snails that had obviously just emerged with the latest rain.
These flowers are unbelievably intricate and yet structurally more robust than they may look. I decided to bring this remnant indoors to find a way to preserve it (possibly in a resin block). But first, I had to take some photos because the curls are just so pretty and remind me of the kind of decorations you would hang up around Christmas time. I figured that some contrast would work to show off the lace. The kitchen counter has become my go-to for photographing anything light in colour, so that's where I started. Lace isn't the easiest thing to photograph I discovered, but I think I got a couple that worked.
Unfortunately I'm not as pedantic as some and as I was looking for the best way to arrange it, it was hemorrhaging bits of plant fibre all over the counter top. I don't really mind it in the photos, but I'm sure that real photographers would have cleaned this up along the way. Oh well. I shoot them as they lie. Can you guess what this plant was originally yet?
I then took it outside to see how it would do in natural light against a more natural background so weathered wood seemed a good idea. I like how the light plays on the surface of the lace and brings out the natural glow of the light wood. I did this during the golden hour which came out really nicely.
So after a while of pondering, it was my partner who actually worked out what this used to be. It was a stem that not that long ago held my tomatoes that refused to ripen. I had pulled off this stem and left it in the corner of the planter box while I hacked down the rest of the plant tree. As it left me feeling rather annoyed and down about my lack of harvest, I didn't expend much energy on that planter since, so even though I was initially irritated by the green tomatoes and even more annoyed by the snails, they did a nice job of cleaning off the stem of all greenery, leaving this beauty behind. Even in bad harvests, we sometimes get rewarded with something cool.
I like the flower? on the left that looks like a person with a funky comb-over hair-do who's clearly still stuck in the 80's and thinks pixie boots are awesome. Can you see it? I love finding personalities in things like this.
I had no idea that tomato fruiting stems had this kind of "skeletal" structure but considering how heavy tomatoes can get, it makes sense. Nature is an amazing architect. Have you ever found something like this in your garden? I know that some insects leave their exo skeletons behind when they shed, like grasshoppers, but I haven't seen one of those in years. Figured it would be cool to share.
๐ท๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐จ๐ฐ ๐๐๐๐. ๐จ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐.