I hope I am finding everyone well and having had a fantastic Christmas. If your anything like me your still pretty full from all the Turkey dinners with roast tatties and parsnips. My mouth is watering again.
I hope Santie visited everyone and left them what they were hoping for. I got everything I wanted, my wife gave me the new War of the Worlds CD by Jeff Wayne, love it to bits, I now have both versions. My eldest son gave me a new wallet, thank goodness. I like a certain type of wallet which has a zipper pouch on the back for change, I hate having change loose in my pocket, it always seems to fall out and end up in small gaps where you can't get it back. My youngest son gave me a small 9inch softbox to fit my speedlight, perfect for the macro work I want to start doing again. I have an extendable arm for my flash and the softbox is the final bit to the jigsaw.
I also received some money from family and I put that to good use on Boxing Day. I have finally bought myself a new hard drive, my other two are only 500Gb and unfortunately were beginning to get rather full. I now have a 2Tb HDD as well, so instead of having two discs which are identical I have now split my photos and other documents between the two 500Gb HDDs and copied it all to the 2Tb disc giving me an excellent backup. My intentions are to get another 2TB HDD allowing me to have the two discs again rather than the three I have now. At least I know my photos are safe and that I have plenty of storage for lots more. The transfer of 35,000+ photos took forever on Boxing Day.
I have been to the supermarket as well and bought myself a few plants. I used to grow Amarylis every year, but haven't bothered for a while. I decided to get a couple this year, well, I was quite surprised to find them so cheap so I bought four in the end, the four at their reduced price came to the price of one before they had been reduced, absolutely crazy. I also managed to get a Narcissi Paper White and Gill found me a couple of Armeniacum's. In total I now have seven plants to grow and have spent less than £8.00, bargain. They will all become subjects for my macro work, so keep your eyes peeled.

Todays upload is an old one from the archives that I found during the transfer to the new HDD, in fact it is from 2010 and was taken at the Botanical Gardens at Durham University. They are lovely gardens and have a hot house where they keep and breed butterflies, you can enjoy walking through looking at plants whilst the butterflies flutter about and land on you. Taking your camera in there on a cold day is not recommended though, I did that and had to sit for about half an hour to allow the lens, sensor, mirror and viewfinder to demist before I could take a shot. Amazingly I was covered in butterflies whilst waiting, but the second the camera was ready, they all flew to areas that I was struggling to reach, typical.

I hope you like this and thanks for any comments.

If I don't see you before, HAPPY NEW YEAR and see you in 2013.

Tags: Plant Ladybird Insect Durham Close-up and macro Botanical gardens

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