At first sight, my house and yard could look like places where the Christmas spirit doesn't feel at home. There's nothing Christmas related on the shelves or in the windows. No wreath nor tree. I'm too lazy for having fun with decorations or making cookies. I'm OK with that Christmas stuff, don't get me wrong. I'm not a Scrooge, although I can sound like one at times. Is just that I don't mind having or not having that stuff around me. What I see on the Internet is more than enough to satisfy my Christmas needs. Nope, at first sight, and with the naked eye, you can't see Christmas in my world, but ...
... but a look through the macro lens can reveal some fantastic decorations that can be easily overlooked otherwise.
The annoying rain that keeps falling with regular short breaks since last weekend, keeps leaving beautiful pearls on the vegetation.
Yesterday, I had the whole afternoon without rain, so I had plenty of time to collect a nice variety of droplets.
Not only that. Since the temperatures are relatively high for the winter, from 9 to 13 degrees Celsius, I found some insects as well. Not many really, but enough to spice up with them this droplets-themed Christmas post.
The droplets, shown in this and the following picture ...
... were formed, found & photographed on the Stellaria media plants.
Here you can see a neat horizontal line of droplets on the elongated leaf of grass.
This vertical composition was also found & photographed on the grass.
I found the insects three or four hours after the last raindrops fell on the ground, but immediately after the rain, I found another interesting arthropod.
This is a millipede from the Polydesmidae family. Can't tell you what species exactly is shown in the above photograph.
Here you can see how the droplets can decorate the beautiful folded leaf of the Sonchus oleraceus plant.
Some of these droplets look a lot like Christmas bubbles to me.
Some of the wild plants on my lawn produce plenty of flowers in winter. Here you can see the lovely blue flower of the Veronica persica. In the following photograph ...
... especially if you enlarge the picture by clicking on it, you can take a look at the minuscule Sminthurus viridis springtail in the center of the flower.
Here you can see a bunch of Senecio vulgaris flowers. While taking this photograph, I noticed a small insect among the flowers ...
... so I came closer with the macro lens. This is a leafhopper nymph. Can't tell you the name of the species. Could be the Allygus modestus. Maybe. The family is Cicadellidae.
Some droplets on the grass were hanging on the top of the leaf.
Others were standing on the top in a vertical position.
You could see fragments of the yard reflected in some of those droplets.
On one of the Senecio vulgaris leaves there on the lawn, I noticed some minuscule orange-colored protuberances and a springtail near them.
Here you can take a better, more up-close look at those things. Today, after a quick Internet search, I found that this is a rust fungus. The Puccinia lagenophorae.
For this shot, I came even closer so you can take a better look at the Entomobrya multifasciata springtail.
After taking this photograph I left the springtail on the fungus-infested leaf ...
... and continued working on my collection of Christmas droplets.
Here you can see yet another of the many lovely little pearls on the leaves of grass.
This considerably bigger and more free-form piece of water jewelry has been formed on the upper surface of the Arum maculatum leaf.
Here you can take a look at the Euphorbia peplus spurge and a few sparse droplets on its top.
However, most of the droplets in this post were photographed on the Sonchus oleraceus and the grass. When it comes to the grass, I can't tell you the name of the species because is hard to identify the type of grass only by the leaves. In springtime and summer, when flowers, and then seeds are produced, each grass looks different, but now, all of them look pretty much the same.
On another Sonchus oleraceus leaf, I found an aphid. The Uroleucon cirsii aphid.
Here you can see yet another droplet on yet another leaf of the same kind - the Sonchus oleraceus kind.
At one point, I came across this very small planthopper ...
... on some plant that I wasn't able to identify.
When it comes to the planthopper, I was able to identify only the genus and the family, not the exact species. The family is Delphacidae.
The genus - Javesella. It could be the Javesella dubia. Maybe.
A meter or two further, on the nettle, I photographed another small hemipteran insect. This is the Trioza urticae, a psyllid from the Triozidae family.
This pair of droplets was photographed on the edge of the Sonchus oleraceus leaf.
Here you can see a fly from the Syrphidae family that has landed on the Veronica persica plant to get a bit of nectar from its flower.
In this last shot, you can get out of the macro view and take a look at the wider setting, the lawn, and one of my cats that was sleeping while I was busy collecting the material for the visual part of this Christmas post.
The following links will take you to the sites with more information about some of the plants and small arthropods showed in the post. I found some stuff about them there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellaria_media
https://www.naturespot.org.uk/millipedes/polydesmidae
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonchus_oleraceus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_persica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sminthurus_viridis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senecio_vulgaris
https://www.naturespot.org.uk/species/puccinia-lagenophorae
https://www.naturespot.org.uk/node/132018
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uroleucon_cirsii
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphacidae
https://www.britishbugs.org.uk/homoptera/Psylloidea/Trioza_urticae.html
HAVE A GREAT CHRISTMAS AND A BULLISH NEW YEAR.
