hidden behind

hidden behind

the daffodil's yellow trumpet,

a crab spider lurking

When I left for the Yucatan at 3:30 am in early March, the thermometer read 15 F (-9 C) and the frozen landscape consisted of dead brown grass and bare branches. When I returned ten days later, it was 86 F (30 C), hotter than the tropics, with green shoots of grass and early spring flowers all abloom.
          Today I sit under a pin oak beside a coterie of daffodils to take a portrait. With ruffled yellow trumpets held above the six pointed petals that form the perianth, they look like Renaissance ladies with golden crowns and white ruffs. I choose one and bring the camera as close as I can to capture the graceful shapes emerging from the daffodil's yellow corona: the three semi-circular lobes of the stigma at the end of the style and the pollen-encrusted anthers.
          That's when I notice a small black bug crawling up one of the columnar filaments. The next instant, a brown crab spider, lying in ambush, darts out from behind the corona, brandishing its long forelegs as if to say, "That's MY bug, back off!" We play a little game of hide and seek as I try to get a close-up of the spider. Meanwhile, the little black bug wanders off along the ruffled edge of the daffodil's corona. Just as quickly as it appeared, the spider dives out of sight. Game over, back to business.