Entry in Papa Pepper Combo Photo Contest

So a few days ago I saw that Papa Pepper posted a photo challenge, where you had to have a picture with an animal and a plant together. Our weather has been very stormy, but I finally got a short break yesterday to head out with the camera.

It turns out that the really hard part with this challenge isn't the critter with a plant. It's the proof that you took the photo yourself and that it isn't an old photo!! I got a bunch of neat bee, wasp, and butterfly pictures that I can't enter, because I couldn't get a pose with the signage!

I finally staked out some flowers with my sign clipped to the plant and got some decent shots. Some of those I couldn't use, because the wind flipped my sign so it wasn't readable. But I ended up with this.

This picture is cropped but has had no other editing.

Here's my proof.

The only thing touched on this one was I renamed the file. No editing at all.

For anyone who wants to know, this is apparently an Admiral butterfly (Vanessa atalanta). My husband the Dane thought it was something else, but after I looked those up we don't have them. Not often anyway. I still need to figure out what our other regular is.

So I mentioned bad weather. It was thundering like crazy when I took all these pictures. Still hoping I'd find a spider to photo--I have a thing for awesome spider shots--I headed across the road into the beginning of the local dune plantation. Seeing as I ended up wandering around in the heather and grasses on the small inland dunes with nothing but a pair of cheapo crocs on my feet, I'm lucky I didn't meet one of our local poisonous snakes.

I did find a spider--two of them actually--but not enough plant to qualify for this contest. Sharing one for fun. Those of you scared of spiders, run far away and don't scroll down (I made the mistake of sharing on discord and freaked a few people out).

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By this time the storm was worsening, so I didn't have decent light for handholding closeups with my zoom lens and no flash anyway, so I grabbed a few shots of the threatening sky (a 70+ zoom is not ideal for sky shots in Denmark) and headed back inside. I made it in only moments before the rain hit. Our storm-scared border collie immediately glued herself to me, so I think I had stayed out too long.

I hope you enjoyed this little story of my adventure with this contest.

Finally, here is the totally unedited version of my entry, just in case my cropping isn't acceptable. In the lower left corner you can see I seriously need to get my camera cleaned. I finally found somewhere that might be able to do it, but last time I tried to take it in, the guy I had to see had gone out, even though I'd called ahead to confirm he'd be there.