SUMMER ADVENTURES ... Episode 9 - MY LITTLE DESERT
A land turtle ( Testudo Hermanni ) is moving on the rocky terrain under the strong sunn ...
... is high noon, pretty hot, and not much else here is mooving ...
... strange little plants with lovely flowers ...
... are growing on the rocks ...
... and almost invisible ...
... a grasshopper ... perfectly camouflaged ...
... is still as a rock ...
... many things here ...
... look pretty dead ...
... or petrified ...
... especially now, in the middle of a dusty, summer day ...
... but this is not a desert ...
... both :) figuratively ...
... and literally ... :D
... this is just a small patch of an isolated desert-like landscape ...
... that looks dramatically different from everything that surrounds it ...
... It's a stone quarry that is rarely in use, I see some small scale works there every 5 years or so ...
... and a community of beautiful, resilient plants ...
... have taken over the place ...
... and with many plants around ...
...
there are some animals too ...
...
even butterflies occasionally visit this place, but they are a rare sight ...
... the typical inhabitants are much modestly colored and much smaller ...
... like this tiny jumping spider ...
... standing on this little piece of rock like a lion on some boulder ...
... and if this jumping spider was small ...
... this one is really minuscule ...
... at first, I thought that it's a flea ... or some strange sort of jumping mite ...
... never saw a jumping spider this small before, it eas really more micro than macro ...
...
in the same area, maybe his usual pray, these similarly minuscule grasshoppers
were jumping around in big numbers, but completely invisible if you are walking
around due to their small size and camouflage, only if you crouch down and
concentrate on small things there is a chance to see them. 
Once
upon a time :) in the late 80' precisely ... a group of adolescents, kind of ''
Hippy out of time and space '' type of young persons, me included, were regularly
visiting this place, entering with a big cloud of dust like a Mad Max gang, on
their cheap TOMOS motorbikes ( local production, made in Yugoslavia) and barely
functional, half rusted cars, Renault 4, Polski fiat 126p, and Zastava 750 better known as Ficho or Figuar ( kind of parody of Jaguar) a
national symbol more than a car back then, and there was a lot of weed smoke
and music all around this stone arena, it was great to listen to the Dark Side Of
The Moon or something from King Crimson or Deep Purple there ... it was a great place to recreate some American myths in local versions and best LSD voyages I
had, I had there ... but that's another story ... this one is about a more
stable community :) that stays here when the bunch of loud kids is gone. 
The plants here are amazing ...
... they will take the majority of the post ...
... and I will surely exaggerate ...
... with the number of photographs ...
... depicting plants ...
... and that's because ...
... first - they are beautiful ...
...
and then ...
... even in the same species, there is much variety and with different light conditions, even more, ways to photograph them ...
... and make them look ...
... every time a bit different
There are some trees here ... figs ...
...and pines ...
... that have grown here ...
... many years ago ...
... but on this hard soil never became much more than a small shrub ... good only for a little bit of shade for some small creatures ...
... like these wasps ...
... with their nest on the branch of the small, undeveloped pine ...
... this other home on the same tree ... is a work of a caterpillar ...
... taking a picture would mean to destroy her habitation, so I decided to leave the shape and colors of this caterpillar to your imagination :) ...
All these plants ...
... are growing ...
... on the limestone dust ...
... between the rocks ...
... and the rocks ...
... themselves ...
... are ...
... varied ...
... and ...
... interesting ...
... with their own kind of beauty ...
... complexity ...
... and elegance ...
... with ...
... many textures ...
...
colors ...
... many crystal formations ...
... lovely glittering surfaces ...
... and occasionally ...
... some fossils on display ...
Under one bigger boulder ...
... I found some wasp ...
... and this little community ...
... was very aggressive ...
... but the place was interesting ... and pretty photogenic ...
... so I decided to go in a series '' shoot and run actions '' ... which were pretty successful ...
... I have some photographs two show here ...
... and I got away with only two stings ...
... and on a beautiful boulder in shades of brown and orange ...
... there was another ...
... very cute ...
... like ... you know ... the teddybear level of cuteness ...
... little jumping spider :D
... and not very far ... on a boulder of a different color ...
... another camouflaged grasshopper ... and now :D ...
... let's go back ...
... to the stars of this little post ...
... the plants ...
... back to a variety ...
... of little flowers ...
... yap :D ...
... and some ...
... just slightly bigger ones ...
... back to many ...
... maybe slightly unnecessary shots :D ...
... of the same species ...
... over and over again :) ...
... just in some different compositions ...
... with a slightly different angle ...
... or light ...
... always in search ...
... for new versions ...
... and ...
... different details ...
... of the same things ...
... trying to convey ...
... many different atmospheres ...
... that can be experienced ...
... from dawn ...
... to dusk ...
... during ...
... the long ...
... the very, very long :) ...
... and kind of ...
... a bit like the melting cheese ...
... hot and overlong ...
... summer day ... and now :D ...
... let's talk about spiders :) again
This is Argiope lobata, one of the most beautiful spiders in this area, in my opinion ... this is the young specimen ... all the spiders that have found a home here, in this period are young, small, the abdomen is still elongated and they look a bit different than the fully grown ones.
But just as the grown-ups.
They are shinny and they reflect the light.
This one is even younger ... smaller ... more elongated ... without lateral decorations on the abdomen ... and less recognizable as the Argiope lobata spider ... bun if he survives and grows up ...
... will look like this ...
... or this ... the look will depend mostly on the direction and the quality of the light ...
... and this ...
... is a short look at the other side ...
... yap, these are some cool spiders ...and now ...
... let's take a short look ...
... at another strange, beautiful and well-camuflaged grasshopper of this area...
The Acrida nasuta grasshopper... and now :D
... let's go back to the stones ...
... let's see :D ...
... some more ...
... of these ...
... boring ...
... and lifeless ...
... ups :D ... nope ... this one is alive ...
... let me repeat this part ... and lifeless ...
... shapes and textures :D
... while the lovely ...
... little lizards ...
... are observing us ...
... hidden all over the place ...
And now :) let's see how the empty shells of the deceased snails, with the passing of the time, are becoming like made of the same rocks that are surrounding them ... looking almost like fossils...
... while the recently abandoned shells are different ...
... kinda cool, ha? :D ( I'm exhausted, this is taking too long to finish hehe hope you will be exhausted after visiting this post, the vision of the tired face of the reader is the only thing that gives me the strength to continue with this self-inflicted torture )
And now ...
... it's time ...
... to take a look ...
... at ...
... some ...
... plants :D ...
... AGAIN !!! ...
... yap ...
... plants, plants, plants ...
... this little flower looks like a minuscule version of the rose that grows in my garden ...
... and this combination of plant and rock reminds me of some schematic, simplified drawings of the way the vulcanoes work that I saw in some encyclopedias, you know those drawings, like in old books... maybe newer too ... the stone here is like a mountain and the branching plant is like a lava underneath the earth's crust ... :D or maybe this is only in my head.
And here is an unnecessary shot that shows you just some grains of dust caught between the hair of this plant.
And now ...
... with this minuscule grasshopper ...
... and this bigger one ...
... with this fly in the dusk ... on the small pine tree ...
... and the small pine tree in the dusk ...
... and these shots ...
... that are showing us a larger perspective ...
... let's bring ...
... this scrolling exercise for the mouse and finger ...
... to an ... no, no ... stop this ... you know what?
... let's end this little story ...
... with the turtle ...
... from the beginning of the post ... maybe some of you still remember her after all this time ...
... slowly as this post, the turtle has arrived at some aromatic plant, and now is resting there ...
And this is THE END.
( As always in these posts on Steemit all the photographs, and the GIF made of some of those photographs are my work )
Have a good day ...
... or night ...
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What a fabulous collection! After all the shots of the rocks, I can only hope you were wearing shoes for this photo shoot, especially since you were running away from wasps part of the time! Picture my face absolutely exhausted from reading your post, if that makes you happy, but I love these. I also enjoyed your description of the 80's. I still listen to Dark Side of the Moon. Wonderful post!
Thanks :) glad you like this photo story with some memories in. Fortunately the slippers I use during the summer are good enough for short runnings.
Haha! Since you don't mind getting stung so much, maybe you can come over here and get rid of the hornet nest that's blocking my path through the blackberries!
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:D I'm on my way with some Ghostbusters equipment.... coming soon hehe
Wow! That’s a lot of nice shots there. I like them all. Except for the wasps. I detest wasps. But your pictures of them are still nice. 😁
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:) Thanks.
This post has received a 71.50% upvote from @lovejuice thanks to @saboin. They love you, so does Aggroed. Please be sure to vote for Witnesses at https://steemit.com/~witnesses.
:) thank you ... and thanks to @saboin ... I vote for witnesses from time to time, I have voted a little more than 10 till now, I think ... is there any particular witness that you recommend?
I would recommend Aggroed, the guy who runs the lovejuice bot.
I usually vote for witnesses when they are part of projects I think are great for the platform. I voted for the whole gang that are behind the minnow support project and PALnet.
I voted for the people behind the Steem Keychain extension because I use it and I think it’s fantastic. I also voted for thecryptodrive because he filled my delegation lease request.
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Thanks appreciate the witness vote!
I can be somewhat arbitrary in my choices too. Hehe!
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:) me to ... this was very informative, thank you ...I also have voted for witnesses linked to cool projects I discovered along the way on Steemit ... and now the time has come to vote for the guy behind the lovejuice :)
Voted :) and I still have 17 votes remaining ... cool
I like the jumpers.
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Me too :) always wondered why don't produce them in plush for children, like teddybears
The beauty in the smallest things. Wow. Love the photos and the details. I've lived In a desert years ago so I can appreciate the scenery. Thank you for sharing it with us.
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Glad you like it :) I never visited the real desert, It's cool to have a place at hand where you can easily imagine that you are in some distant desert.