There’s a great big world out there. So many beautiful and exciting things to see and experience – awe-inspiring landscapes, exotic animals, amazing feats of architecture – the list goes on and on.  But sometimes the most interesting things can be found right outside our own door.  When we walk outside we step over, around and into a much smaller world.  A world that creeps, crawls and buzzes right beneath our noses, inhabited by creatures so tiny we hardly even notice their presence.  This is the wonderful world of bugs.  Where everything is on a scale so disproportionate from ours that we are reminded of classic old horror movies like The Incredible Shrinking Man or Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

I never paid much attention to these little guys before, unless I was scratching at their bites, being annoyed by their buzzes or trying to outrun their stingers.  Then I got a macro lens.  The idea was to do super close up shots of pretty things, like flowers.  As I started playing around with it, I was trying to focus on the cutest tiniest little flower ever, when suddenly an even tinier bug crawled up and sat down right on top of the flower.  It was amazing to see something so tiny, so close up.

And thus began my new obsession – actively seeking out bugs all over my backyard and everywhere else I went. There were so many things I never noticed before, like the tiny black hairs on a fly’s back or the aphids the size of a pin head all over my purple cone flowers.

Tiny aphids on a purple cone flowers.

Green fly on a blackberry flower.

Up close they really weren’t as ugly or icky as I once thought them to be.  Some are dazzling and colorful, some are soft and fuzzy and others are so fragile and delicate it’s hard to imagine they are really alive.

For the past couple weeks, I have been learning to look more closely at their delicate little world. At first glance they seemed so much different from us, but are they really? Just like us they eat, sleep, multiply and eventually die. They are such an important part of the circle of life. They pollinate our gardens, fertilize the soil and provide food for the animals that we eat. We simply cannot survive without them.

So the next time you walk out your door, take a few minutes to look more closely at the world that surrounds you.  Stop and smell the flowers, breathe in the fresh air and remember to be thankful for the little things in life.

–          A life is never so precious as when you hold it in the palm of your hand.