Friday My Town Shoot-Out: Macro

Friday My Town Shoot-Out is a sharing of photos from all over the world, taken in and around your community. This week's theme was Macro, and I'd hoped, as usual, to get out to find some new shots, but again...Life took over. So, these are taken within the last month, and are my best archived interpretation of macro, taken in and around Athens, OH.

If you peek at this blog with any regularity, you know that most of my posts are about enjoying the world outside.  This post is no exception...

 I find it difficult to take crisp photos in most of the light we are afforded in winter, but this particular day was brilliant - which has its own challenges, but I love the tint of blue along the edges of snow, and the contrast of textures.

 These thorns caught my eye - they looked exactly like miniature swords to me!

 Also sword-like, but hiding a bud, covered in deceptively tender-looking scales.

 A neighbor's charming sunflower, with its cap of snow...

 I am enamored of the fungi, and this one was found in a friend's woods and brought home, where it promptly shriveled up into a dry little blob.  I put it back outside in hopes that a wet day might revive it, and here it is, weeks later, back to its happy little job of decomposition, accompanied by an appropriately slimy little friend (you can juuuust see him, a slug, up in the right-hand corner).

This is not quite macro, I don't think, just up-close, but it's more along the lines of subject matter I'd hoped to find this week.  There is a new retaining wall in our neighborhood, and they used some of the old bricks that used to be manufactured here...Athens Block.

Thanks for looking! Please have a look to see what others found in their communities!