Prairie Flowers and Bugs

It's probably an innie trait that I photograph flowers and other non-human subjects almost as often as my kids, right?

These are from a natural prairie just south of Chicago. My kids especially liked the little snake (not pictured) and the walking stick (on the blue hat brim).

















Edited to add (since I can't frigging post comments!):

I was told it's a tiger spider, which is an orb weaver, but when I check on Google Images I can't find any others which look exactly like this one, other than the general yellow-&-black coloring.

It was big. Top to bottom, including legs, around 3". I got the camera to within about 4" to take the photo.

Edited again to add:

Angelique writes "Hey Tammy, is there a "sign in" icon at the right top side of the blog for you? If so, click on that and you will be able to comment."

You mean it might work the 127th time I try it?????!!!!

Believe me, I have tried everything. Logged out and back in under various email addresses and screen names, etc. Blogger refuses to acknowledge me in the comment section. It's truly bizarre.

Yet another edit!! Bella, that's interesting. Apparently there are a number of ways for this to not work. In my case, I don't get any warnings, it's just that when I hit "post" the entire text disappears into the ether and cannot be brought back. I get the pull-down menu of which account I'd like to use to comment, but when I pick "google account" I don't get any follow-up, like which account, password, etc.