Don’t know about you but to me this look like a clown’s lapel flower that’s going to squirt me in the face.
Different stages of a cosmos.
The next two photos show ants farming their aphids. For a short (one page) but fairly comprehensive explanation of the aphids/ants relationship see How Ants and Aphid Help Each Other. I found the last section of the article to be particularly interesting.
Cosmos flower and bud. To me the bud looks as though it has a plastic or glassy surface, especially near the bottom. I used to get this effect quite often on a different variety of flower at the Missouri Botanical Garden. I always thought it was something about that particular variety of flower at MoBot that caused the effect but now see that’s not the case. Wish I could figure out what causes it so I can repeat it when wanted.
Thanks for stopping by.
David
It's Complicated 
The clown’s lapel flower is a perfect description. Your point about the ancient camera reminded me of a statement from a software company about how they couldn’t be expected to support obsolete software (from 2014, or something like that).
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I know what you mean about support for obsolete software. I can understand that statement in terms of changes to operating systems that require more than a simple patch for the software or after multiple patches. In those cases I think the customer has to bite the bullet but to stop support on an arbitrary time period doesn’t make a lot of sense to me from a customer service perspective.
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These are all stunning, David! I dare not sniff that top flower, just in case it squirts water in my face 🙂
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Thanks Pete and go ahead and take a sniff … I dare you. 🙂
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The Nikon seems to have won this contest, but the Panasonic ain’t too shabby. Nice pics. 📸
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Thanks Steve. The Panasonic is a nice small camera but has its limitations.
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