Rice Paddy July 30, 2010

This is going into the ninth week of rice planting and a huge transformation from last week. Again, I visited the rice paddy after work.  It was very hot today but not humid like last week and what a beautiful sight!  The aroma of the rice plants and the sounds of the rice paddy are so nice.  Most of the rice pods are out by now because of the hot weather, somehow it speeds things up by ten-fold or is that just a normal process for rice to mature rather quickly at this time of the year.

I think this is ready to make Kao Mao, young sticky rice that you make into dessert.

This is a purple sticky rice.  Normally it’s harder to tell when they are this young since they look just like a normal sticky rice and the rice pods don’t start to turn purple until they are a bit more mature, but this rice pod sticks out like a sore thumb.

These are not sticky rice, but a normal white rice that were planted 2 weeks ahead of the rest of the rice paddies.

The dragonflies are beautiful and I’ve yet to capture a different species.  Many are hovering in the middle of the paddy and I wish I had a better zoom lens.  I’m happy to say that I’m still sticking with the manual mode on my camera and loving it.

The damselfly is a lot smaller than a dragonfly, which several years back I mistaken it to be the baby dragonfly.

A closeup image, notice the body is very long and narrow.  They are tiny and hard to capture with a camera, almost impossible with a point and shoot and it takes a lot of patience.

This is my first time seeing a white caterpillar, eventually it will turn into a beautiful butterfly.

I absolutely love photographing the butterfly.  This time was a lot more work on my part chasing after them, unlike photographing them at the Butterfly Exhibit where there are plenty to choose from.

If anyone want a high pixel photo of these photos please let me know, I’ll be more than happy to email to you.