First bumble bee of 2019

Of course there will have been more of them and it is unfortunately for this one that it seems to carry a whole family of tiny mites with it, but it is always great to capture one of this year's pollinators, my first bee of 2019. I also saw and captured a pretty butterfly today. Most of my shots today were however shots of the magnolia, rather urgent as the first petals are falling already ! And for this weekend Kramer's Eye suggested becoming creative with spirals, so I took a piece of tinfoil, followed my masher's spiral pattern on the tinfoil with a metal skewer  and photographed the magnolia tree through that (holding it far enough from me with my left hand so that the shapes were still visible). See one of the results in the extra.

Which brings me to Abstract Thursday, last week entries and this coming week's optional theme. We've done this before but I think it is great fun, this coming Thursday the optional theme is 'make and use your own filter to create an abstract'. The tag will be AT196

Thanks so much for last Thursday's entries with a wide variety of unexpected shapes and patterns.
Here are last week's specials:
carolinav          for a great spiraling pattern
DawnP              for poppy seeds as you've never seen them before
timb2503         for an amazing pattern
ronragsdale3   for a close-up which could have been a drone shot
AH14inbw        for a minimalist scape
Thanks again for all the entries, find them all here ! I'm looking forward to  your creations this coming Thursday !

And thank you very much for the kind comments and stars for yesterday's crystal ball magnolia tree !