Willful ignorance on a sunny day..?.

The bottom four photos were taken today in cultivated gardens in the fronts of businesses. I don't know what kinds they are, except for the daffodil, and I don't know what kind of daffodil it is. And I am not the least bit interested in finding out. I was impressed by the splashes of color and the aromas as I walked along the sidewalk, and I stopped briefly to snap some photos. But I was not curious about their names. Maybe mildly curious about their wild ancestors and current relatives in the wild. Was this a type of phlox? Was this a lily? But for some reason I do not understand, I have never felt attracted to domesticated flowers. I also dislike those photos of wildflowers in which the photographer has used a gray card or other artificial background to isolate the flower completely from its surroundings, in effect making it look like a studio portrait. I much prefer the wild. So, the top two photos, my favorites today, are of an Oregon grape bush. It was one of the earliest to bloom around Quincy, and today it was being visited by lots of bees, spiders, and ants. I spent a good 20 minutes walking and crawling around this bush, shooting close-ups of the flowers and leaves, and always most excited when I caught a bee or spider in the shot.
The domestication of plants and animals was supposedly a significant event in the course of human progress. Maybe I've spent too much time with Thoreau. for I keep admiring the wild ancestors and shunning the domesticated versions. Whenever I photograph flowers and bugs, I like to show them in their wild context, and to use focus in such a way that the photos have depth and invite the viewer to step (or crawl) in. Occasionally, I get very fascinated by a plant family, such as the Brassicaceae or the Solanaceae, from which many of our edible veggies were derived. It has always intrigued me that the latter family, for instance, includes the very toxic nightshade, and that the edible plants in the family - potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, etc. -all have poisonous parts. I guess the one thing that turns me off about those splashes of color in the bottom two photos is the idea that developing these varieties was intended to somehow be an improvement upon nature. That, and the tendency for many gardeners and landscapes to sow large areas of just one type of flower and work overtime to keep others out. I much prefer the biodiversity that results from the competition and cooperation among species. So, I'm still not sure if the proper title for this post is "willful ignorance." After all, ignorance is not synonymous with stupidity. It has to do with ignoring!