I just dug up one of my wife's aphid-infested plants, recently brought home from the nursery, and unceremoniously dumped it in the compost bin for tomorrow morning's pick-up.
Along with the winged adult captured above, you can see hints of much more infestation on the bottom of this sage leaf. The top surface was littered with what appeared to be countless tiny, spherical white eggs. Several of the leaves had white splotches of powdery mildew, which drew our eyes at first. The aphids showed up on closer examination. The sage was in a window box planter between a lavender and a rosemary, both of which appear to be unscathed by either the aphids or the fungus.
I was a little disappointed with the clarity of the 1:1 images I shot with a Nikon 105mm/Micro despite using a flash and bracing myself. Next I tried running a focus stack with my camera on a tripod, but I didn't lock up the mirror since I was using flash, and those images were even worse. The mirror-slap vibrations at that magnification were all too evident. I didn't have time to keep testing, so I'll have to experiment with capturing such tiny creatures a bit more on another day.
* * *
