There is a nice vibe in London this summer with local heroes paving our streets with gold. West Londoners enjoyed a perfect end to the Olympic Games at the weekend when Mo Farah stormed to victory winning a double gold. The Telegraph‘s Simon Hart reported: ‘A capacity home crowd on its feet and roaring itself hoarse as Londoner Mo Farah tore down the finishing straight for his second Olympic gold and a place at the very pinnacle of British sporting history. It does not get much better than this.’ (The Telegraph, Sunday 12 August)

I’ll admit to feeling a little teary eyed as Mo Farah grew up in my home town of Hounslow and went to school in Isleworth where a post box has been painted gold to celebrate his victory. My friend Christine kindly provided this photo of the gold post box in Isleworth – where we too went to school.

A post box is painted gold in Isleworth in honour of new local Olympic hero, Mo Farah. Image © Christine Wilkinson

The British summer saved itself for the Olympics and beautiful sunny days have brought back the familiar hum of bees to our parks and gardens. Bumbles, solitaries, honeybees, butterflies and hoverflies are foraging on whatever is flowering in August to stock their larders with honey.

Donna of Garden Walk Garden Talk and Green Apples wins the gold for shooting insect photography with her incredible post: Macro World – Look Into My Eyes. Inspired by Donna’s work, I have taken the first step from ‘automatic’ to ‘manual’ on the SLR with the result being a lot of blurry pictures and a few focused shots captioned by this summer’s quirkier Olympian quotes: What Usain Bolt & others said at London Olympics 2012 (BBC Sport).

‘Today the weather was beautiful and I decided just to go for it.’

‘We are not obliged to throw our president out of a helicopter.’

‘I’m now a living legend.’

‘We are from space, I am from Mars.’

‘Yohan is crazy. If he keeps talking like that someone is going to put him in a straitjacket one day.’

‘I love you mum.’

‘Watching the Olympics on TV with a beer and a bowl of crisps.’

Related links (or catching up on my blog reading post-Olympics)

I like learning from my fellow bloggers, so if you enjoy macro photography of insects and pictures of wildlife and flowers too, check out these blogs:

Portraits of Wildflowers – a lovely post 25 years, 25 pictures rounds up some of the best
Leaf and twig – with bees at Harvest
A French Garden – studies a Bee in echinacea
Rolling Harbour Abaco – maybe you can help with An Abaco insect is bugging me – what is this creature?
Standingoutinmyfield – It’s like a hair shampoo ad for bees, How to clean your antennae
Apiarylandlord’s blog – sums up my thoughts this August with I’ve been busy and here is my gallery

And finally, two photography blogs:

Daily tips on learning SLR on A Shot A Day with a lovely picture of a rainbow
Planet Earth Newsletter has created a lovely Sunday photo magazine (scroll down to seen some amazing bugs)