The lesson yesterday was:

Bracket your depth-of field. Throwing your aperture wide open might blur your background beautifully, but you may also lose important details in your subject. Closing it down all the way will give you more subject detail, but could resolve that pleasing blur back into distracting graphic elements. Sometimes, an endpoint is where you want to be. Other times, you want to live in the middle.

Case in point, this false hellebore leaf:


which I shot at several f-stops, including f/3.5, which lost the curve of the back edge of the leaf, and f/32, which brought the background into far too sharp of focus, and in the end chose this instance at f/8, about the middle of the road.

ETA: The full set is here. I have this evening's shoot and tomorrow morning yet to go, so I may add some more over the weekend. Assuming I get any more shots I like.