Saturday, June 4, 2011

locust trees! pink things, and another kind of iris.

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Any day that starts off like this is bound to be good. Also, we washed the truck yesterday (every five years, whether it needs it or not – that’s our motto), so please admire the gleam. 

We braved the annual Strolling of the Heifers again this year. It was more-or-less the same as last year’s, which you can read about here, and here. The Dairy Fairy is training the future Dairy Fairies of America – she had a whole squadron of little girls in tutus and fairy wings following her around. There were no draft horses this year, alas, but the Scottish Highlander cow came back. The pooper scoopers were dressed in tuxedos and tails this year. And Alfred, our own African American cross-dressing beauty, wore a wedding dress this time around. But mostly, it was about the beautiful heifers. So sweet! And yes, I left my camera in the car by mistake. Ooops.

Afterwards, we took the kayaks out for a while to decompress from the Sea of Humanity. Whew. And then I further decompressed by finding a spot a few miles from the house to simultaneously catch up with my best friend (aka my wife), and get some shots of stuff we don’t have around the house.

I found a campion. We’ll have these, eventually.

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And now, for the pleasure of my own inner tutu-and-fairy-wings self, some pink stuff – presumably a type of Dianthus, but don’t hold me to it:

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Every few years, the locust trees put on a show. You don’t realize how many of the roadside trees around here are locusts until they all go crazy simultaneously and fill up with white flowers. We don’t have any on our ten acres, and I’ve been wanting to get a good close-up look at the flowers. Today was my lucky day.

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Yes, whole entire trees, filled top to bottom with white flowers. Nothing says “abundance” like a few of these guys.

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They smell just as gorgeous as they look. Alas, Kevin’s allergic to ‘em, as he is to everything that produces any kind of pollen or spore.

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Saw this on a community bulletin board. “Dear Universe”. Attagirl, way to pray. (She’s looking for a new home.)

Oh, we have this whole other treasure trove of purple irises – a different kind – in the garden that’s on the edge of the woods on the west side of the house.

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This one’s regrettably blurry, but I wanted to show the stamen (?) tucked under the petal.

Time to visit the azaleas, and play with different aperture settings on the camera.

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f/3.3 (“just focus on one thing here.”)

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f/6.3 (“OK, focus on more stuff now.”)

And now, for the rhododendron…

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Quick visit to the Siberian irises.

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Everyone’s looking good.

Tomorrow: an exposé on the fern entanglement situation.

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