a random sampling of roadside pleasures

July already? 

Gone are the days when I could while away the hours on a mere trip to the mailbox a quarter mile away, and get 200 shots in. For lo, I am gainfully employed and whatnot, and damn if it doesn't eat in to the esoteric pursuits. Translation: oh right, the Mighty Lumix! Let's go out into the world with it, shall we?

The milkweed is just starting to pop.

This summer, I've let a handful of milkweed get established in the lawn because, why not? We got mouths to feed. Specifically, this one:



I spotted this monarch caterpillar a couple of days ago but couldn't find him (her?) (it?) today. Must be around somewhere.

Grass is always good for a close-up. I don't know what kind. The tall kind. Sorta like timothy grass, but we have that, and it hasn't gotten this far along yet.

Purple-flowering raspberry. I'm just going to go on a binge here, don't mind me. We'll start with the beginning:

Some say beauty fades with youth, but I'm not so sure...the petals may be gone, but this is life unfolding before your very eyes...

Ah, wasn't that fun? Soon that'll ripen into the the sweetest little open-cupped raspberry you can imagine. Yum.

Here, have a fly.

And now, a final dose of purple, courtesy of the bittersweet nightshade flower...

OK, time to call it a night.

good morning

Lawn mushroom (Mushroomicus lawnum)

Bittersweet nightshade

Celandine, this time showing the formation of one of those most excellent pod thingies!

And now for the bugs:

No clue.

Pardon me.

 

that is all.

sunday ramblings

 

Fall’s definitely on its way. The milkweed pods are nowhere near opening up, but they are losing their green.

july 24

september 16

Bittersweet nightshade berries are so translucent, that you can make out the seeds inside them.

Jewelweed – aka “touch me not” – flower. Loving the texture.

 

cattails lose all dignity when they go to seed.

 

I was aiming for the flowers of the japanese knotweed, but found this wasp instead.

And now, for the jester’s hat of the campion’s seedhead:

there are goodies to behold inside.

it took me a few tries to focus on the mysteries within.

oooohhhh! another whole little world in there! I explored all this last september, too – you can see that here.

superheroes in pink capes, purple grass, etc.

I will be out of town next week – hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with an old friend – and I’m working like a crazed bunny to get everything I can wrapped up at work before I go. This afternoon, I staggered away from my desk, my head and body seemingly disconnected from one another, my spirit nowhere to be found. The perfect remedy: break out the hiking boots (gotta remind my feet about the hiking boots!), grab the point-and-shoot, and go for a four mile jaunt down dirt roads.
I found plenty of entertainment. It is just amazing how many more species there are to admire, just a half mile to two miles from the house. But I started with the locals. Remember those sleepy pink moths? They’re still around.

“Don’t worry, little lady.”

“I’ll save you.”
‘The aptly named primrose moth,’ I am informed. (Schinia Florida)
By the pole barn, where we store firewood, grass that has yet to encounter the lawn mower is in bloom.


Timothy grass, as yet not quite in bloom, with a visitor.

Later on, a mile away, the timothy grass was in full bloom. 

quack grass.
OK, now we’re venturing out away from my typical haunts of late.

Bittersweet nightshade, many of them already in full-on berry mode. These berries will turn yellow, then orange, then red. A veritable rainbow – as if the flower itself weren’t gorgeous ENOUGH.

Herb robert (yes, that’s its name) – I thought the sparkly velvet flowers were done for the season, but I’m pleased to see I was wrong.


Some kind of mutant, gargantuan dandelion-style flower. Sadly, they had ALL already closed up shop, so I don’t know what color the petals (well, rays, technically) are – still, though, I ought to be able to ID it. So far, no luck.

These seed clusters were the size of my fist.


Here’s a new one for me: bladder campion (Silene cucubalus). Later on this summer, I’ll show its cousin, white campion. It grows right next to our mailbox.


Common st. johnswort – which also tends to grow near our mailbox, but I haven’t seen it yet this year.


barberpole sedge. Bonus: see the spider? I didn’t when I took the picture!

Partridgeberry – a ground cover, with red berries in the fall. I laughed when I saw how the insides are fuzzy. Kevin said maybe it’s naturally-occurring velcro.

trillium seed. joy!


red baneberry is possessed of a certain in-your-face charm, no?


this is common comfrey.


a whole hillside of day lilies.

brand-new to me: motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca).
The hiking boots feel good. That’s a relief.

spider harassment, goldenrods, exploding cattail, and run-on sentences

I told a friend the other day that we were down to goldenrods and asters up here (she’s from the tropics of Massachusetts), but today I was pleased to prove myself wrong:

We have a reprieve of black-eyed susans.


Or, from another perspective…


I had fun bugging the spider.
Next door, a neighboring susan was covered in aphids:


But it’s true: a lot of asters are still blooming. Next year, I’ll start to differentiate between them all. This one’s the “big purple kind”.


As for the goldenrod, we have the almost done cooking stage…


…and the done cooking stage.

Actually, look again: two of the clumps above haven’t opened because the tip-ends of flower stamens haven’t completely dried up and fallen off yet.
The cattails are engaged in a competition to see who can explode the most, the fastest. Current contenders include:

Bittersweet nightshade does this awesome thing.

The flowers, as you might recall, are purple. The leaves are normally green. By now the flowers are long gone. It’s as though the plant was like “oh wait – something needs to be purple here – you! leaves! turn purple, stat!”
We still have some soapwort (Saponara officinalis) blooming.

But a lot of them look like this now.

Can you see the bug hiding out in the post-bloom at lower left?
Something else still blooming: japanese knotweed, a roadside invasive the stalks of which are apparently edible.

Such teensy flowers. It’s curious: some plants get their flowers going first thing, before even generating leaves (think, coltsfoot. Flowers show up first thing in spring, and right around now, their huge leaves dominate roadside ditches). And this guy, the knotweed, isn’t bothering with flowers til the very end of the season. Hm. I wonder if the fact that japanese knotweed is apparently so good at propagating from even cuttings (to such an extent that I’ve been advised, should I be so brave as to eat it, not to put any of it into the compost pile unless I want the side of our hill to be taken over by knotweed) (end of sentence: coming soon) …that it can afford to do the seed game late in the season. There’s a study in here somewhere, probably.