random scenes from recent days.

It’s been a whirl of travel and work since my last post. Visits with lots of old friends. Followed by a ton of work. Today I delivered mass of permit applications I’d been immersed in for weeks on end to state offices (for my job), and then handed out samples of yogurt to college freshmen (also my job) for a few hours, and drove a total of six hours to make all this happen. I’m so tired, I’m in my PJ’s…at 7:20 pm on a Friday. YESSS!!!

Here’s that weird day lily leaf-stamen thingy again. This was our last day lily. Tis a shriveled mess by now.

 

A purple-flowering raspberry. As tasty as it looks. Let’s not forget that fruit…is fruit. By which I mean, that stuff we eat? That’s flower-bits. In this case, you can see the original burry bud that originally held the flower…and an unripe fruit to the right.

 

A chipmunk carrying something up an ash tree. It was so alarmed at our presence that it rushed up and up and up, and dropped its payload. Turned out to be a chunk of mushroom. Sorry, little buddy! I’m sure you’ll retrieve it later when I’m not looking…

Indian tobacco, aka lobelia.

Pale smartweed. Tiny guy. You probably have some of this in your lawn.

Ah, the mysterious Closed Gentian. Mysterious, because it demurely never opens those flowers. Lord only knows how it gets pollinated. Well, I’m sure botanists know, which means the google borg knows. But let’s leave it as a Great Unknown for now. Hey: I’m in my PJ’s. You can’t expect me to work.

Hog peanut, how kinky thou lookest this fine eve.

Yawn. Yay, weekend!

15 minutes x 15 square feet = plenty to see

Part One: They are not called day lilies for nothing.

While we were traipsing around Pittsburgh last week, the day lilies at the side of the house were going great guns, leaving us only one flower, and one bud, to enjoy upon our return

Yesterday.

Note the weird extra stamen thingy seemingly attached to the edge of a petal.

Today. All shriveled up! Just like that!

That extra stamen thingy is poking out. Still hoping to get lucky, I guess.

Part Two: Camouflage and Ambush

I sat in the grass just outside the front door, hoping to lure crickets or grasshoppers near me with the sheer innocence of my intentions. That didn’t happen. I figured if I trained the macro on some nearby tiny daisies, maybe I’d be happily surprised.

Indeed, I was. A spider!

Might there be others, on nearby flowers? Why yes!

A fly came in for a landing. 

Within a nano-second s/he was waving its legs menacingly at it. I wasn’t fast enough to get the fly on camera.

Unsuccessful, it backed around to the underside of the flower.

Better luck next time, sweetie.

Part Three: Speaking of Lunch

While all this was going on, I was also admiring some sort of long damselfly-type fly resting on the tip of a blade of grass. I got closer and closer.

It was when I saw little legs waving around futilely that I realized there was more going on here.

I watched them wrestle for a while.

To the tune of several dozen photographs, which I’ll spare you.

Part Four: Back to the Mysterious Asiatic Dayflower

They’re back! This time, I swear, I shall pay more attention day by day.

The Side View.

The Top Down View

The Indeterminate (Before, or After, Flowering?) View

speaking of naughty bits

Remember the Venetian slippers of the day lilies at the orgy?

Their little feet and legs are covered in pollen these days.

Nearby, the lone pistil.

Glinting mischievously.

A few feet away, a yellow lily.

…and its pistil.

Time for spiders on the black-eyed susans.

Howdy!

Same flower, other side. Someone else.

This here’s a tussock moth. I tried to film it as it scurried back and forth across the table on the deck. That was an artistic disaster – I couldn’t get it to focus. Eventually I took pity on it and carried it out to the shrubbery where I figured it would have better luck finding food.

re-disapparations, upside-down orgies, and stoner moths

Remember the mysterious disappearing Asiatic dayflower from the other day – in which a) we had two flowers and then b) suddenly we did not, and c) I concluded that the flower had been sequestered away into a little leaf pouch?

I take it all back.

Here’s one of those leaf pouches, and it’s spitting out a new flower. Which leaves open the question, what happened to the two flowers from the other day? I’m so confused…

Ahhhhh, this, I get.

Let’s play the focus game with a day lily.

petals?

or stamens?

petals?

or stamens?

how about neither?

Don’t they look like little Venetian Renaissance slippers? In which case, this truly IS an orgy – everyone’s upside-down with their feet in the air. They haven’t even bothered to kick off their shoes.

I’m not the only one obsessed with flower innards. This is a primrose moth getting stoned in a common evening primrose. Scandalous.

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.