gap-toothed innocence, gratuitous purple, and an orgy

I’ve been pretty busy lately, and I haven’t gone as far afoot as I might like, but geez, there’s still plenty going on within sight of the house. There’s the brown-eyed susan update, for one:

june 16

Two days later. Someone’s been chomping on a petal. This shot reminds me of a six-year old who’s just lost her two front teeth, but gives you just as big a grin as ever.

One day later and our six-year old is a lanky adolescent.

Little sis, the next one up, gazes up with envy at her glamorous sister.

Plenty more where that came from.

Spiderwort buds are really…I don’t know…

…decadent, I think. So floppy! Although the one on the right looks ambitious.

And then they do this:

gaaahhhh.

it’s hard not to develop a passing interest in bugs when you stare into flowers’ naughty bits.

since that’s what the bugs are interested in, too. this here is probably some type of syrphid fly.

An orgy of god-knows-who all is getting down inside the newest, still-coming-up leaves of a milkweed plant:

“who are you lookin’ at?”

 

nearby, this guy shows off his derriere.

…and a leafhopper causes general amazement. Those colors! Who knew? The nice people at bugguide,net, apparently, who ID’d this for me.

I saw some queen anne’s lace for the first time today:

spiky bracts = a definitive characteristic.

I’ll leave you with a mystery.

who’s this? first person with the right answer gets points!

Admit it: you’ve always longed for a double-chocolate, bacon-studded whoopie pie.

Right? This was the “Chef’s Choice” invention of my dear friend Jenn of Howling Hog Barbecue in this weekend’s Championships of New England Barbecue competition, held at the Harpoon Brewery. Somewhere in that tasty filling is beer, the mandatory ingredient for all Chef’s Choice entries. “Kept it moist,” claimed Jenn.
What’s even more interesting than a double-chocolate, bacon-studded, beer-infused whoopie pie?

A deep-fried double-chocolate, bacon-studded, beer-infused whoopie pie. This is what happens when you are stationed next to another BBQ outfit – Feeding Friendz – which spent today selling deep-fried oreos for $4 a pop.

“HOT!!!” declaimed Chef Jenn.
The resulting mega-calorie payload of doom was deemed tasty, but it was noted that the inner layer of chocolate filling was destroyed in the process.
So that’s how I spent my afternoon, hanging out with the good folks of Howling Hog.
On my way back to my car, I crossed over police “do not cross” tape to get a look at some milkweed.

This pod’s maybe an inch long, at most. You can still see the dried-up flower petals on its tip. At home, later on in the day, I visited with some milkweed close to the house to see if any flowers had been fertilized. It didn’t appear so.

I had fun looking at the leaves, though. Back to Harpoon Brewery:

I admired a thistle.

And found some outrageously huge poison ivy.
Back on the home front, the honeysuckle berries look pretty ripe. Of interest to me today: instances where the paired berries did not conform to the guide book.

Normally they’re the same size as one another.

These two got fused together.

I visited some yarrow.


As well as a brand new black-eyed susan.

So yes, I’m going with the idea that in compound flowers, it’s not unusual for the rays to start off tightly rolled. Makes for efficient use of space inside the bud.

Here’s one a little farther along. I love the blurriness of this one, caused by my camera’s grumpiness about late afternoon shade.

And here is one that is almost done: see how the petals are fading?

Check out what the flower parts look like at this stage. Not for the first time, I am reminded of persian lamb’s wool.


Some digitalis (foxglove) is still going strong.


And a cinquefoil is looking mighty interesting. Definitely going to keep an eye on this one. That assumes we continue in our regimen of Not Mowing Our Lawn, of course, as this little guy is right in the middle of the lawn.

nap faeries: 1 me: 0; also, raspberry flower development

Yesterday’s b-day party for The Dude, Who Abideth, was lovely. It rained, and thus we all crammed inside the magic portable screened in porch. What is the ideal number of chairs for a party? Let x = number of guests. Answer? x – 1. There was much hilarity and merriment, and then everybody went home, except for my old friend Jake, who crashed in the batcave Reiki room cat napping room and left this morning.
This afternoon the nap faeries sucker-punched me and I was out for three hours.
I dragged myself outside in the late afternoon – force of habit. Here’s the report:

Foxglove (Digitalis) struggling under the watchful eye of the black raspberries and bur cucumber invaders.

More fun with emerging spiderworts. Isn’t he a handsome fellow?
And now: raspberry flowers. I find these astonishing. Some of these are blurrier than I would like, but because the overall narrative is SO FREAKING cool you’re just going to have to put up with it.

The flowers start off as grumbly little burs.

They start to open up.

These white-ish things are…I’m pretty sure, at any rate, the anthers. Disclaimer: I’m no botanist. But let’s go with anthers for right now. They gradually pull away from the center, revealing…

…the stigma, in the center. This one’s blurry, sorry! Also, the petal color hasn’t actually changed that much. I’ve found that on overcast days, my camera washes out certain colors. Haven’t debugged that yet.

OK, skipping forward, by now the petals have fallen off completely. Those white triangles are the sepals that used to enclose the whole package – they’re still all prickly on the reverse side. The stamens have turned purple, which is insane.

And here, we can see that many of the stigma – the bits in the center – have been fertilized, cause you can see the very beginnings of tasty fruit forming.
Trippy!