in honor of eleven

Behold the Mighty Lumix, and its zoom lens. This eastern tiger swallowtail is at least 10 feet away from me. 

Incidentally, I never did find the monarch caterpillar again, after I first spotted it on July 2nd. By now it's probably several sizes bigger. 

Mullein. 

Out on the road, musk mallow. 

Does this remind you of anything?

Maybe gray birch's fuchsia party hats? 

Random shrubbery. No clue. Didn't capture enough info to look it up later.

Hawkweed. Suck down the orange while it's still around.

Today is a special day. Sweetpea and I have been legally wed for eleven, count 'em eleven years.

In celebration, let's observe others celebrating togetherness.

First from one side, then from the other:

A little syrphid fly action for ya. Hubba hubba. Happy anniversary, love!

don’t mind me, says the spider.

We’ll begin with a warm-up: it’s going to get very yellow-and-orange here, so let’s ease our way in with a buttercup.

Black-eyed susans frequently have little white spiders living on them. Not til yesterday did I finally see one on our big girl.

hello!
This afternoon, the spider had a visitor.

At first I thought this Other Thing was caught in a tiny web, but I could see its tiny proboscis extended, testing out the flowers.

I wonder if the spider is holding out its legs to mimic its visitor’s body language. “Don’t mind me” it hums, under its breath, waiting for the perfect moment to take a bite. The nice folks at bugguide.net will probably sort me out in no time.

This bug-free susan offers excellent squinty-eyed close-ups. 

ahhhhh…clearly I’m obsessed.
Nearby, on a common evening primrose, I noticed these pink moths.

What the…? No idea what they’re doing. I think they’re napping.

One of them was still buried in there today. The other one was on leaf nearby.

Some ant on milkweed action.

Forget-me-nots going to seed.

The obligatory hawkweed!

from orange supernova to silver fireworks

Here’s a sort of time-lapse sequence of a hawkweed flower closing up shop and going to seed. This is from a cluster of flowers near our front door – all pictures taken within a few seconds of one another, of separate flowers. But you can pretend you’re watching the same flower, over a few days. I won’t stop you.

0. Prelude: in case you forgot which one is hawkweed.

It’s this fiesta.

1. the petals (technically ‘rays’) close over the whole pistil/stamen apparatus.

2. the sepals (hairy green bits) tighten up. the rays start drying up.

2. …and drying up…

3. …and drying up, until they start to separate from the rest of the plant.

4. ideally, they fall off.

5. magic ensues.

6. one day, POOF, it all explodes open and we have a fireworks display.

…and here’s where that dried-up bit didn’t fall off all the way – you can see it, a bit out of focus, at the lower right.

In other news, it was a big day for little sis – the second-in-line in the cluster of black-eyed susans I’ve been visiting every day.

yesterday:

today:

little miss cranky

What a gorgeous weekend we just had here in beautiful southern Vermont, and gosh golly ma’am, what a CRAPPY MOOD I’VE BEEN IN. I’m having trouble adjusting to the season changing. I’m already half in February in my mind, when there is nothing and I mean nothing, blooming, and it’s so cold I can’t dawdle outside the way I like to and even if I could, the camera doesn’t work well in the cold either. And I haven’t run even so much as five miles at a pop in weeks, and I miss my endorphins and I’m MEAN.
Mind you, it’s not even the fall equinox yet, but I didn’t let that get in the way of my perfectly miserable mood.
Instead, I went to a friend’s birthday party yesterday. That’s right, I left the house, while in a foul mood. I hung out with our mutual friend, and the two of us groused about how crabby we were, and then I bonded with my hostess friend for a bit, and she confessed she was grumpy too – something about All These People Coming Over. So that lifted my mood considerably, I had a fine old time, and watched these other people I didn’t know fire potatoes off into the woods with a potato rocket. It’s some PVC pipe and it involves lighting hairspray on fire. Brilliant.
I burned off some of the bad ass attitude with housework, and with a (for me) furiously fast 4.5 miler today. And yesterday I worked out on the treadmill AND went for an aggressively paced 4 mile walk. Plus, I forced myself outside as well, to prove to myself that things are still growing.To wit:

wild rose hips. See that spooge? Remember it from here? It’s all the dried up stamens and stuff. Nice!


thank god for hawkweed.


yellow foxtail. Try and eat my seeds and I’ll STAB YOU.


aster flowers having a perm.


cattails are starting to lose their minds.


morning glory starting to pack it in for the day.


“stick out your tongue”, aka butter-and-egg.


riots of queen anne’s lace, above and below.



more yellow foxtail, above and below.

onwards and upwards.

here, have a rainbow

day lily


honeysuckle

orange hawkweed


calendula


black-eyed susan


katydid nymph

sensitive fern, fertile front thereof


possibly blue-eyed grass. never was quite sure about this one.


morning glory


thistle


siberian iris