scenes from the day

one end of a dragonfly damselfly

comes with rocket-pack

grass supernova

sumac

“mine mine mine!”

I went looking for the Asiatic dayflower of the other day. It was gone. Simply gone. Eventually I realized that that’s what the dragonfly had been sitting on. Where the flower had been was now a sealed pouch.

two days ago

today

Wild.

must have been the dismount

Had my dream again where I'm making love, and the Olympic judges are watching. I'd nailed the compulsories, so this is it, the finals. I got a 9.8 from the Canadians, a perfect 10 from the Americans, and my mother, disguised as an East German judge, gave me a 5.6. Must have been the dismount.

Billy Crystal as Harry in “When Harry Met Sally”

The Japanese beetles are at it. Some of them are working on synchronized eating…

And LIFT the right hind leg…

…while others are engaged in more elaborate pursuits. I found myself watching two pairs of amorous beetles located just a few inches from each other on the same plant. One couple was right-side up.


The other was upside down.

Both were busy, busy, busy.

The right-side up couple got adventurous. The male started to lift off from the female…who, by the way, looks like she could care less – it appears she’s having a snack:


up, up, and away…


Until he toppled over.


He’s still hanging on with his front legs, though.


Also on the day’s adventure, I found this beautiful Syrphid fly just landing on the petal of a black-eyed susan:


Oh, to be able to scratch your back with your leg…must be convenient.


He took off and immediate landed on the stem.

A jaunty little spaceman wearing his jaunty little spaceman helmet!


So freakin’ beautiful.

time-lapse of bittersweet nightshade, magnolia monstrosity, and a beetle orgy

Hello! Happy Friday. To kick things off, let’s admire the ripening berries of the bittersweet nightshade flower.

This was flower cluster #2 on a plant that had four flower clusters.


#1, closest to the stalk, started the earliest: all but one of the berries have gone red:

Cluster #2 are the rainbow berries I started with – all stages of ripeness are represented. Farther out toward the end of the stalk, cluster #3’s berries are still green, and at the very end of the stalk we have cluster #4, still flowering:

Who invents this stuff?


Day lily stamens. I’m reminded for some reason of Beaker. 


Tiny orange whale? Or a jewel weed flower still wet with placental goo?
I am a bit preoccupied with various things, among them the debatable wisdom of running a half marathon tomorrow when I clearly have plantar fasciitis. It’s not that bad, overall, but it still hurts at times. I have been doing various stretching exercises – toe dips and raises off stairs, pulling my foot back to get at the back of my heel, rolling my foot over a frozen bottle of water (thanks, Katie!), and others it would be easier to demonstrate than try to describe. I’m experimenting with naproxen sodium (generic Aleve) instead of ibuprofen, just for the hell of it. The upside is, one pill lasts 8 or 12 hours. The downside is, it seems to take 1.5 hours to kick in. And, finally, I have an appointment with a podiatrist the week after next.
Who am I kidding. After training all summer, I’m not going to NOT run tomorrow.
Today’s other discoveries include:
A mystery plant I first saw out by the mailboxes a week or so ago turns out to be making inroads into our lawn. Once again, I tout the virtues of not mowing the lawn.

Here I am peering up under the little flower capsules. Each little green capsule is about 1/8” across, maybe? So those creamy-colored not-yet-open flowers thingys are truly teensy.
It was good that I spotted it in the lawn, because the stash that was down by the mailboxes has been destroyed. The town came through and mowed about five feet on either side of the entrance to our private drive – they’re entitled to and all, since they stash a couple of fire engines at the substation there – but boy, what a shame. Utter devastation. For anyone else, “oh, it’s just weeds”. But these plants are my buddies – the St Johnswort and fringed loosestrife, the Queen Anne’s Lace, all the not-quite-identified-yet grasses, wild rose, goldenrod, pineapple weed…fortunately, the cattails were spared. And there’s still plenty of stuff left. Still though…sigh.
A new flower sprung up in the side yard – a kind of phlox.

Cheerful little guys, no?
From the side, they’re trumpets:


The magnolia tree is growing an alien:

You can’t tell me that’s normal.
Here’s that milkweed pod that used to be the size of my pinky’s nail – it’s nearly two inches long now, and what are those white blobs? At first I thought, “it’s leaking whatever that stuff is that’s in milkweed!” but then I looked at this picture all blown up on the laptop and…

…is that a momma bug next to the egg sacs?

I tried and failed to get a picture of the tadpoles out in the ditch.

This was my consolation prize.

And now for the orgy. Avert your eyes if you’re sensitive to these things…

Once again, who am I kidding. This blog is all about the naughty bits. Bugs, flowers, it’s all good.

jewel weed from bud to flower, action movie hero bug, etc.

I was out at my dad’s house today, and checked in on those crazy tubular-leaved black-eyed susans. They’re still going strong!

I can’t get enough of these.

Check out this crazy one – it was just opening when I was last here a week ago. Slow motion dancing.


Just can’t get enough of them.

Nearby, a Japanese beetle was checking out some sunflowers that have yet to open. I love the trident antennae, not to mention the overall action-movie poster pose.
I finally correctly identified this tiny beauty : it’s lesser stitchwort (Stellaria graminea). This is a wee little flower that likes grassy places (hence its name – graminea = grass).

I’m lucky I got to this in time, as you can see that it’s already fertilized; look at the bulginess at the center.
I have a lot to report on the development of jewel-weed flowers. Some of these are from dad’s house, and some from our own yard.

We begin with your basic bud. Note the tiny protrusion from the base of the one on the left. I think that might be the spur.

This one is just starting to peel open. You can see orange veins against a yellow background.

This one is a little farther along. The front is still encased in…um…not a sepal, exactly, but definitely a protective sheath of some kind. You can see the spur at the back, curled under the body of the flower. The whole thing looks like it’s covered in placental goo, doesn’t it?

And look! The spur is totally out and doing its happy dance! The front of the flower is still enclosed by the whatever-you-call-a-non-sepal-looking thing.

Here we have a partly emerged one right next to one that is fully open. And you can see a remnant of the protective bud sheath on the fully-opened flower – over the flower’s right shoulder, if you will.
I still don’t have a sense of what the difference is between this one specimen, and this other specimen (why do the innards look different, and what the time-lapse story of those innards’ development is. That’ll be my next jewel weed project.)
THAT was fun!
Back on the home front, the fringed loosestrife has started go to seed. To remind you, here’s what that flower look like:


And here’s the…berry? I love how you can just make out almost like cell walls or something – different sections – of the emerging fruit. (Is it a fruit? Doesn’t that look like a berry that presumably has seeds in it? Hm!)
That protruding stigma reminds me of something going on in our garden: the bell peppers are forming!

Here’s the tiniest one.

let the mind blowing begin

We went over to my dad’s house to chop down a shrub that had decided it really wanted to be four, ten-inch diameter 30-foot tall trees. On the way we swung by our friends’ house to borrow their chainsaw. One thing led to another and hanging out commenced. P & J have the beginnings of some excellent plantings going on. Normally I restrict my photographs to Our Wild Flower Friends, but I couldn’t resist.
As they say in Wyoming, “hold my beer and watch this shit”.
First up, some kind of Mexican something something. I forget what these are called.


Like the black-eyed susans, the flowers open up from the outside and work their way to the center.

See?


Take a breath, we’re going to do some day lilies next.






Let’s take a breath and have some delphinium:




And now, a Random Lawn Weed I thought was self-heal, until I looked at the flower. Now I’m not so sure.


Ready for some pansies?

\



And now for some hallucinogenic echinacea:

this first one’s blurry, but the colors so thrill me that I have to share it…


Damn, Universe, Nice Work!
Let’s go back to day lilies for a moment:



This beetle was eating the petal. Not sure what that is on its back.


Preacher, looking far more noble than he probably deserves. He is a sweet soul.
Our time with the chainsaw was profitable. The goal was to free up the view of the Green Mountains from the living room window, as the shrub tree had grown so quickly over the past couple of years that it about completely obscured the view. But there were some added benefits: