scenes from late summer

oh, the precious golden days are on the way out. I struggle between wearing t-shirts, and flannel shirts. I’ve been crazy-busy at work and haven’t spent much time outdoors – for shame! for shame!

Most thistles are on the way to white puffballs – this one still had purple bits hanging on.

Seems like all that’s left around here is goldenrod.

 

And a few black-eyed susans.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

…to do a massive purge of old paperwork! Yes, that is how we spent Labor Day weekend!

Found this guy hanging out by the front door.

The cats hang out on the deck in the afternoons when it’s sunny. Here’s Maggie looking elegant…

 

…and less than elegant.

Oh, who am I kidding, this girl looks great no matter what she’s doing. She has the prettiest little face.

 

Onwards to Charlie.

 

I love how relaxed they are, lounging around in the middle of the yard.

Open wide!

thistle hurt if you’re not careful

Asters, all done and ready to cook up seeds.

A solo diner.

Don’t.Freaking.Touch.Me.

[I had to prop this thistle flower upright to get this shot – you can see they’re all drooping in the last shot – and that’s my t-shirt wrapped around my finger at the upper left. This thing did NOT want to be fondled.]

Mmmmm…thistles. I think that might be spider webbing between all the spikes. Spiders: nothing if not enterprising.

thistle do

Good lord, I’m wiped out. Nothing major, all is well, but…oof. It could be the rain (meaning, the lack of sunshine) – how I wish we could send it to Texas.
To tide us all over, I’m going with outtakes from last week. This is all thistle.

when left to their own devices, lawn weeds will overthrow the world

All summer long, I’ve been idly observing a random lawn weed here at home, but I haven’t had any luck in keying it out. It’s a short guy with a raceme of teensy pink buds. As near as I could tell, those suckers were never going to open, I was never going to get a petal count, and its identity would remain a mystery.
Well, today, for the first time, I went for a run in the woods near where I work, and on the way back, I swung by for a closer look at the mess of stuff growing along a stream that runs through the industrial campus. (Yep, here in Vermont, we have woods and trails and streams in our industrial parks. Why would you want to live anywhere else?)
When I took a closer look at this stuff – a thicket of three and a half foot tall things…

…I about jumped out of my skin.

It’s my random lawn weed! In fact, it appears to be two versions of it: the darker pink kind with the reddish stem (drooping down, above), and the pale pink kind with somewhat larger flower buds.
So I ran inside to get my camera, and my coworkers thought, judging from the way I was bouncing up and down, that I’d experienced something really exciting, like maybe running into a bear or something. I said, “I DID! I FOUND OUT WHAT THIS LITTLE LAWN WEED IS WHEN YOU LET IT GROW!” …and they all moved away from me on the bench there...They don’t know about my little nature girl gig, see.

Some of those teensy flowers were open and tonight, with the help of my trusty Newcomb’s, I finally nailed this down as a knotweed, in the buckwheat family. Gotcha!
I also got one of my best pregnant jewelweed shots yet:

(If you’re new here, you might have missed my various odes to jewelweed. All the jewelweed you can handle, right here, or here, or even here. Go on, check it out, we’ll still be here when you get back.)
Finally, we have some exploded thistle.

Mmmmmm.

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

milkweed pods, strange black-eyed susans, spider eyes…

My dearest readers, have I really neglected you since Thursday? ‘Tis true. Where are my manners? What have I been doing? Ummmmmm….I’ve been enjoying life! I seem to be doing OK with the plantar fasciitis so far, via a ton of stretching/strengthening exercises and a teensy six mile run yesterday. And I’ve added to the blueberry stash: we’re up to 30 pounds of blueberries in the freezer. That was my original goal, but now I think we might…just…need…more.
Onwards to the flower report. The milkweed pods are growing by leaps and bounds.

Let’s review: just three days ago, this pod was the same size as my nail.
That one milkweed on our neighbor’s property is also taking off, pod-wise.

I was asked by a fellow blogger who does amazing macro shots of wildflowers whether I knew if that crazy tubular-petaled black-eyed susan is a cultivar, or a different species altogether. I have no idea, but here’s some more data to feed into the hopper:
Crazy tubular – this is over at my dad’s house:

Let’s compare this to a lone hybrid mutant out in back of the pole barn

Some of its petals are that tubular, and some are regular.
Another thing I’ve been noticing about black-eyed susans: they are commonly hosts to tiny white spiders, perhaps more than one kind. Some seem to have markings, while others are straight-up white:

Others seem yellow, or maybe it’s just because this one is lurking at the base of the yellow petals:

Yellow or white, check out her fierce little eyes!
Nothing says “back off!” quite like a thistle:



Goldenrod: distilled sunshine.

Congress of aliens? Or merely Queen Anne’s Lace?

Incipient Deliciousness: the first of the purple-flowering raspberries has ripened.

While others are still doing the “fertilize me, fertilize me!” dance.
An unexpected invasion of hostas on the hillside bordering the driveway. I guess they’re not content being confined right up next to the front of the house.

Somebody’s been eating the ripe berries of the wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis, and previously erroneously identified as ginseng or as red baneberry.)



Speaking of blue berries, the blue cohosh leaves are beginning to fade, but the berries…

…are not yet blue.
Some lovely peach lilies along the side of the driveway are taking over from the long-gone siberian irises and spiderwort: