End of July

What does the end of July bring? Well, lots of flowers are blooming all over my yard. 

The hummingbirds and humming bird moths are crazy busy sucking up that nectar.

I put morning glories in several places this year. I put one right outside the porch door and let it climb up a shepherd's hook. 

Most of the flowers in front of the west porch area were variations of blue this summer. Of course, the Morning Glories take the cake!

 

July usually gives us a rest from mowing with a dry spell. Not this year. Mowing has to be done every 5 to 6 days. Maybe that is why I feel so behind on things. Days of wet, days and days of rain. No dry spells for the farmers to make hay.

The sunflowers are blooming too along with my Brown Eyed Susans. This is the first time I've grown them and they are doing so well.

In fact, they have been home to some elusive Crab Spiders. 

They hide under the petals of the flowers and wait for a meal to drop by. They are ambush spiders that don't create webs to catch their prey. 

August will bring the Orb Spiders out in force in the Meadow just east of us. That will be incredible to see again this year [hopefully]. Thousands of Orb Spider webs sparkling in the morning dew.

Air Quality was a huge factor on and off for July. Well, for this summer. Wildfires in the States and Canada are obviously contributing to the horrid atmosphere. However, the mules are pleased to be wandering a clipped pasture. The blueish haze is smoke.

We got a trip in to Cabela's yesterday and drove through driving rain. Hubby looked at the fish in their giant fish tank and was not impressed since he couldn't have any to eat.

On the way home, Steve as always took the scenic way home which includes as many back roads as possible.

This was a shot I took of the ridges above Prairie du Chien as we headed home. Shooting out the back window of a moving car is pretty challenging.

That's smoke too.

Today is much worse as the sun looks brownish and the haze is thick and smells bad.

Birds, Bees, Flowers, Wildlife, and Mules

We saw this doe walk out of the woods and pretty soon two fawns came racing from the tall grasses. I don't often get to see a doe nursing her fawn, let alone nursing twins.

Fighting Tiny Titans

not a fantastic shot but you can see the hummers chest thumping each other in a dispute over the Bee Balm and the other flowers in our east garden.
 

It's July. It is hot, humid, muggy, and there is a smokey haze. The yard was still too wet from our rain the night before of 1 inch. So I took a chair out next to the garden used my long lens to observe the goings on in my garden.

A Fritillary Butterfly and a Bumble Bee were both enjoying my Blazing Stars.

A Silver Spotted Skipper [?] seemed to be fascinated with my Forget me nots.

The bees were crazy busy. Even extremely tiny ones. 

I caught sight of some house finches enjoying the feeder also.

I can enjoy photographing the flowers and all of the activity and still be near enough to the house to check on my 'patient'. 

Morning light on a pumpkin flower with a busy Bee Butt full of pollen.

I have several pumpkin plants that did free seeding in the mules lot. I'll have to fence them off later if I want pumpkins for this fall. I also have 3 or 4 plants growing in my flower beds. Why not? Less yard I have to mow!

The sun flowers are beginning to get ready to show off their blossoms and with that, the bees will pollinate and the Goldfinches will get busy at eating the seeds. I let them have plenty before I take and save the seeds for next year's planting.

I'm looking forward to having the mule gals' pasture brush hogged. Hopefully it will help keep down the noxious weeds and the burdock. If I can get a regular schedule for next year I will be a happy person and so will my gals.

Sundance looks over Siera's back.

Sunshine enjoys a weedy pasture, she can swipe irritating flies off her body.

They may look like the same red mules, but they aren't. They are half sisters with the same mom, different donkey dads. Sunshine is 28 and Sundance is 16. I can easily tell them apart by their body shape and their tails which are different shades.

I finally did get out into the woods on Sunday morning. I found some very interesting mushrooms.

More...later!

Quiet Riot at the Bee Balm Patch...

The last shot is something that used to be impossible without modern cameras.

Getting several shots in quick succession while keeping things in focus used to be nearly impossible in the film days.

Now there are cameras that 'track and focus' on whatever you choose to follow. It is quite amazing. I love 'shooting' butterflies and hummingbirds as they move from flower to flower.

I miss a lot of shots even with the fantastic modes in my camera. It may take me a few days worth of trying to get anything decent, but it is always worth the extra effort.

The Swallowtail shot consists of 3 shots blended together later in a program I use called ON1. It is so much simpler [and cheaper] than Photoshop.

Anyway. 

Enjoy my Quiet Riot at the Bee Balm Patch.

 PS~ I did get a visit from one of the Tree & Brush Folks! Yeeehawww!

Change of Attitudes and Thoughts

 

Tweet Tweet -- how we change over the years!

Years ago when Rich and I first lived in our cottage he said feeding the birds was such a waste of money and of course I agreed as we had a very tight budget. Bird feeders felt like a luxury as well as any seed.

Back then having dogs in the house was also a no-no. Pets did not live in the house. Farm dogs lived outside. If a dog came in the house it was confined to one room. 

Fast forward 25 years.
Rich invites Charlie to take naps with him in bed. Charlie has his own chair and 'owns' the love seat couch. 

The birds have a feeder and if I don't feed them, Rich reminds me that he can't see all the birds that visit our yard.

This was some fun on the first day the Orioles showed up. 27 seconds long.

On that first day, the Orioles were maddening! They really went nuts over the feeder. I may add a second feeder just to try and keep the peace.

I love that the birds land close by in the pine tree where we can see them from our table. It means hubby can sit and have coffee or just sit in a chair and watch the birds.

I get a running monologue of who is visiting our feeders and yard.

I get ---- Bluebird! Blue Jay! Cow Bird! Downy Woodpecker! Sometimes he gets so tongue tied he just says a partial word and points. Goldfinch! ... the list goes on and on as long as the birds are feeding.

When the Grosbeaks showed up we both got excited since we don't see them that often.

This year the Purple Finches [????] seem happy to stick around. So far.

The first hummingbird showed up on the 3rd of May which feels like it might be a bit early. However, we did have the feeder set out and we do see one returning often during the day.

When it gets nice enough for hubby to sit on the porch, he watches me work on our little garden around the porch and delights in more birdwatching. If there is a bird he can't identify, he has me get the bird book and look it up with him.

I could get the Merlin Bird app, but I could also just enjoy sitting with Rich and  the both of us page through the book together.

How things have changed.

A little pal dog and a fascination with birds.

Birds, Bees, Fungi, and the Surprise!

Beautiful rains.

The only way to make it rain? I set out a Lego Aztec Minifigure to do a Raindance when the clouds moved in.

After the rain quit the first time, I put on boots and headed out to the creek bottom. It was just a joy to see wet leaves and water in the creek.

As I moved along through the tangled brush and briers I noticed some pinkish peachy colors on a log. On close inspection I was so excited!

Its common name is Wrinkled Peach Fungi, its scientific name is Rhodotus Palmtus. Yikes, I prefer the Wrinkled Peach name. It is so delicate and beautiful. And... ---> not edible.

This is the bottom side.

From the top.

I found some Oyster Mushrooms too.  The Slugs were really into them. 

On the same log in the creek bottom that had the beautiful peachy fungi, I found Bear Scat.

 Ewwww. The slugs were all over that too!

I went back home to get out of my hot clothes and report the bear scat findings. It wasn't exactly fresh. There has been a bear in the area for the past few summers [don't know if it is the same one or not]. However the bear uses the creek as a pathway to get from the berry patches on one neighbor's land to the wild apple trees on the west side of our land. 

Back home the humming birds were going nuts on the Bee Balm.

These two photos are a combo of shots. It is the same bird taken in rapid fire and composited so a person can admire how quick these guys are!

They spent a lot of time going to the Bee Balm and then back to the feeders. They really argue quite a bit!

My favorite bird is this guy, the Ruby Throated Hummer.

See his tongue???

8 seconds of him watching for intruders!

The bees were insane on the Bee Balm, but I didn't want to sit or stand in the hot sun and watch them so I opted for some shots of the Humming Birds instead.

HAH!

After I finished chores, an older Cadillac came creeping down our driveway. I was all set to give them a 'What For' thinking some old fart was lost or it was a pile of Jehovah's Witnesses.

It wasn't!

It was our friends from Missouri who had traveled north to see the Northern Lights and then were quite disappointed by their accommodations and the weather.

More on that after our weekend is done....

Flutterbies and bugs

Last year I planted petunias and verbenas in the annual garden by the kitchen window. It looked great, but I noticed that the butterflies and bees preferred the Zinnias further away from my house down in the veggie garden.

So this year I took seeds that I'd gathered last year and seeds from Aurora and tossed 4 O'clocks and Zinnias in my small annual garden.

You will notice some Marigolds mixed in and those were all leftover seeds from the year before. I picked up the seeds that had fallen on the ground and poked a few here and there.

What a surprise my willy nilly casting of seeds gave me this year.

I think the butterfly below is a Black Swallow Tail! I've learned patience this year. A LOT of patience!

To get a bright back lit photo of a butterfly takes a ton of patience and waiting. 

The butterflies like to hit up the flowers when it is warm and sunny, then all of the insects are going crazy in a sense.

I even planted 3 sunflowers within close proximity of the house. In years past, Rich would complain about the sunflowers blocking his view of the driveway. I made sure that he could see the driveway, but also see the sunflowers.

This year he stands at the kitchen sink window and gives me a commentary on what is happening in the flower garden.

I planted sunflowers over a few different weeks in hopes of having more blooming time. The insects and the Goldfinches have been having a hay day with those huge flowers.

And there are all sorts of secret things hiding in the Marigolds. Crab spiders love hiding between the petals of a Zinnia or Marigold to wait for an unsuspecting 'meal' to come along.

The bees, butterflies, and spiders are all having a blast in my tiny garden. 

I'm collecting seeds from the 'Wildflower' Garden I planted in another section of the yard. I recognize the Bachelor's Buttons, the Marigolds, and some of the others, but some flowers evade ID. I think they are pretty, so I am gathering their seeds to toss in another section of the yard that I mow [hubby won't mow it over then!] next year.

I'm fairly sure that I will surely miss this riot of color after the first frost this year.

The flowers have brought me a lot of joy this year, as well as practicing with my camera.

I planted Nasturtiums because my friend in Alabama says these were her absolutley MOST-est favorite flower when she resided in the North. She says they do not survive the intense heat of the far south.

They were not always my favorite flower, however, I am reconsidering them as they have added beautiful mounds of brilliant color around my porch where the ground cover was sparse.

Apparently they too, attract spiders!

The humming birds are still either here or passing through. They are all over the 4 O'clocks in the early morning and early evenings.

I'm pretty lucky to have all this activity just outside my door.

Learning new tricks

This time with the camera. Well, I have used the Sequence shooting before, but never thought to do this.

And I really wonder why. It is such a delightful way to present a photo. It involves a bit of knowledge of layers and editing, with modern programs it is much easier to do than ages ago.

I did this handheld because I happened to be walking outside with camera in hand while peering at the flowers. I wanted to see if any other butterflies showed up other than the Swallow Tail.

The result was the same butterfly in flight in two stages.

That was fun to try so I tried it a few more times. Several times I noticed a lot of activity around the Zinnias so I grabbed the camera and kept trying to catch something amazing.

Below is an example of how the shots look as I start to put them together. These were shot at 1/2000 of a second in rapid fire. The butterfly moved quickly but overlapped itself in subsequent shots. 

I thought it would be a good learning experience to try and merge 4 shots of the same butterfly.

It was work but in doing so, I understand a bit better as to how the Swallow Tails move.

A Monarch showed up later in the day by the Zinnias and I had to wait for it to settle down. I took a series of it and was disappointed in that it just fluttered and hovered over the same flower while a Swallow Tail did a Photobomb!

This one of the Clearwing Hummingbird Moth was probably the most frustrating of all. These little fellows move like lightening. Getting them in focus as they move? Almost impossible. But I tried.

My last attempt at a series was a humming bird. They are one of the most challenging birds to 'catch'.

This female did a lot of hovering and each shot had a different wing position, however they would have been piled right on top of each other. So I found two shots that I could merge like this:

There was another shot I wanted to include that had her with her wings folded forward. 

Photography is such an amazing way to observe these beautiful creatures.

I think I learn so much from observing and photographing them. 

I do the same thing with insects, flowers, trees, and fungi. If it makes me curious, I have to study it through the camera.

That said, birds are beginning to migrate. The Orioles have been gone for a few weeks, the sound of Robins has diminished, the Bluebirds headed out in mid July, the red wing blackbirds are few and far between...and the Wrens are still here, but quieter.
I will miss the Wrens more than any other bird. 

Soon enough the trees will start to show that they are tired and ready for their rest.