Photographs from 7 October 2013
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Retrospective – October 2013
garden
After the storms
We had a number of thunderstorms. (I slept through two Code Red storm alert calls, the phone within 30 inches of my head.) Tuesday night’s took out most of the Sweet Williams and in the early morning, a lot of the day’s new blooms. The rain has, however, encouraged some new flowers. The pollinators were also in evidence.
Some of my favorites from the past few days, now. Clicking on the photo and likewise on the attachment page should bring you to a larger version of the picture.
4 July 2018
Coreopsis tinctoria (golden tickseed)
Bee, another Coreopsis Lanceolata
Bee and Coreopsis Lanceolata
Bllue Wild Flax
5 July 2018
Blue Wild Flax & Hoverfly
Coreopsis tinctoria & Bees
California Poppy
Blue Wild Flax
Coreopsis tinctoria
Blue Wild Flax, Morning Light
3 July 2018
California Poppies
Monday’s Thunderstorm
Storm Clouds
California Poppies
While the U.S. Independence Day fireworks (illegal, but omnipresent) were loud, including someone shooting off the stuff on the street in front of our house, the Scampers and I weathered the noise. I put on some opera music (mostly tenor arias and operatic songs), and the dogs soon fell to sleep. I later switched to Mozart symphonies, and they napped until it was time for their last snack and outing and into their kennels for the night. I am quite happy that the celebration is over for another year.
Our dogs are accustomed to joining us in the gazebo for thunderstorms, and so the loud noises do not upset them. I jump when the strikes are too close. When we were children, we lived in a large house on a double lot that had ten or more gigantic cottonwood trees that inevitably drew lightning strikes. And we would be out in it, since the water buildup in the basement window wells (we started out living in a “basement house”, the main floor not added until the ’50s), with our little buckets, bailing out the water before the windows could pop open and send the water into the living room, bathroom, and bedrooms. Such fun!
And there was a thunderstorm…
And so the garden was wet and windblown when I got outside with the Scampers, this morning.
Yesterday evening with the Scampers:
I was awakened by a Weather Warning alert via my cell phone, a little after 4:00 this morning. Looked at the weather radar and decided that I would not be able to stay awake for the entire show, and so unplugged the electronics and crawled back into bed. I think I got another three hours of sleep before it was time (for the Scampers) to wake up.
Raindrops
Shiny
California Poppy
“Wet” Williams
Blue Wild Flax
Forecast for this afternoon is “30% chance of severe thunderstorms”. I am waiting inside until UPS delivers my book order (Red Waters Rising, by L. A. Gilman). The current temperature is 77°F, headed for 89°.
I am hopeful that I will get more seeds planted tonight, before the next rain showers move through. This evening, I can read some of the second issue of the Tanka Society of America’s Ribbons. I received the first issue for the year earlier and put it aside where I could read a little bit each evening. It disappeared before I ever got to it, that day. I have searched everywhere without finding it again.
This might be Thursday
Sweet Williams
Blue Wild Flax Flower
Coreopsis Lanceolata
Much too hot outside (82ºF, headed for 90º), this morning, and so I took some photographs in the wildflower garden while the dogs explored the back yard. After they’d eaten, we went outside, again, when I managed to get through 3.5 miles on the exercise bike in the gazebo.
By the time I finish my shower and get dressed in going-out clothes, it will already be time for lunch. I don’t know where the time goes!
I suspect that Al will concentrate on inside activities, rather than tackle any more sanding or painting. He’s currently working on the outside of the gazebo. Hoping that we don’t get any brilliant-red paint on the windows. 🙄
Garden Life
Coreopsis & Bee (2018-06-25)
Wild Flax
Sweet Williams
Coreopsis and Ant
Coreopsis & Ant
Coreopsis & Bee
A lovely week, last week and this weekend, for photo taking in the garden. Finally got caught up on household chores, got my clinic appointment and lab tests done, and today, grocery shopping. And Al finished putting the last coat of paint on his woodworking shop. I suspect that it will take him the winter to make the furniture, shelves, and cupboards that he needs, but he’ll have fun doing that.
I have gotten the summer/fall blooming wildflower seeds strewn along the side of the garage, and there are signs of germination. I still have to dig out areas in the wildflower garden to plant the rest of those seeds. Scattered rain showers are forecast for a few more days, beginning Thursday. I will need to get the planting done before then.
I hope that you’re having a good day. Best wishes for the week!
Sunday morning’s excitement
Our backyard neighbors have installed chicken-wire fencing along the length of our permanent fence a foot within the property line behind the house, making it difficult for the rabbits to get in or out by that route. Thus, the doe has dug and lined a burrow in the midst of my wildflower garden which is five feet in from the fence line.
Once again, the Scampers chased the resident rabbit around the back yard and out through the space beside the gate. They go through this routine every morning. We only see the rabbit, however, when it lingers over its breakfast.
Some time after the rabbit escaped under the gate, and the Scampers had returned with me into the house, there was a commotion (and howling) in the front sitting room. Thaddeus spotted the rabbit, who was eating a grassy snack in the front yard.
Thaddeus Spies the Rabbit
Not looking at you!
Seeking Peace and Quiet
We were at a high-school graduation open house on Saturday afternoon for one of the kids across the back fence. His mother mentioned that she sees rabbits playing together in the mornings in our yard, running around and jumping at each other. Play fighting? I wonder if I will get up early enough, some morning, without waking the dogs, to see if I can catch them at it. Sounds fun!
After the Storm
Cotoneaster fruit after yesterday’s winter storm, the bush to the east of the garden shed. We got quite a lot of snow, here. March typically has more snowfall than February. Because it’s warmer, I think.
old memories
surface when the silent snow falls
voices…music…wind
Copyright © 2018-03-05
Lizl Bennefeld
Fargo, N.D. USA
Variations on a Theme: Insects in Flowers, One Summer Day
Honeybee in Tickweed Flower
Grasshopper in a Poppy
Hoverfly in a Poppy
Photographs of flowers in the wildflower garden on 10 July 2017.
WordPress: Daily Photo Challenge on 24 January 2018: Variations on a Theme.
Blue wild flax, work day
In the midst of the day’s work on the workshop in the back yard, I took out some time to play with the dogs and take photographs in the (now fading) wildflower garden. The night temperatures are pretty low, and there’s been relatively little rain. Rain and thunderstorms figure in the forecast quite often, but actual storms and precipitation just aren’t making it to our town very often.
Thaddeus, paying attention
Only two more boards of siding to put up on Friday
Charlie, cricket hunting
I spent a lot of the day at the top of a tall ladder. There was wind, and so I have ended up with a sinus headache. The hot tea will take effect, soon, and I’ll be able to get back to sleep. (That is, soon after I heat the water and steep the tea.)
The first week of my four-week poetry workshop approaches, and I have to decide which of the haiku I’ve written, I should send to the instructor. Between my aunt Marion’s funeral and burial on Monday and acting as carpenter’s assistant, the week has been quite scattered. This coming week, I have to go in for a blood panel, and then an appointment with my doctor. Nine-month check-up on the progress with the type 2 diabetes. One needs the lab results to know for certain, but I think it’s going great.
Also, I am supposed to make appointments with eye and foot doctors. I am not ready for any new adventures, right now, and so I am not making those appointments yet. The past twelve months have held quite enough events as it is.
Now that Mother is no longer acting as gate-keeper for contacts with the broader family on my father’s side, I have gotten a couple of email addresses. I’ve gotten a response to the one email I sent out, this week, and a new-to-me cousin on the west coast is favorable to the notion of making and maintaining contact. By token of which, we are now “Friends” on Facebook. I still don’t have emails for the cousins that I met at the funeral on Monday. Hopefully, information on those will be forthcoming. Two of them are people that I met in 1969, when I stayed with the family for a week, and I also met the widow of the third cousin and their offspring, Monday. Lovely people!
Tuesday’s Garden
The garden flowers got off to a slow start, this morning. The temperature was quite chilly when I first took the dogs out to the back yard. By the second outing, there were butterflies, and at the third time outside, the blue wild flax flowers had appeared. As I was photographing what I think is a wild sunflower, a butterfly flew in to land on it, and so one frame shows the butterfly sitting there. Too bad that I was getting a close-up of the flower, and did not get the entire butterfly into the picture.
Yellow Wildflower with Butterfly
Yellow Wildflower
Yellow Wildflower
There were many of the same sort of butterflies in the back yard during the day. The Scampers thought it was great fun, chasing them from one dandelion to the next. Fortunately, they only caught crickets—the huge ones—which they carry around in their mouths until they find good places to set them down and bat them around. When they do that outside in the grass, the crickets most often get away. When they “catch and release” in the woodworking shop, the crickets are more likely to get stepped on.
Butterfly (edited), 2017-09-05, Lizl Bennefeld.
