Wednesday, June 26, 2013

The Thing About a Walk is...

The thing about a walk is that you never know what you will encounter.  You can take the same route many times and still be surprised.
Yesterday, my walk started out with a surprise visit from an Eastern Coma butterfly that landed  on my hand, and spent some time poking around with its proboscis. It is a dark orange butterfly with some dark spots on the upper part of its wings and black on the lower edge.  Its body has a greenish hue making it look slightly mossy.  When the wings are folded, you  see a very different design of light and darker brown that resembles woodgrain.  It gets its name from a distinctive small silver coma- shaped marking in the woodgrain pattern. One of their food sources is nettles which are certainly around here!
Further along my walk, a coyote ran across the road no more than 50' away from me.  He was not interested in me, and I quickly lost sight of him in the tall weeds. I have seen coyotes in fields when I've been out driving but never one this close. In the fall and winter, we sometimes hear them yipping at night not too far away from our house. Our cats are inside then and the dogs are in a fenced yard when they are outside-we don't need any nasty encounters .
Later, as I proceeded on my way, I was treated to a jazz concert by a big crowd of frogs who have been enjoying all the wet weather we've been having.  The frogs were in the tall weeds near a wet area and didn't stop singing (as frogs often do) when I walked by.  They were so loud that |I could hear them a quarter mile away.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Raindrops and Blooms

Oriental poppy.  Click for full view.


 Siberian iris.  Click for full view.


 Chives



 Reblooming bearded iris


Rugosa rose

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Wet Leaves

We have had some very rainy days and the tree leaves are very shiny with the water.
The wet leaves are reflecting a lot of light even though sky is overcast which brightens up the landscape.

The leaves look almost variegated.

All polished and waxy looking.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Red is Robust

 Red is a great colour to add some punch to the garden.  It's a strong enough colour to work well in shade.





  Some marigolds come in lovely shades of chestnut red with bright yellow centres.


 This is an unsual bicolour verbena, but solid rich velvety reds are easy to find at the garden centres.


On another note:  The other day, we saw these two horses galloping around their field in spite of the fact that the palomino is due to foal any day now.  I can't imagine running around that close to a birth.

The chestnut mare is a bit lazier than the palomino.  Here she is eating grass as she rests.