Another Daily Flower Report

I think of DYCs as a late summer thing, but some bloom early!  This, I believe, is an ox-eye sunflower.  Perhaps more interesting, in this case, is the plant's scientific name -- it's a Heliopsis species.  "Helio" is Greek for sun... opsis is Greek for "appearance" -- so it looks like the sun.  Its specific name is helianthoides, which means "like Helianthus" (that being the genus of sunflowers).  So it looks like the sun, and like a sunflower!  Heliopsis species are sometimes called false sunflowers. 

Also just starting to bloom are Asclepias species, here a butterflweed. Though a member of the milkweed genus, these plants don't have the milky sap associated with most milkweeds.  They are, however, still larval hosts to monarch butterflies! 

Sawtooth Sunflower

Sawtooth sunflowers are starting to bloom.. though they have a very long flowering range, quite a few are open.  I don't think they've hit peak yet and I expect to see them at least until October.  What sets these apart from other DYCs* is their odor.  Since I was just a young nature nerd, I've been told by naturalists that they smell like chocolate.  Now, there are a few possibilities here.  Maybe I, or they, have bad senses of smell.  Maybe they were just repeating what they'd been told, as I am admittedly doing here.  Maybe these fine folks spent so much time being nature nerds that they didn't cook.  I don't know.  But I definitely don't smell chocolate.  The plants do have a distinct odor, not quite sure how to describe it... (actually, that's the fourth and likely correct option -- we just don't have very good vocabularies of smell.  If it's not "like something else" we can't capture it...)  At any rate.  Sawtooth sunflowers! 

*that's, um... "darn yellow composites"

Fresh Flowers and More

Each day or two there are so many new and noteworthy flowers showing their faces that I can't possibly hope to chronicle them all.  Here are a few that caught my eye this morning or yesterday:

Foxglove beardtongue blooming in the prairie.

One of my most evil enemies, the bindweed (shown with a tiny bee pollinating it).

This false sunflower was one of two in full bloom -- very early -- in a whole grouping of which none of the others are even close to blooming.  Odd.  Note the crab spider hanging out, well-camouflaged, just above the disc flowers in the photo.  Because tiny critters on flowers is a theme of the day!

Purple coneflowers aren't blooming yet, but they actually look so interesting at this stage of almost-ready that I decided to include this.  Plus, there are ants crawling on it. 

Found her hanging out on an arborvitae tree... who wouldn't love this face? 

Yarrow

Last week I showed a painted turtle laying eggs, this week it's a ginormous snapper.  

Autumn Draws Near

Sunflower, Unfinished

For the past few days, I have had these gorgeous, green-and-yellow centered sunflowers on my desk at work. They were brought for me by a co-worker who grew them for our wedding, as several friends did... but they chose to bloom quite a bit late. So I got some now. And they are so lovely, I just wanted to draw one. But I didn't have a lot of time, so... but I actually kind of like the picture this way.

Once again caught camera-less, today I saw 7 monarchs all together in one bunch of false sunflowers. Quite striking and lovely. A migration? And speaking of monarchs, the fat caterpillar from the last post? Is gone, and I can't find a chrysalis to save my life. I really, really want to. But it's not to be...

Dragonflies, Etc.

This common baskettail (I think) sat calmly on a lupine while I took her picture. She was hard to ID, and, if we're correct, she's a new one for me!

Eastern forktail, above (not a new one) and orange bluet (also not new) below. What a contradictory name...
These caterpillars were just decimating the Somonon's seal on which they lived.

An early false sunflower, this one without aphids.

An Alternate View

I decided today that the back of a sunflower -- with its sand-papery, curling sepals creating caves and shadows, with the light shining through the petals -- is every bit as spectacular as the front.

I'm Back... Sort Of

I haven't posted in a few days -- been feeling under the weather. Not terrible, which would mean staying home from work, but just the wrong amount of bad. Well enough that it would be silly not to go to school, but icky enough that being at school is not at all fun.

This is the second night in a row that it has gotten into the 40s. Our high temperatures have been about 11 degrees below average, and the lows have been ridiculous (not good for melons, tomatoes, peppers...). This morning, a thin layer of clouds blanketed open fields and yards, fog so low you could actually see the sunny sky above it. And the plants are heavy with moisture, some bending over with the weight of it, although it hasn't rained.

Bumblebee on goldenrod, which is now in full bloom.

False sunflowers, also in full bloom. The world is yellow, the color of late summer, when everything seems tinged by sunshine but yet sunshine seems further away, fleeting. Early September is a beautiful time of the year, and made perhaps more so by the fact that it is the time when its slipping through your fingers...

Some random sentences strung together this morning, with no coherent structure. I guess I'm tired.

July 12: A Day of Firsts

July 12: First bergamot flowers in my yard.
July 12: First tomato harvested in my garden. It's a roma, not big, but quite red. Also harvested: 5 cucumbers, 3 broccoli with disappointingly small flowerheads, some carrots.
July 12: First sunflower in my yard (I know I am well behind other people's gardens in this area, though...)
July 12: Yellow coneflower starts to take its shape.
And, another damselfly, this one unidentifiable. It's either a female or a juvenile and those are hard to distinguish... but it's still pretty!

Another Garden Visit

Here is the new damselfly for the day... but I can't positively identify her. (The bluets are hard -- there's a ton and they all look similar. But the female bluets are even harder!) I think this one might be a female blue-fronted dancer.
I know this is bad photo (of orange bluets mating) but the point I wanted to make is... damselflies were mating today, like, a lot. At one point, I saw three couples at one time.
Sunflower ready to open up! I love the brown sunflowers, because their brown color is on top of the typical sunflower yellow. You can see the yellow through the brown costume, and if you pick a petal and break it, it's yellow inside.
Virgin's bower, the native clematis, in bloom.
Boneset.
Hophornbeam seeds.
Hazel nuts.

Now for the waterfowl update...
Baby swans.
This juvenile duck, probably one of the first born this year, is the size of an adult, but his coloring hasn't fully come in yet (his head doesn't have the pretty green), whereas...
These baby mallards are much littler and so so cute.

Plants turning color already (and, besides this fern and anenome, there are more, like some serviceberry leaves and Solomon's seal).

(Yeah, I know this is sideways. I don't care.)

Another hot one...

We were supposed to have a cool wave, but it doesn't seem to have come through yet. Anyhow.

Thistles are blooming on the roadsides and in lower-quality prairies. Thistles are a weed* I hate to love, and love to hate. Their flowers are quite pretty, big (in this case) purple orbs that actually look fuzzy. They are a beautiful color. But if you've ever been involved in a thistle removal project -- as I was a few years ago -- you quickly learn how... let's just say, well-adapted they are. Thorns are painful and plentiful, roots are deep. They're tall so your whole body gets scratched up when you try to remove them. And before too long you start to dislike them despite their beauty. Or even feel violently anti-thistle. I wrote an essay about that a few years back, which I thought about including here... but I can't find it. Oh, well.

*I say weeds, but it should be noted that there are some native thistles. You just don't see them too often. Only in really high-quality prairies, actually. And their colors are more muted.

Our false sunflowers are starting to bloom. The picture on the left shows one almost open... and the picture on the right shows what seems to be happening to the fully open ones! I'm not sure what's up. Last year we did have an issue with some neighbor kids picking these flowers as they bloomed, since they're right by the mailbox/street. But if you pick it, you at least get to, you know, have it. Why someone would just snap the head and leave it hanging is beyond me. So perhaps it was a bird? Either way, I'm hoping it was bad luck and not a trend that will occur as each flower blooms. If it does, I'm going to install a flower cam to solve the mystery.

Milkweeds beginning to bloom. Shown here are purple milkweed (left) and possibly poke milkweed(? or some white, slightly narrow milkweed. The latter picture was taken on Tuesday, so there are undoubtedly more flowers open now. Common milkweed is at the same point as purple milkweed... mostly not flowering but a few blooms on selected plants are opening up.

By the way... 20 quarts of strawberries yielded:

• 1 pie
• 16 quarts of delicious and hard-earned jam, some of which jelled great and others of which stayed slightly liquidy, but all of which will be a welcome treat in the middle of winter!
• a tiny bit of temporary insanity.