Bugs and Other Things

I found this female common whitetail today in the parking lot at Lowe's. It was moving but looked a little worse for the wear (her head was a little wonky looking). I rescued it and released it near a little pond, so in my brain she made a full recovery and is doing well! (Her wing is fine there, just caught in a breeze. And, the males actually do have white abdomens; on the females, the name seems rather odd.)
This question mark was also looking a wee bit wobbly when we found it on Tuesday, but may have been OK. Who knows? I was struck by how hairy its wings were in the center.
The monarchs -- this one and several others -- all looked healthy and happy, feeding, dancing with each other.
These are interesting berries, no?
Wild bergamot blooms.
A wild onion flowers, picture taken from underneath...

I'm Back...

Butterfly weed sketch and queen of the prairie starting to bloom.

Updates Part (Whatever)

Purple Prairie Clover

Besides the vibrant purple of the prairie clovers, here are some other observations from today:

Red baneberries are now, indeed, red berries.
Culver's root has the very first flowers at the bottom of the stalks.
This picture didn't really capture very well the lovely orange color of the flowers on the little bluestem, but let it act as a prompt to go outside and seek some... their tiny blooms -- which most people never notice at all -- are really quite special and colorful.

An Ohio spiderwort to commemorate our Ohio trip. Spiderworts seem to just keep going and going, which is, of course, a good quality for a flower to have... So, here's some notes from our travels.

We took a ferry to Kelley's Island to see these -- some of the largest (and most accessible) glacial carvings in the world. This exposed groove is over 400 feet long and 35 feet wide -- and apparently was dwarfed by some of the ones that were quarried a hundred years ago. (That's a shame, no?) They were completely fenced off, which was sad because they looked fun to climb on and slide down, but good, because tons of people climbing and sliding on them would wreck them eventually. In terms of geology and really old things, Kelley's Island is also a great place for finding marine life fossils... and I found tons!
Speaking of tons... these mayflies were everywhere, although I think they were near the end of their emergence. Last year, I recall, there were many, many more living ones. This year, we saw piles of them on the ground, where I guess people cleaned the dead ones using shovels. Crazy. Lake Michigan has no such thing, but I guess Lake Erie is warm enough...
Aren't these baby swallows cute???

In addition to Kelley's Island, we also went to Cleveland and went to the botanic garden there. It was a nice garden, not too big. It had several very small gardens that were actually neat in their diminutiveness because you could really see how you could do that in your own yard. But there were a few gems at the garden. First was the indoor greenhouses, one of which was a butterfly house, and a really good one. The second was the children's garden. I am not a child, but I could have easily spent all day there. How could you go wrong, inspired by this quotation, "Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, waterbugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade, water lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets, and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of education."-- Horticulturist Luther Burbank? It is the type of installation that I just wish our school could have... magical, educational, fun... I recommend a visit if you're stopping in Cleveland.

AND, they even do phenology there!
I have discovered that blue dashers like water gardens at botanical gardens all over the midwest. (I also saw twelve-spotted skimmers, some huge darners that looked like helicopters, and some damselflies, but this is the only fellow I got a picture of.)
I just liked the color and pattern in this coneflower.
And I photographed the dogwood because we don't see flowering dogwood too much this far north.

Guess I Scared It

But I got pretty close...

Today's Discoveries

We had a lovely day at the gardens today, hot and summery but not unbearable, before the late afternoon storms swept through.

Water lilies are in full bloom, where they have them in all sizes and shapes and colors -- purples and yellows, peaches, pinks, whites. The insides fascinate me, they seem to transition from petal to stamen gradually, as though some petals are made of pollen.

Blue dashers were everywhere today, but they didn't especially want to be photographed. They still sat better than all the other odonata we saw, which I didn't stand a chance of capturing with my point-and-shoot.

Rattlesnake master... the plant with some of the most interesting leaves in the prairie, makes up for it with some of the most boring flowers...

Purple flowering raspberry is a lovely color and has fascinating fuzzy stems and buds. It also shows quite clearly how raspberries are, indeed, members of the rose family. But is sure seems a shame to have these huge raspberry bushes that don't produce edible berries!

Pipevine is pretty neat, no? I wonder if I could get some, put it in my morning glory fence instead of them?... Then I could get swallowtails, too, maybe...

This coneflower has just the oddest curly petals, I quite enjoyed looking at it. Like ringlets.

Playing Catch-Up

Last Friday -- yes, a full week ago, we went to the beach... and now, I am finally catching up on writing a little about it. Here are some of the flowers that grow there that we don't see too many other places... Flowering spurge, a diminutive flower atop a green leafy plant... you'd miss it if you weren't looking.

Prickly pear would be hard to miss.

Hoary puccoon.

And, at school, a very early rudbeckia shows its colors...

And butterfly weed is starting to bloom.