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Thursday, November 17, 2011

Miscellany

As happens every so often, I take photos of things that don't merit their own post. Sometimes those photos are forgotten, or intentionally ignored, but sometimes I feel the need to combine them into a "catch up" post. This is one of those posts -- a collection of unrelated recent observations.


Starting with an early morning storm. Some mornings I get to see the sunlight painting the clouds. Sometimes it's just clouds though, and these were dramatic ones.


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The contrast in the sky was striking that morning.



From those nearly monochromatic cloud images, we move on to more autumn color:


Black locust trees look almost worthwhile for a few minutes each fall, especially after a rain that darkened their bark.

My 'Lady in Red' hydrangea is showing a beautiful mix of similar colors this fall:


This is a really pretty plant (that's in a poor location, but that's a story for another day I think). I love how it's held on to some remnants of its flowers.


From the pretty to the not-so much:


These sow bugs (aka pill bugs, woodlouse, roly-poly) were devouring the remains of an elephant ear tuber:



These are everywhere in the garden, but I typically don't see them in such a high concentration. The fact that this was a potted plant makes it even more interesting -- I wonder exactly how they got in there since there was no drain hole contact with the ground.


Finally, after our hard freeze last week only a single salvia remained alive in my yard: the pineapple sage (Salvia elegans). What made this really interesting though was the little swarm of clouded sulphur butterflies that were around this plant. There were six at one point! Unfortunately this is one of the most shy butterflies (at least in my garden), and they just won't stay still or let me get close.



So you get one poorly-exposed image and a couple of "find the butterfly" challenges. I expect these will have been the last butterflies of the season. Sigh.


And that's the last of my miscellaneous topics for now.

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3 comments:

  1. Those sow bugs remind me that we have been enjoying a respite from them during the hot summer. They are starting to come to light and I know what they like best. All those tasty winter things like violas and pansies. I'd better be keeping my eye open for them. Little fertilizers! Thanks for the reminder.

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  2. At last I know what those bugs are called - I see them too in my garden. Never knew what they are called.

    The Black locust tree looks quite spectacular. Lovely Salvia!

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  3. The pineapple sage hung on through our summer and is blooming like crazy right now. Last year it bloomed through December and into the deep winter until we had that crazy, extended freeze. Don't feel bad, the sulfur butterflies are shy down here too...that, and extremely fast!

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