Fall Colors...........

Orange is really a fall color and when things start to be less green, the monarch looks in season.  I had two of these waiting for me to photograph on Monday when I went out to the zinnias.  The little yellow flowers really don't seem real but I am wondering if the butterfly is getting nectar from them.

White Winged Insect......

I took shots of this white butterfly last weekend.  Sometimes I bury things and forget that I have not posted shots.  I am thinking this is either the white moth butterfly or the cabbage white butterfly. He has a lot of weathering, wear and tear on the top ends of his wings.

He was opening and closing his wings here and I thought it lucky to catch it in transition.

I saved my best photo for last.  The butterfly didn't seem to be too concerned about me being around so I was able to play with the lining up of the flowers.  I have seen the yellow sulfite one out there but not a picture of one have I taken. 

Glories in the Morning.........

As I left for work this morning the trellis at the back door had two perfect blooms of morninglories.  The blue one is so strong looking and is a larger size that the others.  I bet it is twice the size of the ones I see growing wild in the cornfield.

The other one that was blooming was this red one.  I know I won't see the red one when I get home from work but the blue one has a past history of staying open night and day for a couple of days.  I might see that one tonight. 

I messed with the camera and the moon shots last night and I have to get myself schooled on how to do the moon shots.  I watched the moon come up last night from my chair looking out over the neighbor's garage.  It seemed to raise quickly last night.

Having an Off Day............

The wind was strong but I bet this was done by a friendly cat or maybe even a raccoon.  There is water in a fountain nearby so any creature could have toppled the angel while getting a drink. I did set the angel back right with the world and he sits guard on the bench. .

Getting Myself in Focus..........

A dull day with lots of moisture can cause me to get a grainy photo.  I think it can cause a nice effect but it doesn't make the photo fit into the pile of perfect photos.

On a sunny day things do clear up and the camera can perform well.  The mosquitoes are gone for now so I can get out and take new photos today.  The town sprays before the homecoming weekend to help rid us of all those small insects.

Missed a Day Again........

It is a jumbled mess as the sunflowers are in decline.  There are actually four heads shown in the picture and there is a stem that has a head above all of this off the photo.  I don't intentionally miss posting but yesterday was apparently a "brain is dead" day. I miss posting on one of my other blogs earlier this week.  I guess my Thursday was so much like Wednesday at school that I thought I must have done it. Teaching in the music room was exhausting and today it will be more of a breeze teaching in the middle  school science room.

Patriot Day.....

The students and staff were to wear their red, white and blue to school yesterday.   I had to do some digging in the spare closet to find my old flag tie.  Male teachers don't wear ties to work anymore but I did rather than dig up a patriotic shirt.  I guess I did have a t-shirt with a flag on it.  Anyway, I was surprised that I could make it through most all of the day with the tie around my neck.  I did loosen it a little by the last period of the day.  I did look and was glad to see that the tie was made in the USA. 

Sunflowers Revisited...........

The seeds are filling in and the heads of all of the sunflowers are now too heavy to follow the sun. They are such an amazing plant as that small little yellow flowers fills in to be a very large dinner plate sized bloom.

It looked like these a few weeks ago. If I get my timing all right I will harvest them for feeding the birds this winter. 

Squirrel...........

Up on the roof a squirrel is busy carrying a walnut to his nest.  The walnut tree is on the far aouth side of the neighbor's property and I believe this guy travels via trees, fences and eventually to my roof to get to the big maple on the north of my house.  The hull seems to still be on the walnut as he carries it to his tree. I will have to be looking for hulls on the ground below his nest.

Morning and Afternoon Glories...........

Three days ago I was not expecting to see these blooms.  The two different colors were a surprise also as all that was growing here was the pastel pink blooms.

Saturday afternoon I walked outside with the dogs and I was again surprised.  I did not expect the color or that they were ever going to bloom.  The red ones here bloom early and shrivel up in about an hour.  These blue ones have stayed open most all of the day.

It was worth the wait.  They are so unpredictable as all over the cornfield the glories have been blooming for a long time. These have acted like I was never going to see any color. 

A Lucky Find and a Lucky Shot......

                                                    Eastern Comma Butterfly

I had to wait for a time to get this shot.  All of a sudden the butterfly decided to crawl away from a rotting pear on the ground and warm itself on a leaf. I like seeing the white line around the edge of the parts of the insect.  I have found that it is an Eastern Comma butterfly.  It looks differently than the Question Mark butterfly that I found earlier.  I guess they are from the same family but they do look differently.

A fly and a closed wing butterfly sit on the pear sucking the sugar from the pear.  It would flip its wings open and shut while eating but I could never catch it open.

While crawling out into the sun it gave me a great moody shot.

Apple Picking Day........

Standing on a stepladder gives me a different perspective of the trees.  I have been picking up apples as they have dropped but it immediately gives them that one bruise.  I picked more than we can use right now but once I got started I decided to stay on it.  The gray coating on the apples seems to wash off with a scrub brush and I really don't know what causes it.  I cleaned up all the apples before I would give them away and they looked like a shiny yellow cooking apple.

I keep my camera in my shorts pocket so I can take a shot while I am falling.  I went over and picked from the tree these red apples.  I have been admiring them for quite some time.  When I picked them I found them to be small and also bugs were putting holes in them.  This apple would not be one that I would recommend.  I didn't get many apples from this tree as they seem to rot instantly when they fall on the ground.  Ants and slugs attacked these apples immediately.

The red apples looked this good when I looked up at them.  All those apples are now in that bucket.  Some fell to the ground while I was picking them and they weren't in that good of shape with bugs eating on them while on the tree.

The River Birch

The river birch is far from any river but it is close to the garden shed.  I am sure it gets more water where it is growing with runoff of the two roof sides of the shed.   It is a perfect specimen of this kind of tree.  I gave a neighbor one of these at the very same time and her's is a skinny version of mine.  It isn't very good looking as her son has trimmed here and there making it look more like any other tree rather than a river birch.

I am not anxious for fall but I will be keeping an eye on this tree as its yellow leaves transforms this tree into a glowing one. 

Finding Their Way.........

Climbing, struggling to reach the top, which way should they twine or should I say climb?

Waiting for the warmth needed, give them some sun. Finally they bloom.

Wishing for more moisture on its roots,  where is my keeper, old man? Pour......

Listening to the wind, hoping it isn't too cold. the south breezes warm their soul.

Success in spite of all the odds, so many are for and against you as you trumpet your colors in the early light.


They will yield when it is time, may the frost be slow.

They will make it one more day. On no.............. cold!

Young and Old.....

As the season of summer comes to a close the flowers loose their beauty to a different beauty.  The dead seed heads of flowers have the same form but the arrangement of individual petals change. I don't think I have ever had this bright orange zinnia bloom before this year and it is quite stunning in its brilliant pure color.

Harvest Time.....

This will probably be the last picking of rhubarb for the year.  I am giving this away for someone else to make rhubarb cake.

Red......

My last two blogs were blue and yellow so here is red.  The sun was shinning at the time and the leaves look very yellow in the natural light. I don't know if this is a normal bloom shape for this morning glory as it came from a variety pack of seeds.  I have yet to see a trumpet shape on any of the red ones so this may be the normal.  I will wait and see if we have some normal warm temperatures to see if will turn into a trumpet that is more circular.

Saturday's Yellow Glow.........

The sunflower that fell during the strong winds is doing well being kept alive in my wheel barrel full of rain water. The textures and the seeds put out a very tactile display.  I am going to have to get a watering can and put the sunflower into it.  I do need to move the wheel barrel and dump its water.

I think it is interesting that field corn and sunflowers are exactly the same color of yellow. I suppose yellow daisies are in the same color family too.

Blue........

A bluejay feather caught my eye laying on the ground in the alley.  I have never seen one where the blue colors and markings on only on one half of the feather.  While on the bird, I assume the layers of them make the bird blue and the underside part of the overlap is black or dark gray.  I like the white tip on it.

The natural surroundings make for a better backdrop for the feather than the created one by me in the top photo. I haven't been seeing bluejays around for a while so one must be out there and it did shed a feather. The dark part of the feather does make the blue to be so much more bright in color.

Ready for Harvest........

The corn plants are fading into dead stalks.  The small amount of green at the top will be gone soon as the corn stalk stops growing.

The corn is called dented when it has dried and taken on the darker color.  Dented corn can be eaten when ground into a powder but there is not more eating of the corn from the cob when it is in this stage.  When I was young my dad had my mom cook him some field corn  in its early stage of development just to see if it was good.  Actually field corn isn't good while sweet corn in bred purely to eat from the cob.  There was evidence of morning glories blooming all along the field of corn.  It was hot afternoon and they were all shriveled by the time I was there.

Looking Up.....

My garden shed has a loft.  Not really but I put in a floor above like an attic to store things.  It has become my major storage area for leftover wood.  My tall oldest son was home, dropping in, and I put him to work helping me put the thing together.  It is too high for me to access without standing on something so I do have to keep a floor space area cleared to get up there.  I haven't look up in there for a couple of years so I should get the step ladder and see what I might have put up there and forgotten.

Transforming Rose........

The heat and humidity must suit the roses as all of mine are now budded and blooming again. The larger rose in the top photo is now fully open in this bottom shot.  The camera macro is sure working great for me.

Off Duty......

I noticed yesterday that one stalk of the sunflowers was leaning.  I tried to prop it up but the winds had snapped it off at it base.  The winds took it out and it missed our heavy rain and lightening storms last night.  We have a flooded out highway west of us so we must have received a lot of rain.

In the Shed.......

Art teachers tend to collect things for still life drawing.  An experienced art teacher collects some really unusual things.  Mickie Smeltzer brought in a cow skull into the classroom for me back in the 1980's.  It smelled a little and as time went by the teeth did fall out or the students removed them.  I can remember the expression on his face as he handed it to me.  You would have thought he was handing to me a treasure chest or his Olympic medal.  For an art teacher it was a prized piece and I had hit the big time with not a human skeleton or stuffed birds but a cow skull.   It now hangs in my shed.  I bet every high school student that I ever had would be able to tell you about drawing the cow skull or even doing paintings of the cow skull.

A Photographic Series.......

The heat and humidity has caused every rose that I own to bud and now bloom.  The above photo of the semi open bloom taken yesterday now looks like its twin sister that bloomed out already.  Both will be faded to white in a couple of days.

Seeing Vertical Whites........

The birch tree is always a good thing to photograph.  I quit taking shots of it as I seemed to do it too much.  Yesterday though the light was just perfect to give the tree a very white bark. I was taking shots of some roses and I looked up and there was this repeat of similar shapes of tree and trim on the bay window.  As fall gets closer the light outside is also changing.  The heat and humidity doesn't seem to show in the photo but it is there.

Leader of the Pack.....

The harvest of tomatoes has been a disappointing one.  With the number of plants that I have I should have sinks full of tomatoes.  We have a lot when you see this counter but a lot of them have been picked and left here to ripen. There are not many left on the vine.  The heirloom tomato plant has put out six or less tomatoes but they are a good tomato.

The lighting was bad for this shot but it did give it a consistent yellow glow. The dirt on the counter is real.  The counter that I put in 3o years ago is probably considered cheap by some but it still looks good and has been a great product for our needs. I had to bring in the tomatoes as some insect, maybe the grasshopper, is eating chunks out of the tomatoes.

The positive thing of this is that we have had a lot of great bacon, tomato and lettuce sandwiches on toast. The were especially good with my wife's potato salad and also fresh sweetcorn.