peony — 2017 — The 21st Century Matriarch

I used the zoom on my camera so much in May that almost every picture was a candidate for this post. I picked some images that were no previously included in posts for the slide show below:

A fly perched on a tiny yellow flower covered in water droplets
New leaves at the tips of the maple branch – and a fly that I didn’t see until I looked at the picture on a big screen
A butterfly head and shoulders…the zoom is enough that the individual yellow scales show in the darker part of the wing.
New leaves on the sycamore. The size variation of sycamore leaves is very large: small fingernail to dinner plate.
A resting butterfly
Peonies: flower and bud
An insect that looks like dried leaves
A monarch caterpillar
A butterfly – again the individual scales can be detected as ‘powder’ over the darker markings
A chipping sparrow making a mess at the feeder
A butterfly wing collage

Enjoy!

The Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm was a busy place in May: many field trips from elementary and middle schools and the flurry of construction on the education center expansion…trying to finish by the end of the month. There were the usual spring sights around the farm house: black walnuts leafing out and blooming,

Dogwoods in flower (this pink one is and near the rain garden).

And peonies.

The perimeter around the construction is mostly off limits – but the new sign in up.

Last week I took a walk out to the community garden to meet the buses for a 2^nd grade field trip and enjoyed the time before the other volunteers walked out doing some photography. There was plenty to see: dandelions gone to seed,