Sunflower Pictures to Brighten a Rainy Day

As I begin to write this post, it has been raining all day. I need something that brightens up the wet! What could be better than sunflowers! I looked back at pictures I’ve taken since mid August and come up with some cheer. There is the big sunflower that I got as a volunteer at Brookside Gardens.  The goldfinches are already stopping by for snacks.

Then there are sunflowers that came up from seed that shed into the pots from last year’s plants. The flowers aren’t as big but they are still cheerful.

When they are toward the end of their blooming the petals droop like limp hair around the ‘face’ of the flower.

Up close, one observed the texture of the petals causes water droplets to align when there is a heavy dew.

And that brings us back to a very wet day that needed some sunflowers to brighten my mood!

Flower Glow

Sometimes the light is just right…the flower bloom is at the right stage…it seems to glow from within.

It happened last week at Brookside Gardens. The hibiscus flower was in partial shade but the wind was blowing and the top part of the inner flower got direct sun for a few seconds. There were several fleeting opportunities to take pictures…the one I am including in this post is my favorite.

As I looked at the on the larger screen, I wondered if people glow and concluded that when I think of people glowing it isn’t from light…it is from something within. Looking back at people that came through the Wings of Fancy exhibit – it seems like the people I noticed ‘glowing’ were either young (preschool) or very old.

For the children, the glow came from seeing so many butterflies around them. They don’t appear overwhelmed or overly excited; they just stand and follow the butterflies with their eyes…a little smile on their face…their hands together.

For older people, it is a little different but sometimes the expression is the same. There was a 90-year-old woman in a wheel chair whose family had brought her to the exhibit to celebrate her birthday; she didn’t say very much but the look of her face was one of pure joy of being in that place at that time watching butterflies flutter around her. Another older lady – probably in her 80s – was more animated; she talked about when she was young and loving butterflies around where she lived but being afraid of caterpillars…not finding out until many years later than the caterpillars became butterflies. While she talked, she followed butterflies with her eyes; she was savoring her life – present and past.

The other people in the exhibit may not always glow but the happy voices and expressions on just about everyone’s face certainly makes the volunteer shifts enjoyable. The Wings of Fancy exhibit at Brookside Gardens in my universal happy place this summer!

Jelly Fungus

Our deck is over 20 years and has tiny stands of jelly fungus fruiting bodies in the knots of its railing after a heavy rain. I photographed on knot in late July just after they appeared

And then a day later. They expanded very rapidly.

The jelly dried up but after a heavy rain last Thursday they were back and even bigger.  They have a blobby beauty.

This means that the deck railings are rotting...and will have to be replaced at some point. Fortunately, the other parts of the deck have no yellow blobs!

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 5, 2017

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #98 – This set includes a kestrel!

View and Print in 3D more than 200 Objects from the British Museum – If you can’t go to the museum itself, these 3D renderings are the next best thing. And you can look at them whenever you want!

Here are UNESCO’s Newest World Heritage Sites – There are so many unique places to explore.

How a guy from a Montana trailer park overturned 150 years of biology – The researcher that overcame challenges of early life….and figured out that lichen was made of more than a fungus and an alga.

The dizzy history of carousels begins with knights – A little history. I was surprised that it starts with a training game for Arabian and Turkish warriors in the 12 century!

16 best train trips in the world – I’ve never taken an extended train trip…only short ones for fall foliage in Maryland and Pennsylvania – or scenic areas in Arizona. Maybe a train trips will be my substitute for long road trips.

Paul Hawken on One Hundred Solutions to the Climate Crises – Focusing on solutions rather than the problem…of course.

Look Ma, No Break! You’ll Drive Electric Cars with One Pedal – My Prius Prime still has 2 pedals but long term EVs will be changing to 1 pedal to maximize regen breaking…barely using brake pads

These nature photos inspire serious wanderlust – From National Geographic.

Archaeologists discover a ‘Little Pompeii’ in Eastern France -  From the 1^st Century AD…abandoned after catastrophic fires….but the excavation will only last until the end of the year before the construction of a housing complex begins.

Hummingbird Moth at Brookside Gardens

One morning before my shift at Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy last month, I finally managed to photograph the hummingbird moth (this one might be a Hemaris thysbe) that was frequenting the path toward the exhibits ticket taker station. They are difficult to photograph because they are always in motion. Most of the time the wings are just a blur. The wings can be moving differently enough that one is visible….and the other not!

I try to get different angles. The first time I ever saw a hummingbird moth (and had no idea what it was), I knew it wasn’t a hummingbird when I saw that it had antennae.

It moves around flowers a lot like a hummingbird but has a flexible proboscis rather than a beak and tongue.

And it has way too many legs to be a bird!

Our Neighborhood Streets

The first indication that something was going to happen to our neighborhood streets, were he signs that appeared in late June…and then the big equipment at the front of the neighborhood. The neighborhood is about 25 years old; the streets did not seem that problematic but I was glad the work was being done proactively….and interested in how it would proceeed.

Markings were made on the street around the utility covers and the connections of cul-de-sacs to the primary street into the neighborhood. They started at the front of the neighborhood and scraped off the top few inches of asphalt from a few cul-de-sacs.

The increased heavy equipment traffic caused some break up of asphalt – a sign that it was old enough to be easily damaged.

The big equipment finally removed the asphalt from in front of our house in mid-July. A dump truck moved slowly in front of the big machine to collect the asphalt that was scrapped up. Smaller equipment (Bobcat size) came along and removed chunks of asphalt that the bigger equipment didn’t. And then there were street sweepers. Every night when the work was done for the day, the neighborhood was left tidy.

Ten days later, the asphalting was done in front of our house. The dump truck carrying the surfacing material links with the equipment and then the two pieces move forward and the layer is put on top of the road bed. Big rollers come along behind and compress the material. By the time all that happens – the new layer is flush with the concrete curb.

Our neighborhood looks spruced up with the new street - and the earlier work to replace buckling segments of sidewalk and clear out the clogged water retention pond. 2017 has been a busy year for infrastructure maintenance in our neighborhood!

Mt. Pleasant in July 2017 – Part II

Continuing from my Monday post about last week’s walks before and after photography session with summer campers at Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm….The areas around the nature center were easy enough to walk around and through several times. There were cone flowers in the Honors Garden that were very attractive to the tiger swallowtails and other butterflies.

There were flowers growing up through the rungs of a bench that survived the campers (they managed to sit on the bench and not the flowers!).

We saw a cicada killer resting on one of the benches too.

I liked the view of Queen Anne’s Lace from below. The campers decided it looked like a tree.

All cone flowers are not pink!

In the quiet one morning – before the campers were anywhere near – I saw a cat bird in the garden (only heard it when the campers were around)

And a butterfly was interested in the pickerel weed at the small pond

Where there was a water strider moving around on the surface of the water.

Somehow some plants look otherworldly to me – as if they are two unrelated things glommed together. This is an example!

There were also early instars of an insect (maybe milkweed bugs) on one of the plants.

In the Garden Club garden with the ‘Flower Pot People’ there were mating milkweed beetles

And bugs

And several different instars of the milkweed bugs all on one plant!