Camera Critters

Late summer/ early fall is the time for Skippers
 

 

 

 

and American Ladies,
 

flexing their beautiful wings.
 

 

 

Lots of purple and sunshine yellow, a mecca for nectaring insects.
 

 

 

 

 

 

To see more critters of all sorts, visit Camera Critters!

Blooming Friday -- September Peak

The star of the garden every September is always the Bidens. Some years we also have Bidens in the ditches next to the pastures, 1200 feet on each side. Not this year -- I think DH mowed down the young seedlings in May. The ditches need to be mowed every year to keep the woody plants down, but we need to try to get it done in late winter or very early spring instead of April or May.

But there are a lot of Bidens in the garden.

At first they start off looking like any other garden plant, with a nice amount of blooms, and then there is an explosion of color.
 

 

 

 

 

They are even more brilliant in sunshine.
 

View from an upstairs window.
 

 

 

 

Something is needed to offset all of that yellow -- this is a Knockout rose, whose garishness I sometimes don't appreciate and sometimes I do.
 

Buddleia 'Potter's Purple'
 

On a gentler note, pink and white Lespedeza.
 

Hibiscus syriacus
 

 

Crinum 'Royal White'
 

Hardy Ginger Lily, with its heavenly fragrance
 

Mexican Petunia
 

Spiderwort 'Zwanenberg Blue'
 

and roses. This is the tea rose Duchesse de Brabant with Transylvanian Sage.
 

Rugosa rubra with Buddleia Potter's Purple in the background
 

Buds of the tea rose Devoniensis
 

Aloha
 

and the lovely Clotilde Soupert.
 

 

For more Blooming Friday posts, visit Katarina at roses and stuff.

Camera Critters

These little guys love to sing in the drain pipes.

Green Treefrog
 

The butterflies love the flowers
 

but sometimes they just want a drink. I had dumped out the horses' water trough earlier.
 

Look what I found under the well cover: a female Black Widow spider! We have lots of these on the farm, under leaves, under rocks, and under water troughs that haven't been used for a while, yet I rarely find them in the garden itself. So I'm careful to wear gloves in certain situations.
*no spiders were harmed in or after the creation of this post*
 

Bidens are the great insect favorite this month. The flowers are literally abuzz with dozens, even hundreds of bees, wasps, flies, moths, and butterflies.

Another that looks like a Tim Burton creation.
 

 

 

 

 

Digger Wasps are very common this time of year, buzzing in circles above lawns in great numbers. They are beautiful wasps, with their irridescent blue-black wings and chesnut abdomens with yellow markings.
 

 

 

 

To see more critters of all sorts, visit Camera Critters!