Thursday 10 September 2015

nature walk in town


Hello again. Plunked into September and still no sign of colour change in the trees.  Despite being on a similar latitude to Ottawa, the Season always arrives late here and stays later as well. The wildflowers, however,  are doing their Autumn dance.
I stepped into the garden before going for a walk to check in on a few favourites.
This beauty has flowers that unfurl from the pod as shown here, kind of like a Jack in the Pulpit.
 
The smaller clematis that took off after our violet ones died out are still going strong on the composter trellis.  They leave these beautiful fluffy hearts when their petals fall.

like little starbursts
 
We had a record growth of Echinacea this year, but now they are past prime.
This little bumblebee is napping on a petal.

The cement sheep went into the garden a while back when Wally began staining the deck.
 
 a red chard is bravely growing through the clover

Our 7 Harelson apples didn't fare too well despite our keeping the deer at bay as we didn't spray them for bugs. But these 2 have hung on. We will celebrate the day we eat them, probably fresh off the tree as we did last year. Just below them you can barely see the cement sheep in the garden.
 
This lovely forest floor scene is immediately across the road
 where our neighbours keep their property wild, much to our delight.
 
There's always some bug in a wildflower.
 
If you look closely you can see the ladybug on this Queen Anne's Lace gone to seed.
How similar she is to the seeds (minus their "millipedes").

A lovely stand of yellow Tansy.

Aha! Who's this?
 
a Locust Borer it turns out, named not because he is a locust, but because
they lay their eggs in the bark of Locust trees. It turns out that they like to feed on Goldenrod.
I guess the colour confused this one.
 
I was happier not to know the stats but to admire their lovely jackets.
 
Another stat that drove me absolutely "buggy" was the name of this plant. What was worse is that I once knew it, but try as I might, I couldn't find the right words to narrow down my search.

I even knew that it started with an "S".
Eventually, knowing it had a somewhat succulent leaf, I found it in domesticated rock garden plants even though I always seem to find it growing wild.
It is called "Sedum"!
 
I will take a break here as I continue to go through the 120+ photos I took that day,
a lovely nature walk right here in town.

peace

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