I Have a New Address

Come visit at my new address.

Mother Nature's Garden

http://mothernaturesgarden.wordpress.com/

Lycoris and Dogwoods

A nice rain in September will stimulate Lycoris radiata/red spider lilies to bloom. There are lots of buds but I usually cannot wait and eagerly photograph the first one that opens.

Fruited, Budded Dogwood

My area is filled with mature dogwoods/Cornus florida.

Buds and Drupes

They are now laden with next year's white flower buds and this year's red drupes. The drupes are a favorite food of wildlife.

Dogwood Bark

Soon the leaves will be turning red

and there will be pretty flowers in spring.

A word about the hummers... The last time I filled the hummingbird feeder, I decided to hold the feeder to see if they would feed from it. It worked. :-)

Autumn Dish

Autumn is in the air. It is a little cooler at night...down into the 50s. I can bring out the fall theme dishes I bought earlier this year and bring autumn to the table as well. It is time for those comfort foods like chili and chicken and dumplins and beef stew. Now I'm hungry. Cornbread...and...

Strange Things

Perilla frutescens

Square purple stems are strange but I am becoming accustomed to the unusual. Some deem it a weed but it looks pretty good to me.

African Mask Plant/Alocasia x amazonica 'Polly'

makes a very attractive indoor plant. It likes humidity. I water with rainwater or bottled water.

Northern Walking Stick

Diapheromera femorata

Look again. His head is in the middle and to the right are his front pair of legs and antennae flexed forward to contribute to the stick disguise. Distinctive backside on the left tells us it is male. This insect feeds on apple, oak, rose leaves. We put him on this available hosta leaf for a photo. He was hanging on the best he could for this photo was made in very windy conditions. One can imagine how he would blend into the surroundings on a twig or stem. Diapheromera femorata can reproduce parthenogenectically.

Autumn Joy

Gloomy days lately have me moving plants away from my door. It seems I cannot get enough light.  It's clean up time today. I must reduce some of the planters. It is too big a job to wait.

fledgling disciples

hunting in the misty rain

outside my window

One bright note.. I saw the Carolina wren fledglings hunting as a family yesterday. This is probably their last day together. In one week parents teach them where to go and what to eat and what to avoid. I'd say that is a crash course in survival.

I'm not noticing any male hummingbirds. I think the males have already gone south. Next will be the females and lastly the young. They fly solo. Read more here.

Campbell's Labels for Education tallied on your Kroger Plus Card.

Thankful Thursday 

I'm thankful I live in a peaceful place.

Happy Birthday, Philip Bewley.

  

John Muir Trail Hike

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature's sources never fail.
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike. 

2658 mile Pacific Crest Trail by Rainmaker

So extraordinary is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees....

By forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive Nature accomplishes her beneficent designs - now a flood of fire, now a flood of ice, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an outburst of organic life....

One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature -- inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty; and we soon cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspendable wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies about us, feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.

Nature is always lovely, invincible, glad, whatever is done and suffered by her creatures. All scars she heals, whether in rocks or water or sky or hearts.

No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening - still all is Beauty!

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. 

John Muir Quotes

Carolina Wrens Fledged Yesterday

and I'm thankful they made it.

Thankful Thursday

Although there isn't any room to ever have flapped their wings and they still have downy fluff on their heads, four Carolina wren nestlings are ready to fly on day 13.

A brick wall will do for the first landing. See his little short tail.

Although it was later in the day, the least developed one also took off. He hardly has any feathers on his head but it is warm weather.

It was a big day with little birds landing hither and yon and parents locating, feeding, and calling them together. See you around, birdies.

Now I can replant my flower pot.

Photos are courtesy of Father Time.

Yellow Floating Heart/Nymphoides peltata

 

Nymphoides peltata

I grew weary of waiting for it to bloom and forgot about it. Hubby alerted me to seeing a new bud yesterday. I almost missed it. They only stay open in the morning.   More Nymphoides species info can be seen here. Shops that sell tropical fish are a good source for small floating plants you may desire for container water gardens. 

Aquariumscape Contest

We can always garden inside when it is no longer possible to do it outside. How about a tiny terrarium?