A Walk Through My Flower Garden

Yesterday was such a beautiful day and a good day to spend with my camera outside.  I have not taken time to get any photos this summer of my beautiful flower beds and yesterday I tried to get some close up shots of a few.Probably one of the last roses this summer, and this one has such a lovely scent too.The bumble bees, flies, wasps and other insects really like the sedum flowers.  They leave you alone if you leave them alone and believe me I do not want to make a bumble bee mad.  I used my  zoom lens and cropped the photos to get the close views of them.  Don’t their wings look like plastic? Lantana is one of my favorite flowers as it grows so easily and this variety is such fun with the multicolored flowers.Even a dandelion seed head can be beautiful but I sure snapped it off and disposed of it after taking it’s photo! Grasshoppers are such voracious plant eaters but luckily I didn’t have too many munching on my garden this summer.  The fall mums are just starting to bloom so will have bursts of color until we have our first freeze.

Until later,
Lynn

Summer Visitor

John called me one day as I was busy working on a quilting project in the house and told me to come outside and look at what he found.  Yes, it is a large, and I do mean large praying mantis.  He says they don’t bite but you wouldn’t catch me getting one to crawl up on my hand.  You can see by the size compared to his hand how big it was – probably around 5” long.  We see smaller ones quite frequently during the summer, especially around the house on my flowers.  This one was in the middle of the driveway and John stopped to guide it onto his hand so it would not get run over.I loved watching the insect watch me.  I don’t know if there are any other insects that can turn their heads but Praying Mantis can.  I really wonder what it was thinking of me as it followed me with it's head/eyes.  They use their front legs like arms too.

Another observation or supposition I have made is that I think when the first people were drawing what we all think an extraterrestrial looks like now must have modeled them after this insect.  I think the little green men look a lot like this.

After we admired it for a while  and I took a bunch of photos John slowly walked across to my garden to set it on one of the sunflowers growing there.  I haven’t seen this one again but did see another large one come scooting out from a plant I was watering a couple of days ago. 

By the way I love the photos of my hard working farmer husband in these photos who stopped in the middle of the day to rescue this insect.

Until later,
Lynn