Flora & Fauna

Or is it fauna and flora?  Which do I have more of--flowers or wildlife?  Probably flowers, so the title is correct.

I found some twine in the garage and tied up the Stargazer lilies this morning so I could take their picture without my arm and hand in the shot.  I am impressed that I can smell the lilies on the light breeze when I walk over to look at them.

 

The orange tiger lilies are still going strong.  Every day I expect to see nothing but empty stalks out there but so far there are still flowers.

 

Another Stella d'Oro opened up a flower today on a different plant.  I wish that each of the eleven plants would have flowers on it so I could take a picture of the whole row of them blooming at once but that is not to be.

 

In the lawn this morning I noticed a little lavender flower.  When I went out to look at it I think it's a chickory flower.  I have a wide variety of weeds in the lawn and some are determined to flower even though I keep mowing them down.  I don't want to spray herbicide on the lawn because there are so many weeds that there'd be bare patches all over so I just tolerate the weeds and mow them.  Hey, at least they're green.

 

A pair of Goldfinches landed on the feeder this morning and one skedaddled before I got the camera up but this one stayed so that I could capture it.

 

This Mourning Dove likes to sit on top of the platform feeder.  It's heavy enough that it makes the feeder hang low but then it somehow manages to get onto the base of the feeder so that it can eat some of the seeds.  How it gets its big self turned around, I don't know, but it does and spends time in there pecking away and ignoring the other birds that try to join it.

 

This raggedy looking Downy Woodpecker visited the suet pellets today.  It sat there staring around and was finally chased away by a Sparrow that landed on the feeder.

 

Today's toss was a box of blank notecards with skulls on the front.  Not sure why I bought them in the first place.  Must have been at Goodwill, now they're going back.

The prompt today said that you have been given magical powers.  What spells would you cast?  Well, I'd remove all calories from ice cream forever so that I can eat as much as I'd like.  I'd teleport myself to Lexington, KY to visit DD and her family because it's just too far for me to drive all by myself and I'm reluctant to stay in motels on the road.  I'd goose the FDA into approving the vaccine for younger children so that my little grandkids could get vaccinated and be safer.  Stuff like that.

Today, being the first Monday of August (already!), I went to lunch with a half-dozen of the people I graduated eighth grade with.  The funny thing was that there was another grade school lunch group there but they were at least ten years older than us.  They had more gray hair than we do and had canes and walkers.  Definitely older.  I had my usual splurge of cheeseburger and sweet potato fries.

--Barbara