No Title for Today...............

The black swallowtail returned yesterday and I was able to get two good shots of it before it fluttered on down the street. You can see anther photo of it on my Larry's Photo a Day. For some reasons only known to butterflies they seem to be all out there getting their evening feeding.  I went out just to see if the morning glory had put out a flower of a different color.  It had not.

I found while out there that the swallowtails have discovered the zinnias.  I was hoping they would and since the zinnias are just starting to open maybe the butterflies will hang around longer in through fall.


This is one of the two female swallowtails that were feeding.  You can see the blue band on the back of the outside wings.  I think the blue is on the inside too but I didn't get to capture any of them with wings wide open.

I don't need to be a scholar on these butterflies but I am curious why they are different sizes. This is a smaller female that was feeding at the same time as the larger one pictured above.  Both of them stayed very friendly and I had to just stop taking photos after a while.  I wouldn't think they would grow in size as they get to be older.

I claimed yesterday that I didn't have any red zinnias but this magenta one is closer to red than all the others out there.  We had a good rain again this morning that is now over for the day.  It wasn't a large amount of water but it was a good dose of water to help things to keep growing.  I had started watering things but the two rains helped me to not have to do it with buckets. 

This is another zoom shot that I took a couple of days ago is this nice red truck parked next to the neighbor who owns the camper.  The trucker guy, young,  was out cleaning and waxing and it was looking really sharp.  He and his wife were living in New Zealand but  are now living with our neighbor, mother of the wife, and they have a couple of kids.  It is nice to have kids in the neighborhood on that side of the street.  We have three others in our backyard view all the time too.

Speaking of streets, here is the view that I see when I look down the street south.  It is actually going down hill and at the end of the street is a pasture with cows.  Not too many anymore as they have thinned out their herd.  That is another story but we see less cows around town anymore.

Looking west from the same location in which I took the above photo you can see the location of our house.  Yes you can barely see the house.

The large silver maple hangs over our house and is the tallest and oldest.  The birch tree is hidden at this angel behind the red maple in front.  The pin oak seems to be pretty small but will someday be the main tree in front when the silver maple is removed.  The round shrub in front is the redtwig dogwood.  As you can see we are very green this summer which is a good thing.

The last photo is the left side area next to the blue gate. I put a post in to help brace the bluegate so I bought a round finial to top the post.  I plan to move the lilies that you see the stems of in the back.  They just don't grow well there.

No big jobs planned for today.  It is drying up a little from this morning's rain and the afternoon is suppose to be very hot.  I trust all is well with all of you in blog land.  Thanks for checking in today.



I looked it up and I found the correct spelling for finial. I probably have misspelled it in the past but I will work on getting it right from now on.