Hummingbird Swarm.......

 

I was out sitting on the patio keeping the dogs company.  I looked up and I saw something above the house that looked like a swarm of insects.  They weren't thick in number and yet there was a dozen or so.  I first thought they were dragonflies.  Then one of them landed on the dead branch above my silver maple.  They were hummingbirds.  I have never seen them swarm like that before.  I have seen aggressive ones chase others off the territory of the bird feeder but this was different.  I am assuming they were getting ready to head south.  I really didn't know if they migrated in groups or not. I have not seen many hummingbirds this summer but others say they were around their feeder.  So I didn't get a single shot of one of them.  I do have this great cheap plastic feeder for you to see.

Most of the rose hips on this wild rose are dried up but here are a couple of them that survived. The rose bush itself dried up leaving only about ten percent of it still looking green.  I may make this the fall to trim the whole set of branches down to the ground. 

 

One more shot of the white hollyhock.  This was taken right before two bumblebees landed on it. It was a good day yesterday as my wife made pie from one of our batches of peaches.  It is so good. She makes such great pie.  We had frozen all of the batches a week ago so we could use them when we had more time.  There will be pie to eat today and maybe for a couple more times after that. I took a picture of the pie and will share on another day.

Thanks for stopping by today. 

Questions and No Answer......

I never know what I should do with setting the size of my photos.  I usually do the extra large setting and then I see that on this school's laptop that you can't always see the whole picture at once.  Then again on my screen at home, which is added to my old laptop with a broken screen, it is a large screen.  I can use the extra large size and it fits very nicely with a lot of room to spare.  I just don't know what each of you have for size of screen.

I do like using the largest size when I actually have a great photo.  When it is not so great, I shrink it down a little as that can help with blurry shots.  Shrinking can also make a bad composition look less bad also.  So as my decision goes, I guess I will start using just the large size setting.  I know if people really do want a better look they can click on it and it enlarges some. I think that when the extra large starts to bug me a little when I am looking at my own blog I should shrink them down a little.  I know this isn't as serious of situation as what is going on in the world but I do think I have myself figuring out the problem.

I whined continually about the large sedum that has fallen in the middle and spread out like a diced up onion ready for the fat fryer.  So now I have to backtrack.  This little sedum perked up after the rain and is seems to be doing well.  I had forgotten about having it as it is crowded from view by the phlox in my yard.  I so think I will dig the large flattened one and plant sedum all over the place. 

Did I tell you about the guy the lives over by the major highway near here?  He lives next to a very busy highway and he has a bridge right next to him.  He went out and planted sedum plants next to every post of the guard railing close to the bridge and also the stop signs and directional signs.  They are a couple of years old now and he has a little flower garden planted along traffic traveling at 65 miles an hour.  I am wondering if the Department of Transportation will notice and make any comment about it to him. The sedum grow in close to all the posts so the mowers will never hit them.

 I took a lot of shots of this renewed hollyhock.  It has been a few days and they all turned out to be good pictures.  I think I will just share one a day until they are all gone.  Some have the bumblebees showing in the shots and some do not.

Saturday school again for me today.  I wasn't called in to work only two days this past week so a day like this will help a little to increase the weeks salary.  I get a lot of blogging done on days like this with four hours of monitoring.

Friday.......

It has not turned to white yet.  The marigolds are suppose to be white so we will see the projects roll out into white petals eventually.

The one flower is the weed.  The vinca and hosta are in a battle for space.  I will probably have to clear mup the vinca so more growth will take place by the hosta.  I was expecting the hosta to be more agressive but I guess I was wrong.

A lot of rain, too late, came yesterday afternoon through the evening.  There are token bits of color coming through the last of the phlox. We didn't get bothered by the storm but a lot of cities did have troubles.  Building damage, tree damage and power lines were down in many areas near here.

Thanks for stopping by my post.

Warning! A Snake Photo.......

A month ago I received a letter from the energy company that I needed to remove my snakes from my basement stairwell.  The meter reader would not read it and just made an estimate that month.  Since then I have patched holes in  my concrete steps and any places along the old trim boards around the old entrance to the basement door.  The garter snakes liked that place as the concrete is always cool and damp and it is dark when the outside door is closed.

Before I repaired all the holes and cracks I would open the door and the snakes would crawl into the holes temporarily to hide until I was gone.  Now when I open the door they can't slither away and hide.  I can pick them up with the pooper scooper and put them in a tall wastebasket.  I then put them in the garbage bin to send them to the landfill.  Since I have fixed the cracks and holes I  have been able to capture five snakes.   The mother snake I had to catch twice as she figure out how to get out of my tall wastebasket.  All the small baby snakes I  have succeeded in only having to catch once.  When I dropped the little fellow above into the large town garbage bin I noticed the other one I had captured over the weekend was still alive and doing well.  They have each others' company now.  I will be curious to see if this one is the last one that I have finally caught them all.

In the middle of the summer I turned this rain barrel upside down and washed it out for the next rain.  Finally a month and a half later look what I have.  Usually an inch rain will fill this and we received less than a half an inch a couple of days ago.  I have clean clear rainwater again. The illusion doesn't really tell you that it is half full of water.

I was surprised to see this hollyhock looking so healthy out at the corner of my lot.  The redtwig dogwood covers the view of it unless I would drive by to see it.  I had to share the flower with two bumble bees who looked desperate for food.  The one you can see reaching way down into the flower for nectar.  Another bee was beneath a petal of the flower there to the right.  He had pushed the petal aside to get in towards the base of the flower. You can see the flower petal is shoved up and barely one black leg of the bee is showing in the picture.

I am making a list of things to do today as I ended up being unemployed today.  I was to be a one on one associate today with a student and as I arrived at school ready to go I was told his mother called in sick for the boy.  I have decided that I will get things done today that I have been putting off for some time.  I hope to have everything crossed off the list before our predicted thunder storms arrive.

I don't like severe storms but the rain will be so welcomed.  Middle Iowa seems to have been missing all the rains that the north and south part of the state  have been receiving.  Thanks for stopping by today. 

Wordless and Colorful...........

Have a good day.  Thanks

Tuesday and it has rained, sort of...........

The English ivy seems to be doing well.  It just doesn't choose to climb the trellis against the garden shed. I guess I need to tie some of its many vines on the base of it and see if it will try to climb.  I know it climbs as the original plant was on the side of a shed at my parents home as well as it was climbing a tree. I see that I have many apples in the tree that I need to pick.  I think if I can get a step ladder out under the tree I can save them from bruising when they fall to the ground.

 

I seem to be too lazy to look this wild flower up on the net but it has done well out in the orchard.  I only had to mow the orchard once this summer so the wildflower didn't get touched.  It actually grew up among some iris and I would have had to pull it if I was to want it to be gone.

The hostas have either withered up for the season or like this one hve regrouped and puts out new leaves.  The smaller ones just gave up the ghost but the larger ones in my garden must have retained their own moisture for a while that now with a small sprinkle come rushing back to life.

I will finish with a bright spot of a fading set of blooms on the hardy geranium.  They have liked the cooler temperatures but are like this set of flowers starting to close down for the season.  My potted plants have been good to me as the phlox and sedum seem to just be gone now. I have one small sedum plant that will still give color if it doesn't get too cold for it.

I am in the high school math room today as a substitute teacher.  They are having a workday to help them catch up on the assignments.  The teacher tries to keep up a fast pace to keep them on task and then gives them a day once in a while to go clean up the unfinished assignments.  

We had heavy rain on the roof this morning at 6:00 am.  It was such a great sound and it has been a long time.  It was just sprinkling by the time I was up so we didn't get much.  Every little bit will help.  It is too late for the corn but just maybe the soy beans in the fields will get a little boost.  It would be nice to see green grass again but this rain won't do that. 

Thanks for stopping by today and have a good day.

Monday........

I do run out of cleaver, creative titles after while so as you notice I still have a mind enough to know what day of the week it is.

Ruffle red petals on this violet are looking good.  I had to move them out of the sun the other day as the sun has shifted down and the sun comes straight into the window for a few days.  It changes so quickly that a week later I could move them back into the window.

The plain smooth edged red violet is doing very well.  It not only has a different shape than the ruffled one but the leaves seem to be different too.   I have a lot of these now as they successfully rooted from leaves for me.

No work today for me and I am having a hard time adjusting.  I know that I won't get work everyday but I don't always have plans set up when I am not called to work.  I tried to cut a frame for a job that is due to be done and I screwed it up for sure.  I have three pieces of frame cut for the job but the last piece was mitered on one end to the wrong angle. What was I thinking?  I don't have any more of that molding so I will need to buy more wood.  Usually I have a scrap laying around to make up for a mistake.  Not today of course.

My wife and I are going to accompany our neighbor lady to Walmart this afternoon. She doesn't like to shop alone and we don't mind to trail along today.  It is cold now and yet we are not getting rain.  South of us  they had great showers and people to the north of us had storms.  We are just gray and chilly with a wind.  I guess we will warm up in a couple of days but for now it looks like I might have to get the pilot light going for the furnace.

We have new pictures of our grandson so I suppose you might see some of them.  He is getting more handsome and smarter each day. Thank you for following me and stopping in today.  I hope your day is a great one.