In which a Skipper, Tailed Blue and an Unkown have lunch together

At the Black-Eyed-Susan Cafe.   ; )

It just cracks me up every time I see a skipper with its wings spread open (Hence the blurriness of the above picture, too much wiggling) , they look like an airplane about to take off or something!  =D

First sighting of a Tailed Blue this summer!

This looks like a whole different creature doesn't it? It's only a tailed blue from the back side but it looks like an ailen butterfly!

I don't know what species of butterfly this is yet, but for now it will be the "Chocolate Silk" butterfly.

A bit of green

While the grass is mostly a lovely shade of golden brown, some things are still green.

What dead grass is good for . . ;)

Taking pictures of!
Especially in the warm, evening light that makes everything glow and saturates the colors.
Don't let first appearances fool you, from a humans point of veiw it might look like this:

But from a Grasshopper's point of veiw (Or one of those crazy photographers who lay on their stomaches and squint in the sunlight) . . .

It's suprisingly beautiful! 

So the morale of this blogpost is: When life gives you dead grass, take pictures of it.  =D

Just normal common bugs . . .

 A skipper on a Black Eyed Susan flower in the glowing morning light.

 This guy made me laugh, stickin' his face into that flower up to his eyeballs!  =D

 This dragonfly I just saw this week, looked it up and found out it is a Common Whitetail. =)

This is a dragonfly from last year that puzzled me, I came upon it around 7 -ish one morning, and snuck up on it, gradually getting closer, and closer until I put the camera right next to it. When it didn't fly away at that I cautiously poked it and found that it was not going to move. So I hypothesized that it was cold and warming up, (after all, how many dragonflies die hanging on to a flower?) and left it at that. Latert hat morning it was gone, soI suppose either it warmed up or a bird ate it? Nothing I've read gave me any clues so its still a mystery. o.0

Riverbirch leaves Pt 2 Orange

Green is my favorite color. Period.
However . . . there are a couple honorable mentions too, and orange is one of them. It's the color of  butterfly wings, cosmos, maple leaves, sunsets and rises, and, of course, oranges!
. . . and riverbirch leaves . . . =)
Before we get to that though, we'll take a look at the trunks, which are pretty colorful themselves.

I love this view up the trunk, I tried several time to get this picture with my old camera, but it just couldn't focus. But my new camera is splendid.  =)

 



This one is just down right awesome!

 

I love the bright, punchy colors in this one; green, blue, brown and a bit of orange.



This is the trunk of a much smaller tree that we planted a year and a half ago, so the bark is quite different.

 



Normally theses leaves are a dull orange/tan, but when the sun shines through at a low angle . . .

Riverbirch leaves Pt 1 Green

This is a collection of my favorite pictures of the Riverbirch trees in our yard.
Most of them were taken in spring, being the time when the leaves are new, a light green and haven't fallen off from heat stress yet.
They start out all lush and green.....

And then by July or August start dropping leaves. Which really isn't that bad for the photographer because with all the leaves there you can't really see the trunks, but when some drop off, voila, new photo opps!

 In the spring....

 In July.....

Now back to the spring....

In these couple pictures, I liked the contrast between the green leaves and the dark brown, almost black, slender branches.






My Sister took this one.  =)



Now I'm going to sneak in some pictures that aren't riverbirches.....  ;)

 This is what skippers look like with their wings open; bottom wings horizontal, top wings vertical.

 Some Black-Eyed-Susans beginning to flower.

 Autumn Clematis climbing on the trellis



Honey locust tree with bean pods