Mostly sky

I've had quite a few subjects pop up these past couple days, so these don't really have a theme, but they are pretty interesting.


First, I saw this dragonfly, then looked up dragonflies on Wikipeadia and found out that it isn't a dragonfly at all! It is a "Common bluetail damselfly", and they eat mosquitoes, yay!

 

Same damselfly, different lighting, makes a big difference in color doesn't it?



I particularly like the sunbursts coming through the leaves in this one.



This guy requires a little more explanation. Walking through the parking lot of my church I noticed one of these on the ground and picked it up (by the leafy part) and much to my surprise it was a caterpillar! further to my surprise as soon as I saw what it was, he ducked back into his "house" as if he'd been suction cupped (I actually felt it) and then somehow closed the "doors" of his "house". This amused me very much so I decided to take a picture. I set him on a piece of wood and saw out of the corner of my eye another leafy lump on the ground, then another and another, about 10 or so of them, just inching their way across the parking lot, all taking their "houses" with them! It was too amusing to keep to myself.  =)



This is a pretty after-sunrise-cloud scape we had this morning.

 

Dragon . . . flies

I've discovered that skippers like the tiny, white bell-shaped blossoms of the Lemon balm bushes in our yard. Which is great because we have a lot of Lemon balm around so I can hopefully get some better pictures of of them, for instance, the last two days I've seen orange skippers, which I previously hadn't seen before. =D
Of course skippers aren't the only admirers of Lemon balm, bees are the most numerous and, from my observation, the "kings" of the "forest".  I've seen the biggest bees occasionally following (perhaps stalking might be a better term) smaller bees of their kind and chasing different bees and flying ants away.
They don't seem to mind the skippers, but I have noticed that if a bee flies too close to a skipper for comfort, the skippers, ahem, "skip" away.
I haven't noticed them chasing away dragonflies either.

 Lemon balm in spring (last spring to be specific) it gets much taller later, about 6 inches taller than the little bird bath there. And if you're 7 to 9 it's waist high and great for hide-and-go-seek. =)

 

 Close - up of the individual stems.

  An orange skipper!

One of the many bees apparently resting on a Lemon balm leaf.

 Lovely Dragonfly . . .

 These are a different kind of dragon fly, but I still think they're neat.

 This Dragonfly lived last  August, and was the first time I saw what a dragonfly actually looked like, rather than the imagined, highly stylized, body and wings.

Hope you learned something from this too!

Up the deck stairs . . . =D

Aren't you glad? You get to see up the deck stairs instead of down! Rather than descend to the grass, we get to ascend to the unknown whiteness....



Wouldn't this be a fun deck to have? I think so . . . do you?

 

As you might have guessed these are not on the stairs, a thunderstorm blew leaves all over the deck, I thought they might make good subjects.

 Yes, this one isn't looking up either. =)

I like white space, you can imagine anything you want in them, for instance, whats at the top of the stairs? 

A goofy beagle laying in the sun? Maybe a quaint little beach house . . . two comfy chairs and a sunrise? Perhaps its the back entrance to a castle! 

If you have any ideas feel free to leave them in the comments area, I'd love to see them.  =)