Cleome

An old favorite Cleome.

One of my all time favorites is Cleome. I like the way it looks and I like the way it smells but it is also sticky like tobacco is when tobacco is being cut in the field; and I don't like that very much. It is also a prolific seeder and each stem produces hundreds of flowers and pea-pod-like pods filled with seeds. If you allow the pod to fill and grow old it will split open and drop the contents on the ground. Most of the seed will not survive birds and insects but they are tiny and fall into cracks and some will sprout the following year. 

Purple Cone Flowers

Purple Cone Flowers seeds

Purple Cone Flower with Red Admiral Butterfly

The Red Admiral Butterfly is almost always around our house. Not so much this past summer as I am not able to get outside as much or as often as I used to. Still, this is a good picture of the Purple Cone Flower and it shows one of the insects that feed on the pollen and nectar. The gold finch love the seeds when the flowering season is finished. Sometimes there isn't anything left but the flower stock.

Hibiscus

Hibiscus

Hibiscus

A very attractive flower but grows here as an annual. It doesn't attract a lot of hungry feeders but it sure is beautiful in all its colors and shapes.

Buckeye Butterfly

We call this a "Buckeye Butterfly" because the round spots on the wings look a lot like the native Ohio plant that has beautiful seeds called: "Buckeyes"

Hobos

I subscribed to National Geographic Magazine for years and on the front cover of one issue was a story about a woman in Tennessee who carved characters out of wood that represented her kin and fellowman living in her area.

I was fascinated by the story and some of the pictures about the wood carver. I remember picking up a piece of wood and used it to carve one of the characters shown here. They are also painted using ink thinned with water.

I have had them setting around for many years and can still see them standing on a shelf in my closet here in my office.

I bought two new sets of wood carving tools and never really used them--I preferred a regular pocket knife to do the carvings with and I still carry that around with me in my pants pocket.

Zinnia

Zinnia came up this year from seed that sprouted in the area where old flowers from previous years had been planted.

I really wish I could get some of my old Cleome to come up and bloom so I could get some new seed.

The seeds I save are often forgotten about until a few years later and then I end up dumping all of them in the same general area.

Honeybees

We used to have thousands of honeybees around here but they seemed to vanish. This is one of them before they disappeared.

I didn't plant any new flowers this summer and wonder if I should have? I do have "Lavender" that all bees love and I did see lots of small, black, bumblebees on that this summer and yesterday I saw a honeybee on it, so the honeybees are still in the area and I am thankful for that.

There were two large hives of honeybees in the large maple tree behind out house and both hives left and landed on the spruce tree