Zooming – July 2017

I limited myself to 10 zoomed images this month – and it was quite a challenge to choose the 10! Now that I am looking at them, I realize they reflect the places and sites I’ve enjoyed the most this July. 4 of the 10 are butterflies from Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy exhibit. I have enjoyed photographing them (when I am not on Flight Attendant duty) and appreciate the increased optical zoom of the camera I have now.

There are also some plants from the boardwalk between the Brookside Conservatories and the Nature Center: a horse nettle flower and a fiddlehead fern. Zooming allows me to stand on the boardwalk rather than contorting myself into a lower position and leaning off the boardwalk to get close to the plant.

I enjoyed another walk around Kenilworth Gardens this July. Somehow dragonflies and water lilies always draw my attention.

Finally – a walk in my neighborhood had its own photography opportunities. There was a leaf that fell on the sidewalk…tilted a little to show its changing color. And in a tree near the pond, there was a spider wrapping up a large catch in its web.

Tiger Swallowtail on Pickerel Weed

The Tiger Swallowtail is one of the most common butterflies we see in Maryland; we have a lot of tulip poplar trees which are food plants for its caterpillar. I enjoy photographing Tiger Swallowtails and indulged when a male Tiger Swallowtail was fluttering about a stand of Pickerel Weed at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens last week. It seemed to start out at the bottom of the flower stalks and work upward in a spiral around the stalk. It never methodically sampled every flower…but tended to move on to another stalk when it got to the top of one. The whole sequence of 41 images below happening in about 3 minutes! It was a busy butterfly. I liked getting the different angles of the butterfly feeding…the varying levels of zoom. There was a bee that stole the show in one (#7 in the slide show).

Lotus Curves

Kenilworth Gardens is full of blooming lotus ponds in July. We enjoyed our second trip of the year to the place last week. I realized that the curves of the flowers…the leaves…the flower parts (everything about the plant seems to be graceful curves) are what makes them so attractive and maybe why they became ‘sacred.’  There is something calming about curves. As I was taking pictures for the slideshow below I realized that the insects act as a punctuation for the curves because they interrupt the flow. I think my favorite images are of petals freshly fallen into the bowls of the very green leaves. There is something very appealing about the creamy white – often with a hint of pink – on the green background veined from the center of the bowl. Enjoy the slide show!

Ten Little Celebrations – June 2017

As I look back over the month, I realize that there was a lot to celebrate.

Home. At the beginning of the month I had just returned home from helping my daughter move from Arizona to Pennsylvania. As usual – returning home was celebrated. I like to travel but coming home again always feels wonderful.

3 box turtles. I didn’t do a lot of hiking in June but was thrilled that it seemed like there were a lot of box turtles around…and I celebrated seeing so many. There were two along the path between Mt. Pleasant and the Patapsco River and the third was in the cemetery at Belmont.

Receiving the Carol Filipczak Award from Howard County Conservancy. Celebrating recognition for volunteering that is love.

Daughter on the east coast. Having my daughter living in the same time zone (rather than in Arizona) is something I am celebrating this month.

Kenilworth Gardens. Lotus, waterlilies, dragonflies, turtles, birds, magnolias…so much to celebrate.

Milkweed flowers. I had so many milkweeds come up in my front flowerbed that I had to cut some of them down….but I cut the globes of flowers first and enjoyed them in a stir fry (after boiling them twice to remove the toxins). Celebrating the taste of wild food!

Peach preserves. Not sure why – but I couldn’t resist it in the grocery store and I am celebrating the decision. I’ve spread it on toast and whisked it into a homemade salad dressing. Yum!

Volunteering at Wings of Fancy. Having butterflies flying around while I’m volunteering at Brookside Gardens…a constant celebration. So beautiful.

CSA. I’m celebrating the fresh veggies from the Gorman Farm Community Supported Agriculture. It’s easy to eat enough veggies when they taste so good!

Photography with summer campers. I am already celebrating the photography with summer campers that I’m doing for the 3^rd time this summer. I’m in the prep stages but am anticipating the flurry of having 15 or so campers (at one time…a total of 5 groups eventually) all enthusiastic about photographing the natural world around them is going to be one of the highlights of the summer.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in June 2017 – Magnolias

My last blog post about our visit to Kenilworth Gardens last week is about magnolia flowers – specifically flowers from the Southern Magnolia growing near the path back to the parking lot from the demonstration gardens. I enjoy photographing this tree because it has so many flowers that are easily viewed from ground level. I like to photograph flowers in various stages of development.

Sometimes even when the flower is brown – the curves are dramatic. This one is almost symmetrical and is probably my favorite of this grouping.

 Sometimes the center is just peeking through the white petals. Sometimes the spent parts of the flower accumulate in the curved petals. It’s surprising how read the base of ovary looks in the flowers.

The seed pod that is forming can do the same thing although the petals are mostly gone (the hood is a petal) and the leaves are the veil for the pod.

Previous posts about this visit: insects, water lilies, birds, lotus and turtles.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in June 2017 – Turtles

We saw two turtles on our visit to Kenilworth Gardens last week. They were sunning themselves on the same log sticking up from the muck of one of the water lily ponds. At first, I thought they were the same kind of turtle.

But then I took a closer look by increasing the zoom of my camera. The markings on their heads were not the same.

The larger one had a lot of red along the side but the shell was covered with gunk from the water. It probably was a Northern Red-bellied cooter.

The smaller turtle had a dark shell – even on the sides. There was a little red on the neck. Not sure what kind of turtle it was....maybe a juvenile so didn't have all the adult markings yet.

They both seemed to be enjoying the sunshine and I was far enough away to not startle them…no plops back into the water while we photographed them.

Previous posts about this visit: insects, water lilies, birds, lotus.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in June 2017 – Lotus

Our visit to Kenilworth Gardens last week was a little early for lotus flowers – which are the big summer show at Kenilworth. There were lots of big leaves and buds…a few more weeks and the flowers will be numerous.

I was surprised that there were quite a few seed ponds from last season visible in the ponds.

I took a series of bud pictures – surprised that none of the dragonflies were using them as perches as we’ve observed in previous visits (usually in July).

The leaves unfurl like a scroll rather than from the center like some water lily pads. They stand well above the water level as well.

Behind the visitor center and plant houses there was a demonstration pond that was full of blooms. Maybe they were started inside or the demonstration pond is somehow different than the main ponds. Enjoy the slide show from that small pond that is a few weeks ahead of the main ponds.

Previous posts about this visit: insects, water lilies, birds.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in June 2017 – Birds

The dominate bird sighting on our visit to Kenilworth Gardens last week were Canadian geese. They were hard to ignore because of their size and the aggressiveness of the adults in protecting their goslings. They hiss if you are too close – and attack if you continue closer….so we gave them wide birth. We re-routed to other paths through the gardens several times!

When I saw a group on one of the ponds I thought I could get closer and they would just mill around in the water…but then I noticed that another pair with goslings were nearby. I used the zoom on my camera again.

I was disappointed that we didn’t see any herons on this visit. Previously I had photographed both Green and Great Blue Herons in the gardens. I did see a red wings black bird. It was so far away that I only was able to identify it via the zoom on my camera.

And there were cardinals that flitted about in the trees along the boardwalk toward the Anacostia River.

Previous posts about this visit: insects, water lilies.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in June 2017 – Water Lilies

The waterlilies at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens were the best I’ve ever seen them when we visited the gardens last week. Usually we go for the lotus flowers; the water lilies are already declining their peak blooming by that time. I didn’t take any landscape shots (I realized when I reviewed my ‘take’ when I got home)…focusing instead on the veins in lily pads and the flowers.

The lily pads have a lot of red in them on the underside as they are unfurling. The jumble of plants in the pond often lifts them out of the water at least temporarily. The pads are rarely pristine. I’m not sure what nibbles on them but it is obvious that they are food plants for some (insects, turtles, geese?).

The flowers are always spectacular. I took several images zoomed past the optical range (i.e. into the realm of digital zoom) and that makes them look painterly.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in June 2017 – Insects

We made our first visit of the year to Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens yesterday. There are so many things I noticed in the gardens that I am doing multiple posts: insects, birds, waterlilies, magnolias, lotus, and turtles. There are three types of insects I’ll highlight: bees, butterflies, and dragonflies. The bumblebee I photographed was on a buttonbush. Most of the plants are not in bloom yet so the few lowers were very popular. I noticed that there was only one bee per flower! The pickerel weeds were in full bloom and they were attracting bees as well.

I photographed a tiger swallowtail on the pickerel weed. There were not very many butterflies around the garden yet. Perhaps there will be more as the summer progresses.

The main insect my husband and it try to photograph at the gardens is dragonflies. They seemed to be a lot of them flying around but not as many were sitting long enough to photography. I managed to get at 6 different kinds: greenish area around wing attachment with brownish ‘dash’ near tip of otherwise clear wings,

Could be a different perspective on the same kind…or not (the wing attachment area does not look green and the clear part of the wings has an amber tinge),

Brownish red coloring and smaller than the previous dragonflies,

Fuzzy at wing attachment and black markings across the wings (clear tips of wing) – maybe Common Whitetail male,

Brown body and black markings across the wings (dark tips of wings) – maybe a Common Whitetail female, and

Clear wings outlined in black around the tip.

I’m sure we’ll go to the gardens again this summer. I wonder if I’ll see the same or different dragonflies.