Zooming – October 2019

October was a great month for getting out and about. The weather cooperated. There were birds and butterflies and colorful leaves…some flowers and frogs…even a sunrise. I had a lot of pictures to choose from for this zooming post! I use the feature on my camera for most of my pictures…to get the image framed the way I want…avoiding the need to crop.  Enjoy the October slide show!

And Happy Halloween! A restaurant we went to recently had a clever Halloween decoration in one of their small bushes! I didn’t have to zoom for this picture…just stood on the sidewalk and took the picture with my cell phone!

Brookside Gardens Outdoors – October 2019

There is plenty to see outdoors at Brookside Gardens during October. I started out looking for fall foliage. This had not been a good color fall here in Maryland overall because of the drought. I started seeing colors right away at Brookside; a little watering means a lot.

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I found butterflies in one of the garden ‘rooms’ near the conservatory. Monarchs (Danaus plexippus) – probably migrating toward Mexico – were enjoying the nectar plants: asters and late season cone flowers.

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A painted lady (Vanessa cardui) was also enjoying the asters.

A tiny skipper was there too.

It took several tries for me to get a reasonable photo of a Clouded Sulphur (Colias philodice). The butterfly seemed to be in motion almost constantly.

After photographing the butterflies, I continued my walk around the gardens…looking for and finding colorful foliage – oaks and maples and dogwoods. Sometimes there seemed to be a spotlight of sun on just what I wanted to photograph!