The LBirds and Bees and Some Butterflies, Too

With schools across the country opening their doors, it feels like the summer is coming to an end. In fact, here it seems like it is just heating up for the temps have been in the high 90s, typical for August in Northern Colorado. I've spent a good share of the summer on the patio watching Nature from the comfort of my patio chairs. 

Humming birds have been the main attraction that have inspired quite a collection of photos. Using my Nikon with a 75-300mm telephoto lens set on the preset athletic mode, I've been able to photograph them in action. Gradually they have become accustomed to me sitting at the patio table only a few feet away from their hanging feeders.

I make a recipe of sugar water with a ratio of 1/4 cup of refined sugar to a cup of water. I make four cups at a time, keeping in the refrigerator. 

The first one showed up mid July, a black throated male.  He is a handsome one with a distinct black head and dark throat, but when the sun hits his throat, it is not black, but purple. When I researched this fellow, he really isn't supposed to be in Colorado. He first appeared last year. 

I researched the humming bird migration to Colorado where this fellow is listed as one the earliest to arrive and the last to leave late July-August Humming birds will fly 1200 miles from Mexico to reach their destination here and others will migrate over 3,000 miles to Canada.   

The males arrive first, staking out their territory to attract a female. They don't made for life, but they seem to raise their two chicks together. 

The Rufus is another common Colorado hummer, but we've never seen one here, so imagine our surprise when this one showed up. I knew this female was different by the rust colored underbelly with the white tail feathers. Soon the male appeared.

When the sunlight hit him just right, his brilliant red throat sparkled in the sunlight. So now we had two pairs: the Black Throated, with his drop gray female and the Rufus, with his rusty lady.

She lacks the ruby throat, so she is easy to identify.

This male appears to be a mature male, but we do have a young one that's not fully developed his color that regularly visits the feeders.

Like this young fellow.

This photo really shows the male red plumage.

Along with these four adults, later in the summer we had two young ones zoom through the patio, chasing each other through the trees and branches, sparring at the feeders. At first I thought we had two more competing males; instead, once they stopped they zooming to eat, we were able to identify them as young fledglings from their drab gray feathering. Like most growing kids, they had healthy appetites and did a lot foolish flying. We decided that they were probably Black Chinned, but now I have what seem to be a second Rufus male coming to the feeder. He doesn't like me sitting there, so is he new to the Garden Spot? 

Nonetheless the humming birds have been so much fun to watch and photograph. 

 Bees

Where would we be without the bees? The bumble bees it seems arrived early this season, too, and they were huge. They worked over the cone flowers pretty aggressively. 

The honey bees, wasps, and hornets like the waterlilies and have been beeszy with them all summer. There are plenty of blooms to choose from. I especially like to capture these tiny clumsy fliers in flight, which the telephoto allows along with the athletic setting that is a continuous shutter release so that I can get really good action shots then select the best ones out of the series.

Butterflies

The tiger swallowtails are the main butterfly attraction here at the Garden Spot. They dance through the yard on a mission to find food shortly after they have metamorphosed. Sometimes they flit around in pairs, cavorting mid air. They are plentiful here because they will lay their eggs on the leaves of the ash trees, of which we have several. I would guess that we have at least 3 cycles. They don't migrate as the monarchs do, and we expect to see one or two monarchs feed on the butterfly bushes soon. 

It's hard to grasp that something so delicate survives in this harsh world, just one of God's miracles of life.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. 

If you like to visit Ann's Dollhouse Dreams, pop to the latest completed house. 

Cheers, Ann

Thanks to Carol

The Prologue:I had a nice chat with my cousin yesterday. We don't talk often and haven't seen each other in years. She lives in Las Vegas and I'm in Northern Colorado, and neither of us seem to be too excited to travel much out of our comfort zone. Of course our friendship began long ago as children. In those early years, the family gathered for the holidays and trips to the grandparents' cabin; then her family moved to California. Still we  nurtured our friendship by writing letters back and forth, spending some summer vacations together, and sharing our love and passion for horses. On our paternal side there were only 8 cousins, six natural ones, and our aunt's two adopted sons who were good as gold. Carol lost her brother Rick several years ago, leaving our two sisters and my brother and the two boys. Ours is the best kind friendship-- a kinship that morphed from family to best friends. 

While our conversations are few and far between, they are l-o-n-g as we catch up on our daughters, she has one,  I have two. We reminisce about our childhood, remembering the best of those years. This time Carol shared with me about her writing, confessing that as an avid quilter and seamstress, she now writes more than she sews and writes daily. She asked about my blog to which I confessed that I had abandoned it, and she encouraged me to start again. As I look back over the years since I began the blog in 2009 shortly after we moved to the Garden Spot, I amazed myself to see how much of the family history I have recorded, so this post for is for you Carol. Thank you for encouraging me to return to writing to tell stories--as you refer to your own writings. 

A Sign of the Times: While the weather prognosticators have not declared that Colorado is in a drought, it certainly seems so. We finally had rain Friday, a nice substantial rain the perked up the lawn and made the vegetable garden look worth saving. There is another sort of drought not nature made and that is the availability of domestic or treated water. Here in Northern Colorado cities are charging exorbitant amounts for city water. Many lawns in town have turned to weeds because it is so expensive to water them. For us, in addition to our city water, we also have access to agricultural well water that we use to water the lawn and the pastures. The flower beds and vegetable garden are on city water with timers to avoid over watering

But that's not all, along with the hefty water fee, electric power is even higher. Each month our power company sends us a statement of how much power we've used compared to our neighbors who live on city lots with small lawns. Our water used compared to our subdivision neighbors looks shameful; however, it takes power to run the pump to irrigate our 2 acre hay field and the acre+ grazing pasture, an lawn--not to mention the pump that filters our lily pond, so, yes, we use a lot of power to run the pump that drives the sprinkler system. While the desired plants falter with the lack of rain that provides natural nutrients, the weed population thrives, getting more voracious every year. 

Still joy can be found in the garden, so let's visit the time capsule and venture through the summer. 

Ponding update: The last post detailed the removing the giant clump of water lily in center of pond. I repotted smaller pieces in Walmart storage baskets. The Head Gardener ordered canvas fiber-like baskets that I used to repot 10 lilies.  The pond is probably 80% covered now with lily pads.

One of these three seems to be permanently rooted in the bottom of the pond. Part of the original, it seems to be staying put.

These storage baskets worked well for larger hunks of the fibrous lily tubers.

The fish are happy. I have one Koi, a shy fella who appears only to eat. Too bad because he is pretty.

All of the repotted plants have bloomed,  all white, all the same--but wait! is that a pink one I see? I think she was too crowded and lost in the mucky mass of the white lily and became dormant. Alone and separated out now, she thrives. 

The water lily transplant was a success. I nearly cried when, as shown in the last post, the lily was literally ripped into pieces, but each transplanted piece has successfully bloomed.

To the Garden: Check out the May post to see how the Head Gardener and Heather. With the beds complete, it was time to start filling them.

We purchased a dozen ever-bearing strawberry plants, which didn't quite fill the bed. There's room now for them send out their runners and fill in the gaps. I look forward to bowls full of sweet, home grown strawberries.

 

Zinnias are one of favorite cutting flowers, so I planted up all the left over packets that I have collected over the years and my special ones from a wonderful gardener--expensive ones. You can read more about Floret  at this link. I found Erin's garden first on Magnolia network and fell in love with her gardening passion and her story about how she and her husband started their flower  business. She won me over and I purchased two packs of her zinnias. I'll have more to write later about my success with her seeds.

It took a week before they began to sprout. The first to bloom were my lime green zinnias--a bit disappointing because the green is not as rich as the seed packet shows.

The peppers and weeds are thriving.

Mid summer: The strawberries keep growing.

The white trash bags hold the Canadian thistles that I finally pulled. Such ugly plants that we can't seem to get control of.

One strawberry plant has started to produce. Can't wait to see what next year brings.

Z for Zinnia: The long wait for blooms is over, but disappointing. In the past, the plants have grown waist high and were prolific bloomers. With the sturdy weed crop, we weeded the zinnia rows and I gave them a timed release fertilizer that I probably should had put down earlier. Given the extreme hot, dry days and lack of rain, the zinnias have struggled.

Individually they photograph nicely.

She looks more lime green in the photograph.

I picked a bouquet of the wild sunflowers and asparagus that has gone to seed.

These two are Floret and not as gorgeous as the web site shows. I hoping that as the plants mature, so will the blooms. We've upped the water and hopefully will have more rain next week, which will help. Still they really are lovely flowers and last long in the vase.

My second bouquet is a bundle of pretty flowers. I love the little mounded ones--can't tell you what they are, but they are sweet.

To achieve this effect, I use my iPhone camera set on Portrait with stage light, giving the black ground. Experiment to see what cool results you might achieve. 

And so the sun sets on another Garden Spot post, though I have to confess that this photo was taken several day ago when the sun set was filtered through a cloudy haze created from two wild fires in the foothills west of us, one on the way to Estes Park and the west above Longmont. The fires are now out, but sadly attributed to man-made.

Thanks so much for stopping by. It's been my pleasure.

Ann