Our crape myrtles begin blooming during summer an continue to do so through the fall. I photographed a few of their very first blossoms a couple of days ago. The flowers are gorgeous.
Plants
The sunflowers planted in our garden are doing well. None of them have opened yet, but they will do so soon. Although the colorful red sunflower in this photo still immature, it is already beautiful.
The sun was just beginning to set when I photographed this granddaddy longlegs spider sitting in our apple tree. It made him look so colorful and brilliant. He was hard to see because he blended in so well with the leaves and bark of the tree.
These big, shiny droplets of dew made the blades of grass in this photo looked beautiful. Since we have our garden planted in wooden raised beds, grass is continually growing up the sides trying to get to the soft dirt inside. That’s what these intruders where doing when I photographed them.
I found this beetle exploring a blackberry flower when I was out taking photos. From this angle it looks like he’s smelling the blossom.
We a rain shower this early this morning. It freshened everything up for the rest of the day. When I went outside rain droplets were still hanging from many tree leaves and some fruit. I thought the droplets made this fig look so fresh.
I found this tree fungus growing on one of our dog wood trees. It blended in with the bark well, considering how much this type of fungus stands out on other varieties of trees.
The sun was shining on the bark of this cherry tree when I photographed it yesterday morning. The light coming in created a cool effect. It almost looks like a rainforest!
This tiny apple is just beginning to ripen. You can see a little touch of red on the top. I photographed this one on one of our smaller apple trees we planted a couple of years back. It takes new trees a while to start producing. Hopefully we’ll have a crop this year.
Yesterday afternoon I captured one of my best clover shots ever. Half of its pedals were dead, but the other half were still standing strong. Clovers are beautiful flowers, but you can’t really see their beauty until you look at them up close.
I captured this dandelion growing in the shade of our backyard hedge. It looks so bright and radiant with that beautiful yellow in contrast with the dark shade of the hedge. That blurred yellow spot in the background is a second dandelion.
As I was walking around the lawn yesterday, I discovered this beautiful wildflower growing near our pine trees. I’ve never seen a flower like this before. Its shape closely resembles a star!
Our honey suckle vine is now producing brilliant red flowers. The ruby throat humming birds and the bees love them. The bunch in the photo above will open soon.
Last year, we planted several vines of morning glories. We noticed a small morning glory vine creeping up our chain link fence a little while back, but only this morning did we notice this magnificent purple morning glory in its splendor. I’m hoping the vine will continue to produce flowers.
I think we’ve finally got our garden up and going. This year, we plan to plant lots of flowers. They are so beautiful and take less work than vegetables. The marigolds in the photo above aren’t very big yet, but there’re already gorgeous. I photographed them at several different angles, but I thought this ground level shot looked best.
