Up Close in the Veg Garden

After spending some time in the flower garden [yesterday's pics], K2 hopped over to the veg garden to get up close there.  I think these are even better.   I love the colors and textures of the veg garden.

Arugula flowers. 

Cilantro flower with visitor.

Chamomile.

Horseradish flower.

Horseradish leaves.

Lettuce leaves..

Up Close and Personal

Once in a while, K2 takes the camera into the garden and gets up close and personal with everything growing there.  I don't always discover this until I'm downloading, but her style is distinctive and the perspective is all her own.  This is what she found in the flower garden.

Open wide and say, 'Ahh...' 

This is the throat of an iris.

Clematis 'Niobe' just opening.

Its neighbor, open.

The heart of one of the very old peonies that came with the house.    

Veronica 'Crater Lake Blue'.

Early Fall Color

The kids love this time of year.  [We all do.]  They grab the camera and take off to their hidden places outside and come back later with glorious pics like these.

K1 caught some great pics of early fall color [including the one above] on a beautiful foggy morning.

K2 likes the macro shots, like this one of Bushy Aster, a fall blooming plant with tiny pink and white flowers.

It looks like the autumn color is coming on fast this year.  The wet, cool weather has super charged the color in the landscape.    I reminded the girls yesterday that it wasn't so very long ago that they were wondering if it would ever rain again, or if the temps would ever dip below 90.    And now it has rained and it is cool.

And we smile and dream of warm kitchens and soup dinners and cups of hot chocolate around fires in the firepit.    Bring on the Fall. 

Winter Geese

Every morning we hear a pair of geese go over.   We're starting to hear flocks of sandhills moving north.

Spring must be coming.

Raindrop

photo:  Lily Jenness

Spiderweb

photo:  Lily Jenness

Fog, Woods, Sun

photo:  Lily Jenness

One of those spectacularly foggy days earlier this week.   Lily spent an hour outside before breakfast trying to capture the mood.   This is one of my favorites.

More Gratuitous Frost Pics

We've had a very damp winter.   The higher the humidity, the more spectacular the frost.   Here are more of Lily's frost pics, my edits.

Nice Textures

Sycamores - the ghostly trees

I grew up in northern Indiana, where the winter woods are dark - full of oaks and maples and locusts.  Down here in southern Indiana, our winter woods are haunted by the ghostly forms of sycamores, whose white trunks show up through the darker trees.   It's surprising how they change the character of the woods from a distance.

Sycamores are big trees.   Big, brittle trees.   Don't put one near a structure.  

They have long elegant branches, beautiful huge leaves that look a lot like a maple leaf on steroids, and really interesting, round seed heads.

They love creeks and damp meadows and since this area is full of creeks and damp meadows, we have a lot of them.

The soil is exactly right for cultivating them, so they often grow in small clusters, where the seeds from another one have dropped.

I love sycamore bark.   It's mottled in shades of white and grey and is unmistakable when you meet it.    Click on the pic, left, to get a closer look at this beautiful bark.

This time of year, the seed balls hang like ornaments from the tops of mature trees.  

Can you pick out the white sycamores in this pic of the woods?

Winter Moon

Hoar Frost

Wiki has some interesting information about hoar frost, but I like it because it's pretty.  K1 caught some of the beauty on film last week.  

On daylily leaves.

 On a garden sculpture.

On an echinacea seed head.

On the bird feeder.

On foxtail grass.

On a geode.

On sage.

Snow Gone

Sunflowers

We have a ginormous sunflower that volunteered in our melon bed.    It keeps watch over the melons and is better looking than a scarecrow. 

Pretty, huh!

Photos:  K2

Summer

A few of K2s photos from last week.   She loves getting up close and personal.

After the storms

Red at night, sailors' delight. 

K2 took these pics after one of those bad storms we had a couple of days ago.   Even though they're a little blurry in places, the colors are fabulous!