Pictures to Share

[chrysanthemum]

Every so often I take a picture that I’d like to share, but sometimes I just don’t know a good thread into which to put it.  I thought maybe I’d just make a new thread where we could just put pictures that we want others to enjoy but that don’t need a whole new thread created so to do.  This is a picture of a basket of produce I took to San Antonio yesterday to share with my daughter’s music teacher and a good friend of mine who is recovering from a bad fall she had the other day.



This is a picture of the music teacher’s new kitten.  He was quite adorable.  I’ve never seen such a squashed face on a cat before.  I think he’s a short-haired Persian cat.

[woodeye]

Beautiful on all counts. I'm sure you made the ladies' day with that basket of fresh produce. Pretty kitten...👍

[chrysanthemum]

Just yesterday I noticed that the passionflower vines I grow on an arched trellis on the north side of my house are beginning to bloom.  On the other side of the backyard fence [outside the backyard at the base of our driveway] my husband and I planted a pomegranate hedge back in 2019.  It has had a couple of hard winters so that the plants have had to regrow sometimes from the roots, but this some of the bushes are taller than I am, and one put on a couple of blooms earlier this spring.  I’m excited that they’re beginning to mature.

[hmoosek]

Those are beautiful!

[hedgeapple]

Year two and my echinacea is flowering. 😊

[chrysanthemum]

Beautiful, Hedgeapple.  Thanks for sharing.  I had to look up growing echinacea from seed as I had not realized that it can take up to three years for the plants to flower.  That’s good for me to know as I have some seed that I gathered from my neighbors’ garden last year, but I haven’t planted any yet.





Here’s my photo for the day: a volunteer pumpkin that delights my seven year old, a mature zucchini that I grew for seed, and some heart tomatoes that I’ve been eager to see blush.  The two on the left are Taiga, a variety that is green when ripe.  The one on the right is a Hungarian Heart which will probably redden up more.  The plants don’t seem to like our heat, though, as they have set very few fruit.  I plan to save seeds from both these varieties as well.

[heavyhitterokra]

Hedgeapple,

That was beautiful! When I was a kid growing up, there were fields of prairie hay that went on for miles. Wild echinacea was common in those fields, as well as many other wildflowers such as Marshmallow, Blazing Star, Hoary Vervain, Button asters, and many others I never knew the proper names of, but somehow, while the two Bushes were serving their terms as President, all of those acres upon acres of old, Federal, Corps of engineer's land fell into the hands of private developers who destroyed the old prairie hay by baling it for racehorses. God made prairie hay, man cannot replace it. Now sedge grass, red cedar, and persimmon sprouts grow rampant where once there was great beauty.

[rdback]

Was down in the garden the other day and saw this fella. He stayed on this flower for at least two hours. I think he took a nap!

Believe it or not, I've never grown a sunflower before. Don't know why exactly - just haven't. I didn't set out to grow this one either. I had some seed starting trays out on the porch, with a birdfeeder close by. This plant grew from birdseed deposited by hungry birds, lol. Funny, it doesn't look like it's going to produce any seeds. Hum. Kinda strange, lol.

[chrysanthemum]

That is a beautiful sunflower, rdback, and so amusing to me that the birds planted it for you. I don’t know what to say about whether it will be making seeds or not. I, too, have limited sunflower experience, though I’ve grown a few just for fun.

On our drive into town, there is a huge field of good-sized sunflowers growing off to the side of the road. I don’t know how big it is, but it stretches from near the road, down a hill and up the other side of the hill as far as the eye can see. I don’t know if the owners of the property cultivate it as a seed crop or just planted it as some sort of statement of solidarity with Ukraine or what. It’s a beautiful sight, though.

[chrysanthemum]

On the way home from church yesterday, I tried to get a picture of the field of sunflower I mentioned in my previous message.  I got a pictures of all sorts of greenery, but I’m afraid it really doesn’t show the sunflowers all that very much.  I’ll have to try again some time.

We had some rain in the afternoon and early evening, and the later evening was just beautiful.  After the evening church service, my oldest child asked if we could drive a bit of a long way home to enjoy the rain-washed colors and the fog.  We agreed, and we were treated to some pretty amazing views of the golden light of sunset, clouds on the mountains and hills, and even a rainbow where at times we could see the bow shape where both visible ends disappear below the horizon.  I tried for a few pictures of that as well, but of course I wasn’t carrying a high quality camera, and the pictures can’t compare to the reality.  I’ll include some of my attempts, though, because they at least give an idea.

[macmex]

That's beautiful! Thanks for sharing.
With the sunflowers it might take some maneuvering to get the right angle on them as well as just the right lighting.

[chrysanthemum]

Aug 7, 2023 7:20:39 GMT -6 macmex said:

That's beautiful! Thanks for sharing.
With the sunflowers it might take some maneuvering to get the right angle on them as well as just the right lighting.

Yes, I may not really be able to do better since they’re located on a busy road.  We pulled off to the beginning of the driveway, but it was clearly marked private, so we didn’t feel comfortable going anywhere but the immediate pull off from the road.  I’m not sure where my actual camera is located these days, so you guys may just have to trust me that there’s a beautiful field of sunflowers around here.

[chrysanthemum]

We have some neighbors who live up the hill from us who are very neighborly in the good old-fashioned sense.   They didn’t live here when I was growing up, but my mother has known them for nearly a decade now, and I’m just getting to know them.  Last night my mom showed our family where they have created a neighborhood walking/biking trail around their property.

The walk in the woods was lovely, but when we got to one point where we neared the main road again, I walked out of the trees to see what the view of the mountains was like.  [We don’t see mountains from our house because we live in a little ‘holler” or river valley, but there are mountains in the distance any time we drive anywhere.] The view was so stunning last night that my oldest daughter asked me to pull out my phone to take a picture.  The phone couldn’t really capture it, but it definitely gives an idea.

The second picture is a stump in the neighbors’ back yard.  It was apparently a majestic old oak tree that was struck by lightning a number of years ago and started rotting where the damage was, so they had to have it removed.  The neighbor told me that they were able to give the huge stump to a local woodworker who turns bowls.  I took a picture of the stump to share with woodeye .  The neighbor has a beautiful raised bed garden fenced against the deer but tried growing a cantaloupe outside the fence this summer inside the stump.  The deer enjoyed that effort.

[woodeye]

Very nice, chrysanthemum . Thank you for the pictures, love the view of the mountains. I imagined a stump of much lesser proportions, boy when you say stump you mean it. That tree may have been how the term "mighty oak" got started, it had to have been extremely mighty to leave a stump that size. Wow!

[chrysanthemum]

That may well be one of the biggest stumps I have ever seen. That’s why I had to take a picture.