Nature Notes: Pleasant days for walking

The big change at the moment is I've had some sunny days with cooler temperatures for walking.

Although most of the leaves are still green, more trees are starting to change their colors and a few are already dropping leaves.

I love the way I can walk any time in the day I choose without it being too cold or too hot. It helps motivate me to walk.

In the summer if I don't get up and out very early, I lose my window of time that is good for walking. In the winter it can be hard, some days, to get motivated and go outside when it very cold in the morning. But days like these, any time of the day is good for walking.

These shots are all from a walk I took on Monday at Shelley Lake which is at the end of the road my subdivision is in. I didn't walk all the way around the lake but instead took a side trail, after checking out the ducks.

It's nice to see how much water there is in the creek beds. I remember walks when they were practically dry. The shot below isn't very good but you can see the great blue heron in flight which I never seem to catch.

The shot below is another one which isn't that great but I'm including it because of how I caught the turtles sunning on the log. At first I thought they were just bumps on the log and then I realized what they were when I noticed some of their little heads stuck out.

I'm going to try to walk every day it's not raining. Since we have more rain in the forecast that won't mean I'm going on a walk every day but it will be more than I have been doing.

I guess I'll wrap up this meandering photo walk with a duck splash.

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Today's Flowers: Mums Hanging at the Supermarket

This time of year there are a ton of chrysanthemums on sale outside the supermarkets in my town.

It's almost sad to me because so many of them will sit out until a hard frost without ever being sold and planted in the ground.

They are pretty to look at and photograph before I go inside the store to do my shopping.

I've never bought chrysanthemums to plant in the fall but I used to start them from seed. Some years I grew a wide variety of chrysanthemums from seed, successfully, but I haven't done that it ages.

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Photohunters: Twisted

The photohunters theme this week is twisted. I took these shots last winter of the twisted wood in the forest.

Because it was twisting around like a vine, I wondered if it was indeed a vine. However, it was so thick and hairless, it looked a lot more like a tree. I'll let you decide if it's a twisted tree or vine, or something else altogether.

For other twisted posts, please visit the home of the photohunt, beginning on Saturday.

Nature Notes: Birds in my garden

For this post, I've inserted all the photographs in a form that allows for clicking inside to enlarge them. The mockingbird above was screaming so loudly I went outside to see what was up. I never did figure that out unless the mockingbird was screaming so I'd come take its picture.
The cardinal above was actually trying to hide from me but its bright red feathers make that difficult. The birds are busier and busier this time of year, I suppose getting ready for winter. I notice this trend every fall.
The carolina chickadees seem to be in great abundance. I didn't even know I was shooting two (photo above) until I looked at the shot and realized I had a pair of chickadees. I thought I was shooting a single bird so fun to see I had a couple.
The carolina wren is another bird which is abundant but small and not always easy to catch with my camera. My neighbor's cat is a frequent visitor to my garden but the birds seem to successfully avoid him so I don't usually chase him off.
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Today's Flowers: Wildflowers doing well as we near autumn

While walking on a trail near my house this Saturday, I was pleased at how well the wildflowers are doing.



This has been a good year for late summer and early fall flowers where I live. I think it's because we have had such a wet year.



Some years at the end of summer, in North Carolina where I live, everything is looking brown and parched. Above average rainfall this year has given a boost to many of the wildflowers.



The woods on the trail we walked on were filled with such a nice variety of flowers. The cooler mornings are giving me a boost and I'll have to try and walk regularly on the trails like I used to.



Even if I don't have the energy for a brisk walk, I can at least go on photo walks. Walk a few steps, take a photo, walk a few more steps . . . . The last shot is from my back yard. The fairy asters are bursting into bloom all over the place at my house.



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Photohunters: Upside Down

I like reflection shots but sometimes it can be disorienting when an image is upside down. I think I prefer the second shot because there is a frame of reference with part of the photograph right side up, and part is a reflection. The first house which only shows the reflection is too upside down for me.



Saturday is when photohunters post on the host site. You can click here for the home of photohunters.

Nature Notes: Elusive Hummers, Fairy Asters, Seeds and such

I've had more hummingbirds than ever in my garden this year but not much luck photographing them.



Ironic how hard they can be to shoot because they practically run into me. I will be in my garden and whoosh, another near miss with a hummer.



Soon the hummers will leave for the winter so I decided to post this series of shots I took this morning, although none of them are good. The action sequence was taken within about 30 seconds with me click, click, clicking as the hummer darted overhead.



I recently found out that a common name for aster vimenius is Fairy Aster. I love it and will be able to remember that name unlike its longer harder one to remember.



Fairy Asters are a treat for me in September and October when they bloom, covering large sections of my garden in their tiny white flowers. These are both macro shots but the flowers are very tiny and they form shrub like mounds that almost look like snow hills.



The fairy asters have just started to bloom and it will be at least a week or so before they give me snow like hills of blooms. The mimosa tree below, with its seeds dangling down, illustrates why mimosa trees sprout up all over the place. I have several that I've let grown as volunteers from my neighbor's seeds which I imagine a bird dropped.



We've been getting a lot of rain off and on, and I always love to photograph the rain drops on flowers and leaves. The hibiscus blossom below is one of many still in bloom.



Redbud trees are another that I have volunteer all over the place from the proficient seeds the mature ones drop in the summer. I like the heart shaped leaves from the redbud. Many are already turning yellow and dropping but some like the one below are still green.



I guess I'll end with a shot of some of the grasses which are brown going to seed. I still have tall green grasses with plumes too. September is the time of a little bit of everything where I live.



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Today's Flowers: Grace Garden

I am so glad I thought to walk past the tree line which blocks Grace Garden from view, in the summer, at the place I park when I have to work on site (normally I work from my home computer).



The garden is in Durham NC's Central Park which was established in 2001 and is a fairly small city park. I had taken some shots last fall and winter when I worked on site but the trees had dropped their leaves so I shot what I could see from my car. However, with the trees still full of summer leaves last week, I decided to walk into the park and get a better look.



I was totally surprised to find a delightful garden in the park. Looking online I found out that Grace Garden is a memorial to Grace Richardson, a Durham resident who was killed by a drunk driver. Although some of the flowers like the ones above, have gone to seed, there was still a lot in bloom. Next time I have to work in Durham in the spring and summer, I'll have to get some shots of the earlier garden blooms.



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