Today's Flowers: April draws to a close

 My overgrown privet is putting on quite a splash of white flowers.

I do enjoy the way it looks this time of the year.

 It is interesting how plants like privet that are often cut into hedges can grow as tall as trees when left to their own devises.

My garden is increasingly left to its own devises.

Some of my roses are doing well left to their own devises although I've lost some varieties.

The macro and close-up shots hide a multitude of mess.

A mild winter combined with a wet spring has loads of blooms abounding as April ends.

My neighbor's cat got a summer hair cut and he's frolicking in my evening primroses.

 

Click for the home of Today's Flowers.

Photohunters: Local Streets and Texture

 Local Streets

 Texture

This is another week where I found it easy to combine the two separate photohunt themes.

The local streets in the downtown area of my city (Raleigh, NC, U.S.) have so many different textures.

The buildings cover a number of different centuries and many different decades.

The paving materials for some of the streets and sidewalks have different textures.

The buildings use different materials each with their own texture.

The photos I'm using are from different seasons and were taken over the past several years.

One of my favorite parts about downtown is there is a lot of variety, not like some of the boring malls and suburban shopping areas and neighborhoods.

I don't live or work in downtown Raleigh, although I worked in downtown Raleigh in the early 1980s and the early 1990s.

 

The company I work for now is located in downtown Durham, NC about 25 miles from Raleigh, although I primarily work from my home computer in my Raleigh subdivision.

 

Click for Gattina's Local Streets Photohunt and/or click for Sandy's texture photohunt.

Nature Notes: Late April

Hard to believe that April is drawing to a close.

 

This sparrow must not have been as shy as the other birds.

 

During the time I photographed the sparrow: a chickadee, titmouse, and nuthatch all swooped in and out too fast for me to catch them with my camera.

It will be interesting to me to see how this post looks after I publish it.

What google blogger refers to as their new, streamlined, easy to use format, looks very weird to me.

I'll admit that I'm not big on change in terms of new programs that never seem like an improvement to me. The shot above is of butterfly weed which is popping up like crazy.

The roses above give a little splash of red to my increasingly jungle like garden. Large sections of my yard, like the one below, have been overtaken by honeysuckle.

Virginia Creeper is another vine that's taking over in the back part of my garden.

On the right hand side of the shot below is a mulberry tree branch. The birds love the mulberries so I've let several volunteers grow into large trees.

The gutter on the street in front of my house had a flowing stream of water from recent hard rains.

Moss is growing on the base of my oak tree.

I guess I'll have to clear out some of the weeds around my irises since they are trying to bloom.

I almost didn't spot the dutch iris since I've let that part of my garden get so over run.

At first I thought the yellow might be goldfinches.

In another section of my overgrown garden, a different type of irises as well as the money plant (purple blossoms) are trying to hang tough.

I was pleased to see some coriopsis coming up near a cherry tree. I used to have a lot of coriopsis but most of it was lost to competition.

Click for the home of nature notes.

Today's Flowers: Blooms abound

Blooms abound in my garden although I've let it become so overrun that closeups work better than wider shots.

My red roses have lots of buds and more and more are reaching full bloom.

I like the way the red roses are different shades of the same color.

This has been a wet spring which accounts for what a jungle my garden has become.

More and more of the evening primroses (oenothera speciosa) are blooming.

I like the way the center of the evening primrose has a touch of yellow.

I still have quite a few camellias in bloom.

The kolkwitzia continues to make my back garden look like its snowing, or that's what it reminds me of.

Click for the home of today's flowers.

Photohunters: Reflect and Humor

REFLECT

HUMOR

To reflect an ordinary object onto the sky can result in some humor.

In this case, the reflection of the parking deck light fixture onto the sky above UNC Hospital makes me go off onto a humorous train of thoughts.

Perhaps some sick aliens in a spaceship have to land on the hospital roof to see if the humans can help. As it so happens, this spaceship is heading towards the Nuclear Science wing of the hospital so maybe the aliens can help the human doctors in this relatively recent branch of medicine for our species.

Yep, I know, I'm losing my marbles. Click here to humor the photohunters and/or click to reflect with photohunters.