One last cosmos was hanging on among the dried ends of cosmos stems and brown, hardened sunflower stalks. A green butterfly landed in the mulch to warm itself in the sun before flying off to forage for what little flowers remained. I was going to start pulling up the dead sunflowers, but the finches and sparrows were still feeding on them, so they will remain standing awhile longer.
Lavinia reminded me a few weeks ago that I was going to go back in the Fall and get photos of the grasses at the rammed earth house that was on the Corrales Garden Tour in June. I went out in the late afternoon a a couple of weeks ago and photographed the grasses from the periphery of the property. While I was on the ditch bank I heard sandhill cranes on the river, so I walked out to the river to look for the cranes after photographing the grasses at the house. I didn’t see cranes, but I noticed that the native grasses in the bosque looked like they were on fire backlit in the late afternoon sun. I’ve alternated photos of grasses at the rammed earth house and photos of the native grasses in the bosque, ending the series with a photo of backlit cottonwoods.
Taking a step back in time is dangerous for a paparazzo who got put in the stockade for a photo too far.
The last day of September, the end of a fiscal year, seems to officially end summer and usher in the fall.
A Common Buckeye Butterfly was feeding in our meadow this afternoon. This is the first time I have seen a Buckeye Butterfly in the yard. It’s about the size of a Painted Lady.
It’s that time of the year when the garden spiders are building their webs in the flowers and pathways. Last night I moved the hose from one drip system to the other, and felt something crawling on me — it was one of the zipper spiders. It had apparently built its web across the path and I didn’t see it in the low light of dusk. I felt bad that I had inadvertently destroyed her web. I moved her over to some tall grasses and she crawled off me into the grasses where she could build another web. Walking through her web reminded me of an old Far Side comic where a couple of spiders have a web built on the end of a slide and one spider is telling the other “If we pull this off, we’ll eat like kings!” You can see a copy of the comic here: http://blogerinblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/eat-like-kings.jpg.
Thunderheads appear, change and disappear very quickly in the desert southwest. They can produce sudden and heavy rains, high winds, intense lighting storms and hailstorms. But often they form and put on a show, changing into all kinds of shapes, and then evaporate without a sound or drop of precipitation.
The first four photos were taken over a timespan of 10 minutes while driving on Highway 550 to Highway 528 and on to Corrales Road. The Weather Service interrupted the radio to announce the there was heavy rain and flooding on the other side of the Sandias from these thunderheads.
The last photo was taken from our deck where we sit and watch the clouds form and change over the Sandias through the bamboo and cottonwood trees.
We have a forest of sunflowers and various dahlias in bloom. The last photo shows our outdoor weight room with its west wall of sunflowers.
I painted the outside of the darkroom and put up shelves for storage of the remaining equipment and supplies that are still in the dance room. There are three photos of the darkroom with a view from the top of the step, a view from floor level and a fisheye view just for fun. In-between the photos of the darkroom, I have a photo of our sunflower forest, and a photo of Veteran’s Honor with grasses, our black bamboo forest and trees behind it.
Off Center & Not Even 