It's Monday, happy new week! Starting off this week with another variety of Zinnia. Another reason to grow them other than them being so easy to grow, there are so many different types, you can never be bored. 😀 I like this type as it reminds me of Spoon Flowers which are African Daisies and I can't seem to find any longer at the plant centers.
It's Steamy Sunday here on the Blog! Today's image is a very steamy one. This is one of the 12 inch scale Ottaway locomotives that I work with during a blow down. This lets the water and steam out of the boiler and, hopefully, any solids that might be in it as well like scale. It also cools the boiler down fairly quickly so you generally want to wait until most of the pressure is gone so that there isn't too rapid a temperature change which is not great for the locomotive. I learned recently that it takes at least a week for the Big Boy to cool down enough to blow it out. WOW These only take about an hour or so.
I had to make an unscheduled trip to Minnesota recently. I saw numerous Sunflower fields in the area but most of them were all sad and done. I got lucky and found one field still in bloom. Some of the flower heads were the largest I had ever seen, like dinner plates. I was capturing this near sunset but it was rather cloudy at the time as well.
It's Friday, TGIF! There have been some Dragonflies and Damselflies at my Gazebo pond lately. I was able to capture this Damsel with some lovely bokeh provided by water drops on leaves behind. Sharing for today because Friday's Are Bokehlicious here on the Blog!
I was going out for a bike ride the other evening and only had my phone with me. I was able to capture this Ladybug on the Milkweed fairly well even so. Sometimes my phone impresses me. 😂
It's Wildflower Wednesday here on the Blog! Today's flower is Prairie Coneflowers. They usually bloom May through August. Great Plains Indians brewed tea from the leaves. They are drought hardy and livestock consume the plants when young.
I have at least 3 Hummingbirds visiting my feeder and probably more. They had been very active due to how hot it had been the other week, at or very near 100s. They also have been visiting the flowers on my deck. I captured this one through the window enjoying the annual Salvia that I had read they liked but up until then had never seen them try to drink from. The butterflies are faded stickers on the window to keep birds from flying into it.
