Happy Monday and happy new week! I am starting off the week with one of my very favorite flowers, a Columbine. This one is not a wild one in my area. They mostly bloom in the spring though if the conditions are right they can bloom well into the summer. We had enough rain this year that mine did this a bit.
It's Steamy Sunday here on the Blog! Today's image goes back to Rollag Minnesota and the Western Minnesota Steam Thresher's Reunion this past Labor Day weekend. I was out and about in the evening before the show started and the Porter locomotive that I get to help fire on was sitting outside the Roundhouse. I liked that when I saw the photo later, the moon is visible as well, a nice bonus. The Porter is a tank style locomotive meaning it carries it's water in a tank over the boiler as opposed to in a tender behind.
This is another image that I decided to give a B&W treatment to that I liked how it turned out. This is one of my Cosmos flowers photographed from the back of it and the B&W gives it an almost negative type effect I thought.
It's Friday, TGIF! It's also a double digit day! 😁 Today's image is another of the Monarchs I was able to see enjoying the Goldenrod on my land. Due to the subdued bubbly bokeh I had to share for today because Friday's Are Bokehlicious!
This is an image of the Elk that was in a pasture with some horses for several months. Recently, it was spotted outside the pasture, which is where it was when I took this photo. It's a female and I wish I knew what the back story was on it and why it was in their pasture. Anyway, Elk can jump pretty high so it is not surprising that it could get out but it was surprising that it hung around so long. It had left their land and was in a nearby field not long after this so may have left totally by now. We do have other Elk in the area as there is a herd that is on Ft Riley and it has been moving around lately.
It's Wildflower Wednesday here on the Blog! Today's flower is a new one for me that I was able to see and capture while I was mowing a historical area that I take care of close to my house. This is called Lady's Tresses. It can bloom from August to October, I saw it at the very end of September and it is in the Orchid family. It can grow to 24 inches tall, this one was about 8 inches or so. The flowers can smell like Lilac or vanilla, I wish I had tried to smell them. It receives it's name because the flower heads remind of braided hair.
I was sitting outside by my raised layout the other day for a moment. I had my camera with me as I had been taking images of the Monarchs. I kept hearing this weird bird noise, well weird to me anyway. I finally saw that it was these 2 Flickers that were circling a tree. I'm guessing it was some kind of mating noise as they did not seem aggressive towards each other. I was able to catch this image of them together.
