It's Friday, TGIF! My Cosmos has been blooming quite beautifully this year. I didn't plant any of it, they are all volunteers from seed from last years flowers. That makes this one quite interesting, I have never seen this variety before wit the white rays coming from the center. It's quite lovely. I also chose this photo for today due to the interesting bokeh because Friday's Are Bokehlicious!
It's a double digit day! 😃 I love seeing Dragonflies. They are very cool creatures to me with their huge eyes and the way they are able to fly and hover, so fascinating to watch. I captured this one at my Gazebo pond earlier this summer as it perched on a leaf.
I have a video Here of a cool event I witnessed this past week of a bunch of them flying around my small backyard pond. I had never seen so many around that pond at one time or ever.
It's Wildflower Wednesday here on the Blog! Today's flower is Canada Goldenrod. It is very similar to Tall Goldenrod but has much greener leaves. It is falsely accused of causing hay fever. It's pollen is not spread by the wind, insects do that. It usually blooms July to September and can be rather photogenic. It belongs to the Sunflower family.
Today's bird is the Kansas state bird, the Western Meadowlark. I had a lot of opportunities to see and photograph them the first half of this year. I like this photo because it shows them in a fairly common state, singing on the prairie. Often I hear them but don't see them. Our Meadowlarks seem to stick around for the most part, all year round and are identified by the yellow breast and black V band at the neck.
Happy Monday and happy new week! It's the September Equinox where we have almost equal day and night hours and we transition into Autumn. Every September Equinox, for the last few years I have been able to see a Monarch on the Goldenrod and this one was no different. It was actually on the 21st which Was the start. The actual Equinox is today at 1:20pm CST. I captured this at 4:47. Anyway, I was excited to see several Monarchs in my yard yesterday, one of which was laying eggs on one of the Milkweeds! Cool!
It's Steamy Sunday here on the Blog! We go back to the Colorado RR Museum today and look at Denver and Rio Grande Western locomotive 683. This Consolidation type 2-8-0 was built in 1890 by Baldwin as Narrow gauge #583. It was later converted to Standard Gauge built for the first standard gauge line between Denver and Salt Lake City. It served until the mid 1950s when it was sold to the San Luis Valley Southern Rwy which allowed it to escape the D&RGW scrapping plan. #683 is the only standard gauge locomotive that remains from the D&RGW. It's looking pretty good but will need some cosmetic work soon due to be stored out on the elements. It would be nice if the museum could get more equipment under cover. They are slowly working on it which is good.
I have seen quite a lot of these butterflies around this year. This is a Cloudless Sulphur Butterfly that was enjoying my Petunias a few days ago. While I was out bike riding in late August I would routinely se huge swarms of them enjoying the Alfalfa fields in the area. I had never seen so many at lone time. I shared a short video of them on YouTube HERE. It doesn't quite do the sight justice but gives an idea of how many there were.
