flowers
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Sphex ichneumoneus
What a gorgeous wasp. Feeding on Monarda punctata, whose flowers are rather attractive, too. Great Golden Sand-digger. As the common name suggests, they nest in solitary holes in the ground. Adults feed on nectar. The female provisions her young in these sandy nest caves with paralyzed Orthoptera: crickets, katydids, grasshoppers.The back of the thorax is…
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This Used To Be Lawn
“Now it’s all covered in flowers.”And grasses. Good riddance! This hillside in Green-Wood, near the 5th Avenue entrance, has been converted into meadow. From turf, fertilizer- and chemical- warfare dependent turf, nasty turf, to this riot of life. Yes, it’s “messy,” gloriously so! It’s only a tiny portion of the cemetery, of course. Too many…
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Sweetbay
Sweetbay Magnolia has such a delightful perfume.Magnolia virginiana. A native of the southeast that stretches up the Atlantic to New York. You know what doesn’t smell so good: 53-year old Brett Kavanaugh, and Kennedy’s negotiations to have his former law clerk replace him while his (Kennedy’s) sons are complicit in Trump’s corruptions. On Young Kavanaugh,…
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Recent Sightings
A President under investigation shouldn’t be allowed to appoint judges who will decide cases involving him. The Republican corruption of justice continues. And on top of that, this Kavanaugh character is already lying by saying “No president has ever consulted more widely or talked to more people from more backgrounds to seek input for a…
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Asclepias
Butterfly weed (A. tuberosa). My favorite.Purple (A. purpurascens). Other people’s favorite. “It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order…
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Birds, Flowers, Castle
Winding down with the reports from our trip to Sweden. Here’s Buskskvätta. Whinchat (Saxicola rubetra).These white flowers were everywhere.Anemone. It was a very good year for them, people said.My first ever cranes in the wild! Here’s Grus grus, the European Crane, known as Trana in Swedish. There was a pair nesting in the distance. One…
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Spring Purples
Look how purple these Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) start out!And flowers, ready to open. * Still, spring is having a hard time soothing us. A year+ into Trumpism: a sizable percentage of the American population is militantly ignorant, authoritarian-minded, anti-rational, resentful, racist to the bone, and eagerly yearning for the alleged renewal that fascism promises.…
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Tree Omnibus
The trees are singing. If only we would listen. Tolkien suggested it might be quite hard to hear them, since they sing on a whole different time scale. David George Haskell is listening with microphones and an acute biologist’s senses. The Songs of Trees was one of last year’s best naturalist books, beautifully written and…
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Botanisk Have
A selection from Copenhagen’s botanical garden. Their native plant section was mostly gone to seed, but a few flowers were still bravely waving. Yes, a little awkward cataloging this post under “Sweden” but the Danes held the part of Sweden we visited for centuries, so I’m sure, in the spirit of Scandinavian cooperation, everybody’s going…
Backyard and Beyond 