Summer days drag their feet towards fall ~

Hunting the wild persimmons

Native persimmons ~ ripe when they fall from tree  

Dustin raves about their tastiness  

No persimmon on the ground escapes his teeth

One of a kind

Who knows?

A neat looking small wildflower

Youth has a way of perceiving life as forever.  It isn't, of course, but that optimism is a great feeling while it lasts.  Cervical degenerative discs, pinched nerve flare-ups, shoulder muscle spasms; there are days when being optimistic is like climbing a rock wall up the face of a mountain.

I recline outside today on my plush chaise lounge; a first this year.  Actually, it's a first ever.  There's a saying... better late than never... I know, there's also another saying... a day late and a dollar short.  I'm a model example of why these sayings are still in use in these modern times.

I'm having a little skirmish with a pint-sized spider who thinks it's his chaise lounge also.  I move him, he comes back to spin another web.  It's never ending.  Of course, I could just squish him, but that's not my style, so we co-exist with some trepidation.

Southern Bee Blossom with a fly, tree cricket, 

and what appears to be another 

type of crane fly

Second bloom on clematis after rains in late summer

Beautyberry ripening

Coralberry

Sends runners out on top of ground

that root to ground at stem segments

creating nice trip hazards

Black Stink Bug (Proxys punctulatus) on spicebush

Winterthur viburnum berries 

turning from white to pink to blue

Crane fly (I think)

Natures artwork on a violet leaf

Porch plant

Maidenhair fern in 20" planter

The name of this blog has no rhyme or reason.  It was pulled out of thin air as I realized from the form being filled out, nameless blogs don't exist.  My bad.  It was the best I could cough up in ten seconds flat.  I've made fun of it more than once in my posts.

It's a play on words.  It doesn't make any sense, but you know how we humans love to give a word fifty shades of meanings.  Imperfection would fit me best today.  Oh, poo.....  Just checked the front bird bath, and six English sparrows are a dancing in the water while many others are pigging out at the feeder. 

It all began in spring with the next door neighbor hanging a large feeder overflowing with low quality seeds that drew in the English sparrows and starlings.  Upon discovering my feeder, they all made me the main attraction and my neighbor a backup.  Thanks, good neighbor.  We love you.

Spicebush swallowtail caterpillar

in its rolled leaf for protection. 

Liatris aspera 

Group of Hickory Tussock Moth caterpillars traveling across oak leaves 

at base of red oak tree.

Wasp mud nest on swamp hibiscus stem 

Purple leaf hopper - 1/4" long

Hickory Tussock Moth caterpillar munching on swamp hibiscus leaf

It's been near on five months of cicada songs with several different batches emerging out of the underground from late spring to now.  The last batch sings for mates until dusk has fallen into darkness.  I'm becoming quite adept at ignoring that eternal chatter of love to preserve what's left of my inner peace.

My vegetable beds are minus one cucumber plant that grew old and died with all the cucumbers still on it.  All desire seems lost this year to care for or about them.  Kaput!  I'm still eating cherry tomatoes off the vine, but the seed packets for the rest of the veggie patch are still on the kitchen table.  Oh, well.....

The almanac predicts winter will be warmer at this years end and on into the next.  I want nothing of it.  I wish ice and snow and thirty degrees below... well, maybe not quite that chilled, but those persevering little blood loving suckers called ticks embrace warmer winters to increase their brood ten-fold.  I will be living with the devil come next spring.

Chaos 

Brown-Eyed Susan

 Rudbeckia triloba

Tiny Golden Green Sweat Bee

(Augochlora pura)

on Marjoram flowers

Blue Lobelia

Spiny Assassin Bug

Brown-Eyed Susan flower is 1" in diameter.

Waited 2 hours for this little insect to come into full view.

When I could see only its head peeking over the flower center,

it looked like something from outer space.

Sideoats grama grass seed head flowers

'Sparkleberry' Winterberry

Miniature Robber Fly on grass seed head

(Holcocephala fusca)

Fierce hunters of other insects.

Orchard Orb-Weaver Spider

(Leucauge venusta)

A small spider with a complex web

While autumn teases with a bit of her colors, summer is still in the air.  The broomsedge bluestem, a tall grass that stands beautifully throughout the winter, is coming into its own.  Artistically snaking its way throughout the sunnier parts of the gardens, it is usually left where it decides to reside.

The turtlehead flowers are slowly loosing blossoms from the bottom upward, and leaving those beautiful stately seed heads, while the drying flowers of the Joe pye weed remind one of the ghosts of all the yesterdays.  Their neighbors, the swamp sunflowers are just beginning to see flower buds peeking out of their centers.

I saw a blue aster flower today, and many more will come as the days and weeks pass by.  While these native gardens are not drama queens, they create many delightful pops of color before the end of one winter and on past the beginning of the next winter.

Buildup of afternoon clouds

While it's easy to idealize nature standing on the outside looking in, the reality I see in my native gardens is that life encompasses both goodness and cruelty.  It is the nature of creation.  I always think of my gardens as my Eden and my Hell wrapped up in pretty trimmings.