Gifts from the Meadow

And overhead the great clouds sail...

 

as I struggle to make images showing them and the landscape, too (a tall order and a terrible thing to ask of a camera)

 but I got my best-yet photo of a dogbane beetle in the meadow this summer. All with the trusty Canon G-11.

 

 I love this photo of a fritillary and the whole meadow stretching out behind it.

 The meadow, full of unconscious bouquets of rudbeckia and butterfly weed.

 and the best summer gift of all, a yellow butterfly weed, quite rare, coming up along the driveway!

 It was the most bewitching shade of rich golden yellow.

 and in a spot where Bill won't accidentally mow it. Hurray! It bloomed twice this summer, delighting me for weeks.

I smile down at it every morning when I go running.

 One day I happened on a Peck's skipper deeply engrossed in a Laurentia blossom. I thought perhaps a crab spider had hold of it, and went to help it. No. The butterfly was just trying to reach that delicious nectar at the very bottom of the corolla tube.

 

It hurriedly backed out and looked at me as if to ask me what I thought I was doing.

 It was quite an elderly, worn skipper and apparently set in its ways. It had its proboscis extended all the way, and was partway down the throat of the flower. Very sweet. I left it alone to probe other flowers.

 I set up a fun little shade garden under some birches, up out of reach of the durn rabbits. Rabbits love begonias and impatiens as well as gerania. It would take a rabbit about two minutes to reduce this glorious Rex begonia to sticks.

Hope you've enjoyed this little walk around my summer garden. Too soon it will be gone, and we'll have to content ourselves with flaming fall foliage!