Spangled Skimmer

Not an hard to find species, but pretty all the same.

Black Shouldered Spiney Leg Dragonfly

Also from back in June, it turns out this one isn't a new one though. I have much older pics of it from a previous camera I just never tried identifying it before.

Chalk-Fronted Corporal

A photo from back in June, at the time it was a new species for me to spot and I never got around to posting it, no idea why.

Happy Houseplants

October Shadow Darner

It's not often darners are nice enough to just land where I can photograph them. Most of them fly above head height and land on trees much too high to even see what they are, never mind get close.

Another Tricky Bug

I tried wandering Broadmoor again Thursday with no great results. On the way out on 16 I parked next to the Charles River at the Natick Historical Society. There's a small grassy picnic area right by the river. There are also numerous dragonflies right at the edge of the river. A few twelve spotted skimmers fluttered about and one widow skimmer. The widow skimmer landed a few times and I stalked it about. Eventually, I switched to a high iso and put the zoom lens on just to give me a shot at a good image.

One of the Tricky Ones

You'd think with a name like Common Whitetail catching one of these guys in a photo would be easier. While I do see them practically everywhere getting them to land and stay down can be frustrating. The worst part is they aren't always even reacting to me. This is just one of the dragonflies that tends to hop around. Now that I think of it the Common Pondhawk is quite jumpy sometimes as well. Maybe they got named common just because you see them everywhere, but can't get close enough to actually see what they look like.

An Old Standard

Slaty Skimmer - male

Just a slaty skimmer male. They're easy to photograph and ridiculously common. The only dragonfly I have more photos of is the blue dasher. It has gotten to the point where they have to be lined up perfectly for me to even bother photographing them.
This of course has a huge downside. I've found in some of my old pictures before I was paying attention to dragonflies that I've photographed a few species I haven't seen again. At this point I should be photographing everything and sorting out the images at home as you never know what you actually got until you research.

My Holy Grail... of Dragonflies

12 Spotted Skimmer - Male

I've been going on no hikes all summer, mostly due to work. Yesterday I got up early for something else and decided to suck it up and put my camera in the car. I went a few places, but only Broadmoor had anything I liked, even though I had to keep dodging the kids at camp who were all over screaming into the woods. At least I wasn't trying to look at birds, it would have been impossible with all the shrieking.

It was around ten in the morning and the usual suspects lined up along the Quacking Frog trail between Glacier Hill and Old Orchard Trail. It's the edge of a field with the sun shining into a set of shorter brush and trees and you can find dozens of dragonflies sunning there in the mornings. I picked my next trail about the time the camp caught up with me and wandered to the wildlife pond, which has grown huge and eaten parts of the meadow and killed off the trees that used to line it. The trail close to the pond was closed, but I found this dragonfly sunning himself about 6 feet off the leftover trail. I also almost stepped on several frogs as the footing was a little flooded.

Waterlily

Possibly a Sioux flower, but I didn't trace the stalk down to the pot to be sure.  What a difference 6 months makes.  It's been in the eighties, and not a bit of snow in sight.

Feeding Birds

This was all started by my Mom. Months ago I dumped the last of the peanuts into my homemade peanut feeders, and I left them. Last week Mom started complaining about the woodpeckers that kept landing on the feeders, wandering around then looking put out and flying away. I said I was out of peanuts. Three days ago someone bought more peanuts. I sucked it up opened up the gnarly feeders and dumped out the leftovers, refilled with new, and the woodpeckers showed up within hours.

A pair with three babies showed up and have been by hourly. A red bellied woodpecker with fledgling in tow shows up several times a day as well. The feeders had been on various hooks around the driveway, but I got tired of the squirrel trying to gnaw through the feeders. Since the big trees are gone I strung a wire across the driveway from the porch to a convenient pole. Following this idea I strung cut pvc pipe on the ends of the wire and now I just have to wait for the squirrel to try again. If it doesn't work I'll swap out the wire I have (free) with a thinner wire as recommended here.

Grasshopper

I know other gardeners might look at this guy and flinch, but I remember 20 years ago when we moved into this house the yard was full of grasshoppers, so full several would jump every time you walked anywhere. They slowly disappeared as we killed the grass, and the trees got bigger and bigger shading it out. I'm quite happy to see them return, though I'll be happier if I start seeing some preying mantis as well.

May Already?

Uggh. I've been working the last two weeks with some gardening in the afternoons, which hasn't left much time for other things. The strawberries are moving along. Last week I had to repot all my seedlings due to crappy starter soil (even though it was the same soil type I use every year) it was growing algae on top and not holding any moisture in the middle. No idea how that combo was working. They've mostly recovered and I've stopped dreading having to buy starts. And I've accepted that I can only use ridiculously good potting soil to both avoid Monsanto and keep the plants happy. I had a lot of losses over the winter with iffy potting soil from last year. It was bad enough I've re potted most of the survivors bare root and they're happy about it.

Since the trees came down last year in the fall this is my first year with true full sun. Most of the plants are happy, the hostas I just moved last year however are slowly getting dug up and moved before they burn. A few will stay, but most are being moved to the one shady section of the yard. To make the sun a problem it didn't rain much at all in April, and actually yesterday was the first rain of May. I'd like several more days of rain so I can fill the water buckets and stop having to hose down everything twice a day to keep it from wilting under the sun. The rain should also cut that wildfire risk they weather forecasters keep harping about.

I also caved and mulched the ornamental beds this Spring, partially because of the sun but also to make weeding more obvious. By the end of the year the grass in the beds is normally so thick I can't find what's supposed to be in there. I'm trying to stop it early this year so I can see where I can add plants and what is coming up where. I have a few plants still to move, and if our neighbors replace the fence like they said they were I can then plant a few shrubs I've been keeping in pots due to a lack of locations to put them.

The one other thing in the works is doing two more large pots in the front and moving the much abused front yard hostas into them. They had a wood border but I ripped it out last month so we have no wood touching dirt in the yard to tempt the termites. I also ripped out the 15 foot wide by three foot tall pile of cut tree limbs we'd been storing. I removed them because the neighbors might replace the fence, and they would have been in the way. Plenty of them had disintegrated to mush anyway. (Okay, Mom was worried about termites in them too, though I never found any.)

Note

Planted potatoes today, And radishes

New (for me) Amaryllis

No going to plant stores for me, or my mother the enabler. Of course it is mighty pretty.