Daffadown Dilly

I came upon this beauty in our daffodil room

I decided to take a walk-a-bout with a camera (a cam-a-bout) in our living room this morning and came upon this fine yellow fellow. Some folks used to call this a daffadown dilly but Kit just calls it a daffodil.

Narcissus loves to look at itself in the mirrors

Once we learned that their nickname is Narcissus, we put a mirror next to it and it started to thrive.

Butterfly Flutter By

This was one of our fluttering friends during this past summer. T'was a great summer for flowers, bees, gardens, and butterflies. This dude (whom we named Thorax) liked our backyard blend of blossoms. Here he's pictured sitting upon his favorite pincushion. The verbena were also a very popular spot. Then one day, they all just up and left town. I wonder where Thor is now. If you happen to see him, greet him from us.

Blizzard Warning

Today is Christmas Day! Up in the North Country, we are now experiencing a full-fledged blizzard. The official forecast is for a Blizzard Warning from this morning until tomorrow around noon. If you want to see what it looks like outside here right now (in the Fargo area), just look at a blank sheet of white paper. I decided to look back at photos from exactly four month ago to see some non-winter pictures of our back yard.

Under our deck, instead of snow, we had some pots that were hanging down and morning glories that were climbing up. We had zinnias surrounding our vegarden. Beyond that, a rock and flower garden with verbena & friends.

Here, instead of snow, we see some Sweet Peas in the foreground, with butterflied zinnias in the middle ground, and the verbena bed bringing up the rear.

Maybe the reason I'm reminiscing about August is because now it seems it was much easier to sprinkle & mow than it's going to be to shovel out after this Blizzard Warning storms itself out. Maybe we should start naming blizzards. Let's call this first one: Al Gore 1.

Roundabout

Do you ever feel like you're going in circles, and that you repeatedly continue going over the same ground, without making much headway? (If you drive NASCAR, that's definitely the case.) This sign in our neighborhood warns of a "roundabout" intersection, where nobody really knows who has the right-of-way. It's lucky we have this sign (from all four directions) so drivers don't go straight through and take out the flowers that have been planted in the middle.

Cariflower

When you're walking around, with a Canon A540, looking for an interesting picture waiting to be taken, it's hard to pass up reflections.

If you were thinking

that these front yard flowers

are reflecting

in the passenger-side rear window

of a 1989 Honda Civic Hatchback

you would have been correct.

I could have just said

that the back of my car

was full of fresh flowers

but that would have been

misleading.

Fireworks

When it comes to Fourth of July fireworks, some of the best fireworks are growing in our backyards. Flowers are the original summer fireworks. Even tho this particular bloom isn't growing in our particular backyard, we will probably end up sitting on our elevated deck this Fourth of July evening and watching all the fireworks going off around us, just like we did last year. Happy 4th of July Independence Day!