Today's walk report: 070713

Prologue (AKA, my AM excursion)...

First a correction on this. I had this flower as, a Nymphaea, water lily. It's actually a lotus flower, family Nelumbonaceae. Wikipedia seems to confirm this is a Sacred lotus, Nelumbo nucifera.

Yesterday I mentioned that I was going to check on the flower to see if it was open in the AM. If you don't know, don't care, haven't really thought about it, etc., I take my walks in the early evening. There are lots of water lilies in the main pond at the garden I visit. By the time I reach the garden they are closed for the night. This particular, lotus flower lives solo in a small memorial which was setup for one of the original curators of the botanical garden. It's called the Smallwood Fountain but I don't see how it's a fountain. I called it a pond/statue thing in a earlier post. Here's the dedication. The previous photos I posted of this plant are here and here.

Here are some of the photos I took this morning. I arrived at 10:15 AM. I took a car. There was minimal walking involved.

Hoverfly has an exclusive.

While I was at it...

(It's very far away
It takes about a half and a day to get there
If we travel by my uh, dragonfly )

The usual suspects in the pond.

Much later and onto the walk...

I didn't find much in the way of interesting photo ops. Most of what I took pictures of doesn't fit with what's above so just a couple of quickie shots and I'm out of here...

5 image focus stack, verbena and lantana. I like the two plants together but it was really just to see if I could get a decent focus stack with a long lens (70-300 mm). The two plants differ about 12 cm in height (4.72").

Finally... Male, Allen's hummingbird, peacefully perched.

Today's walk report: 070613

The Birds is coming...

Anybody remember that bit of marketing genius? People were so angry about the apparent grammatical error for the upcoming release of Alfred Hitchcock's film, The Birds (1963), the film ended up with a ton of free advertising. I was only 7 when The Birds was released so it must've made an impression on me to be aware of this and to remember it.

Anyway, my birds came today. The doves I mentioned here were doing their ritual circling of the neighborhood just south of me at the .5 km mark and I finally had the right camera and lens to get a decent picture or two. They circle about 2 blocks wide and a block and 1/2 long 6-8 times before they go back down into whichever backyard they're living. I think I've narrowed it down to one of 4 homes, not that it matters.

The pictures don't do it justice. There's something sort of magical about this event every time I experience it.

Meanwhile back in the garden... My sister ID'd this at least as a Nymphaea, a water lily. Shows what I know, I didn't think of a water lily being so vertical, even though it carries all other characteristics of the water lilies I'm used to. This bud is about the size of my fist, by the way. The entire plant was posted here yesterday. In addition to what my sister told me I read up a little and am now assuming this is going to open in the AM, based on the behavior I see of the other Nymphaea I see there in the pond and because it didn't appear to be coming closer to opening as evening was approaching. Apparently some Nymphaea flowers do open at night. I'm going to try and swing by tomorrow morning and check again. I'll let you know... I promise.

Nymphaea from the main pond, June 2012. I determined the best time for the water lilies was about 10-10:30 AM, even though I never ended up going at that time. This shot was about 1:30 PM.

Leucadendrons, also ID'd by my sister, without me directly asking. She had posted some pics of them in her blog recently. I spent a bunch of time trying to find out what these were before. I'd like to try and see if I can get some growing at home. I'd like to get anything growing at home to be honest.

Lastly, here are three images from the straw flower bushes in the Australian section of the garden. Yes, I know I've done pictures of those before. The flowers lend themselves to picture taking though. Also, I ended up chatting with a woman in the garden for awhile and lost much of my picture taking time.