This Sunday morning is a busy swallowtail butterfly morning. These two butterflies cannot seem to get enough of the Mexican butterfly weed.
Upside down...
sideways...
Over the top..
Any which way it goes!
One of them has some wing damage..poor thing..but it still goes ..happy to see it enjoy its day.....And life goes on!
Our garden visitors always add visual pleasure. Will make daily postings as I catch them in our garden. I enjoy watching them fly in and out, marking their domain, finding their spot under the sun.
For today it is the dragonfly. Dragonflies love to find a pointy perch. Gripping it tightly, staying still for awhile. I love seeing their face..like a flying smiley face!
Fragile yet tough..that's what I call my Oncidium Sharry Baby. This is the first year that I have this plant, got her from the Pacific Orchid Show last Feb 2013. At that time it was already laden with blooms. By mid-May the flowers have expired, followed by the spike, which is okay with me, it did give me about 1.5 months of showing. So as with typical Oncidium care, gave this plant its daily watering, and you can visibly see how happy the plant is..existing pseudobulbs firm and plump, and later on I saw new pseudobulbs coming about..I think there are three new ones.
To my surprise, it started forming a new spike in June 2013. Awesome! Now this would be a flower spike in my care. So still providing its daily watering..and it does like its location inside my Growcamp. The cross breeze passing through the water fountain helps it and the other orchids a lot as summer temperature starts to roll in.
And then the dreaded week-long heat wave came this early July! I was so afraid for the orchids! Our area is so dry, humidity is so low and with the exacerbated heat, it is amplified even more. Got to step up watering on all the orchids, especially the Oncidiums. By this time the flower spike is getting full with blooms. I was really expecting it not to endure, since there were days when temps will hit 109F and will eventually settle ambiently not any lower than 100F..and this lasted for the entire week.
Thankfully, my Onc. Sharry Baby survived the heat wave, not blasting any blooms nor damaging any leaves. Just went okay! Whew..what a relief..as long as it got its daily shower early in the morning, it ably endured. Wish I could say the same with my Vanda coerulea and Odontonia Papageno, though both are on the end phase of the bloom cycle, still the heat wave really hastened the blooms demise..but my fragile toughie Onc. Sharry Baby survived nicely with flying colors!
As Fall season heads on to its last few days, finally the city trees lining up my garden has started to drop her leaves. I really do not know how to make of it, either you just want to keep on cleaning up to restore the aesthetic sense of your garden, or let Nature create her own canvass as the leaves litter everywhere.
So as always lugging around my camera, trying to catch the whimsy amidst the changes going about...color changes, plants going deciduous, plants still actively blooming albeit the chilly Fall weather..a precursor of colder weather coming about.
Ah and better yet, my first year to attempt to force flowering bulbs indoors..that certainly looks promising enough! More colors that will liven up the doldrums of chilly weather.
