Walk Around The Yard

Do you think they will turn red before the first frost or should I make fried green tomatoes.

Saving these seeds for next year.

The rabbits getting a treat of a stem from the sedum.  They love it!

limelight hydrangea

Never realized we had any of these.

September Blooms

Backyard Friends or Foe?

...well, at least for me!  Does anyone know if these guys can sting?  And what are they actually called...other than bees?

According to the book that Ellis just got at the library...Kids Discover (Vol22, Issue 6, June 2012)...this is a bumblebee.  These bumblebees are slower than honeybees and rarely sting.  They look fatter because of their hair.  They only make enough honey to feed their young.

According to Lester Peyton, the Front Desk Naturalist and my new best friend at the Cincinnati Nature Center...the bees above are Carpenter Bees.  This one is a male and he can not sting.  The females sting (on occasion using their ovipositor (egg layer).  going to have to look that one up

The males have the white face.  And you can tell the difference between bumble bees and  Carpenter bees by their abs.  Carpenter Bees have shiny hairless abs while bumble bees have hairy abs.  Bumble bees both male and females sting.  

I can just see me now checking all the abs of any bee that comes into the yard.

Growing In The Muck

We are on a septic tank for all the things that run through the piles in this house.  First a well in WI now septic in OH.  Guess I will just have to move back to WV to get city water and sewer!

Look what I found growing in the dirt that needs to be tilled and moved around the new tanks and stuff they had to do to get us up and running again!  There are actually four of these lovelies growing and blooming plants.  I'm thinking they could be yellow squash or zucchini.  The rebuilt has stopped until these can be harvested.  I just hope that all the deer that seem to all of a sudden to be hanging around don't find them.

Hard To Imagine...

....that anything growing outside these days could survive the heat and humidity.  Please understand these are the survivors...I wouldn't ever show you pics of the other flower beds in the yard!

First year for these.  Love them under the bottle tree.

One of Mark's Beauty Berry bushes has berries.

Volunteer sunflower

When I was cutting grass i was shocked to find this lone gladiolas.

About now I wish Icould grow raindrops!