Nature and Gardening

Apologies for the bad photo but I finally saw a monarch after a few years of diligently avoiding all milkweed plants in the garden. I'm so excited to see such a beautiful creature!

So excited to see a new spike emerging!

Since the depth of field of macro lenses is very narrow and it is not possible to have the whole flower in focus, this picture is focus stacked from almost 40 images.

I planted my first garden this year and have been having a blast watching everything grow so far and I was out watering today and found thy my green beans have already started to produce! It seemed like yesterday there were they were pretty pink flowers haha.

Any advice on when to harvest?

This little guy was crawling around on the hiking trail my partner and I were on in the central Appalachians

This was a mile into the 19 mile elk knob summit trail.

There is a pair of Red-Backed Shrikes in my neighbourhood that I haven't yet been able to see. I knew, however, where they typically hang out so I went there yesterday with my camera and tripod, set up the camera to point and potential perches and finally managed to see them and take a few short videos!

Their German name, Neuntöter, translates to "Nine Killer". It is said that they kill nine things before they actually eat one. This isn't actually too far fetched as Red-Backed Shrikes kill insects, small rodents or baby birds and hang them up on thorny bushes and other plants for later. The bush the female is perched on later on in the video is a blackberry bush which has thorns.

By Shin Ikegami

She has more photos in the same sort of "moonlit" style on Flickr and at https://shinikegami.com/

A lil bee buddy pollinating some Penstemon digitalis!

We’re growing a bunch of morning glories on a string trellis thingie along the ramp up to our apartment, and I just really love it each morning seeing a handful of the day’s babies.

We spent a chunk of the weekend at Patoka Lake, which is an Indiana State Park that has a private marina nestled inside. While my wife was off fishing and boating, I got in ten miles or so of hiking. Honestly I'm not sure I'd come back here; getting from the Marina to the actual hiking trails is about four miles of bike path, i.e., concrete and asphalt. Most of the trails themselves are through areas that have had controlled burned in the last few years. In addition to being less green, this also means that the trails bear only the vaguest resemblance to what the official trail map shows; many of the branch trails don't seem to have been reconstructed yet.

But still, a bad day in the woods beats a good day at my desk any time! More photos on imgur.

Indian cress / Garden Nasturtium

Borage

Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/79539

Top: Longbract frog orchid and Mountain death camas Bottom: Lesser yellow lady's slipper, Wood lily, and Pink wintergreen.

All found not too far from Canmore, Alberta, Canada.

Our new acer arrived last week and I am loving the colours in our garden. Just have to look after it now and hope we can keep this beautiful tree happy!

Any tips for taking care of acers?