Flowers

[m1469]

Here are some wildflowers from this morning's little hike.  I *love* wildflowers , and this is the season for them.  I thought it might be fun to dedicate a whole thread to flowers, so please feel free to post your own (wildflowers or otherwise).

[m1469]

[littletune]

That's really cool and beautiful m1469! I hope I can find and make some pictures of flowers too! 

[amie_de_chopin]

These flowers just had an argument and are not talking to each other... 

[ted]

I don't know what sort of flower this is. The plant resembles a flat cactus and it has produced one flower every year since 1981, when we moved in. Ants are very attracted to it.



The common pumpkin flower has an intriguing texture and shape.



One of my wife's cleanest roses.

[elspeth]

[ted]

Not a flower, but monarchs in midwinter are very unusual here. It was sitting on the orange tree when we arrived home and I had to move quickly, so the focus wasn't the best.

[remy]

I don't know what sort of flower this is. The plant resembles a flat cactus and it has produced one flower every year since 1981, when we moved in. Ants are very attracted to it.

Ted,

That's an orchid cactus, an epiphyte from the jungles of South America. Hence it likes moisture and high humidity, with less moisture when it's dormant during the winter.

Yours appears to be Epiphyllum Ackermanii.

remy

[ted]

Thanks Remy, I hadn't noticed you had posted. It must exude something very sweet to attract hordes of ants like it does.

[m1469]

I find this to be quite rude!



I know, it's not a flower - but often these characters can be found within them!  It's in the window.

[littletune]

Oh but m1469 spiders are supposed to bring you luck! Maybe this spider just wants to bring you luck. Or that one from the tree... that you once almost bumped into. But it doesn't really make me all that happy either if there are spiders in our aparment... specially if they're bigger, it kinda gives me chilles a little.  But I'm not angry at them! 

[ted]

This peculiar plant produces a central "flower" of bright red leaves each spring. After a while they turn green.



My garden is like my music. No ordered, tended, manicured beds here with everything regimented into the interminable twos, threes, bars and meddlesome notation of classical music. I like weeds, I like wild plants, I like the verdant chaos, teeming with spiders, grubs, bees and birds; somewhere to lie and meditate, and to catch the mingled scents of the roses and the cat turds under the calamansi tree. Just like my improvisation.

[m1469]

Oh but m1469 spiders are supposed to bring you luck! Maybe this spider just wants to bring you luck. Or that one from the tree... that you once almost bumped into. But it doesn't really make me all that happy either if there are spiders in our aparment... specially if they're bigger, it kinda gives me chilles a little.   But I'm not angry at them!  

Okay, but did you know that there's supposed to be a spider within 6 feet of us at all times?  That's .... uncomfortable sometimes  :-.  Did you know that I can sense spiders in strange situations?  One time I sensed one under my pillow and so before I climbed in my bed I checked under there and there was a big brown spider!  Now I check under my pillow and in my sheets every single night!  Also, one time I was gone for about a week and I came back home and I went into my bedroom and I just sensed a spider under my teddy bear sitting on top of my pillow (this was in college  ) and I looked and sure enough, there was a big brown spider under there, too!  And one time, it was dark in a room (and the house) and I went into a bedroom and started to reach to turn on the light, and I just sensed there was a spider right by the light switch and so I stopped my hand, got a flashlight, and sure enough, there was one!  Why are they doing that?

One time I was a camp counselor in Canada at this camp where we stayed in "cabins" (which were made out of canvas and didn't have doors or window screens, etc.) and there were spiders all over the bunk beds.  And, every night there were some spiders in my bunk/bed and I had to get some campers to take them out ...   ... and every night I had to calm myself so much about them and I would close my sleeping bag over my head and sleep like that.  I don't think I ever got a bite nor did I ever wake up with one on me in the middle of the night, but still!

[ted]

In some parts of the world you would really need to worry about certain spiders. By comparison New Zealand has only one or two mildly poisonous ones. More than fifty years ago, the South Australian triantelope was accidentally imported into Auckland in the timber used to build the Avondale racecourse grandstand. These huge, hairy spiders have since become very common here, but only in the surrounding Auckland suburbs. They have never spread, which fact is something of a puzzle.

Hundreds of them were collected a few years ago and exported for the film "Arachnophobia". The thought of people screaming in terror at these harmless, delightful creatures scuttling over the walls is too ridiculous for words.

[Bob]

*Bob has a numb spot from a spider bite from years ago.*  Bastards.  Normal day.  Just found the bite, lost sensation in that area.

[m1469]

Sorry, Littletune, but I say:

Bastards.

Amen to that!  

Ted, there are poisonous spiders here, too!  One time my leg got bit when I fell asleep on the grass outside in the back ... and I thought maybe it was just a mesquito bite, at first, but it looked and acted  strangely and kept not going away, week after week, until I finally realized it was a spider bite!  Not to mention there's also at least one wolf making his way to my county!  No, not a wolf spider, an actual wolf/dog creature, OK?  There goes the neighborhood!

[elspeth]

I'm jealous of the wolf! Send him to live near me... I've only seen wolves in the wild once, on the Finland/Russian border, they're breathtaking.

I worry about myself sometimes, I'm clearly not normal... I like spiders too...

[ted]

My son's cat with weeds and flowers.

[littletune]

What a cool cat!    And those flowers are really beautiful colour! That is exactly my favourite color!! 

Oh I wanted to say something about spiders. Some time ago (before it got this cold!!) I was watching a spider web outside and there was this bug flying around (kinda like a small butterfly just the ones that are flying around when it's dark)... and it was flying exactly around the spider web and I was like OH nooo and then it got stuck on the spider web!... and then the spider came out and I didn't even want to watch anymore but then the spider started to jump or something so the spider web started moving really quickly like kinda jumping or something like it was shaking the spider web and the bug fell out and then when the spider saw (or felt or whatever) that the bug fell out it stopped and it went away again! I couldn't believe it! It was really strange! I don't know maybe the spider wasn't hungry or it didn't want to eat that bug but I was really happy and surprised. 

[m1469]

Well, I've gone through phases of trying to be at peace with them.  They have always been only phases and I haven't had one for a long time.

[ted]

My wife's flowers, in particular her roses, came out a treat this year. Too bad she is overseas and missed them.

[williampiano]

To upload photos, do I need to have them uploaded to photobucket or something?

I'm sure the answer is staring me in the face somewhere, I'm just not too good with technology if you know what I mean.  

[ted]

Yes, that is what I do.  Upload the picture to photobucket. Click on it and this box will appear:



Clicking on the one called "Direct link" copies it to your buffer, which you then paste into the picture option in your post.

You have to make public any pictures you want to post of course.That is in the "Privacy" options on photobucket. 

[countrymath]

What camera are you using, m1469?

[m1469]

Oh, I hadn't seen your question, countrymath.  I am just using my iphone (it was a 3G).  Beautiful flowers, ted and elspeth!  

Here is a magnolia from some photos of different flowers that I took this last summer (but never got around to posting about before now).  

[ted]

This plump little fellow did not take kindly to having his picture taken.



I realised after posting that it isn't actually a "fellow" at all. The big, bright ones are females and workers. Drones are tiny, totally black bees about the size of small baked beans. You never see them unless you disturb the nest. We have a nest of a couple of dozen residents in a weed patch this year. They are very useful, harmless insects, what with the honeybee population only just starting to recover.

[thalbergmad]

That is one bigass bee.

[costicina]

With that cute, fluffy insect inside, it’s one of the most charming and unconventional flower I’ve ever seen..

[candlelightpiano]

I absolutely LOVE wildflowers and have photos of some. I just need to find them and post them here. Thanks for the great topic!

[candlelightpiano]

The common cinquefoil

[ted]

Insects in general are going berserk in Auckland at present, something to do with the unusual summer weather I suppose.