Carolina Lily, Ennice, North Carolina

There is no particular order to these barn quilts. There are 78 spread throughout Alleghany County according to the brochure. This is called Carolina Lily and is the largest barn quilt I've seen to date. It must measure 12' x 12', so think of all the work that went into this one.

But there was another barn on the property that had a little surprise and the 79th barn quilt. It isn't listed on the brochure, but if I were to give it a name, it would "A Basket of Yarn". It is much smaller, only 4' x 4'.

Route 18 near Ennis, North Carolina

We went back to Alleghany County to search for barn quilts. According to the brochure that a friend picked up for me on a past trip, there were 78 quilts to be found (Alleghany County doesn't have a website like neighboring Watauga County). We couldn't do all 78 in one day, so I used Google Maps to plot out 13.

It was like a scavenger hunt. Google Maps took us on wild goose chases in some of the quilts, so I had to rely on a North Carolina gazetteer that I had in the car. At the end of the trip, we only found five out of the 13. And then there are the 65 we didn't even look for. It will make for more interesting day trips and by the end we will know every nook and cranny of Alleghany County up in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The above picture is in front of one of the barn quilts (and one of the largest I've seen on any barn). And a close up of the abandoned one room school house and truck:

Tomorrow I'll start posting pictures of the barn quilts we found up in the mountains.

Stunning Sunday Skies

So would someone explain to me why the only time I can get interesting sky snapshots is in some parking lot - either the one at work or, in this case, one over at an industrial park over near our airport?

I bought some inexpensive filters on eBay - polarizing, neutral density, one for UV - and was sitting in the car in the park trying to get some shots of the quarter moon in the clouds. Since it was close to sunset, you can see the red of the sun on the bottom of the clouds.

I'm doing these sky shots with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine. Wonder what she saw in the skies of British Columbia?

How Baby Figs are Made

As the second crop on the Brown Turkey fig ripens, it dawned on me that this tree produces fruits without any noticeable flowering like other plants, like peaches, apples, melons, etc.

I did a little searching and found out that figs are very different from other fruits in that, first, it is pollinated by a fig wasp which crawls in through this tiny opening in the base of the fruit and, secondly, the interior of the fig is actually where the flowers are, each bearing a single seed. If you cut the fig open, the flowers appear as fleshy threads. I downloaded a picture of this from Wikipedia as my figs aren't quite ripe enough to pick.

So now you've added some new trivia to use if you ever get on a game show and I will keep a lookout for those tiny little fig wasps.

House Finch

And here's a better picture when I am using the camera correctly.

I decided to  put up one bird feeder now that nesting season is over. For the moment all I'm seeing at the feeder are house finches and the occasional cardinal who just can't quite manage the cage. Cardinals do much better with platform feeders and the one I have will come out in the fall again.

This female house finch shows signs of having a long summer caring for her chicks. You can see a bald patch on her stomach area or a brood patch. It works like a hot water bottle while she is incubating her eggs (although during this summer she could have probably done without it).

At least something is thriving in the small garden. Well, the roses are doing well, but I spend everyday watering them.

Hairy Woodpecker

This is what a snapshot looks like when you pretend that your bridge super-zoom camera is really a DSLR with a huge zoom lens attachment. Not so hot.

I was wrong about the tree. I now think it is a willow oak. Anyway, here's what it looks like while standing in the parking lot across the street. Way up, at the very tippy top of the tree, is where I saw the Hairy Woodpecker and got the above photo. Underneath is several nesting holes. I didn't see any fledglings, but I really wasn't looking.

Price Park is a terrific place to wander around (when it isn't so hot!) to see all sorts of birds, wildflowers, butterflies and it has terrific walking paths mown in the huge meadow.

If you click on the Location, you'll see the parking lot I was standing in and the trees right across the road. If you move the map around a little bit, you'll also see the mown path in the meadow.

Sunset Sunday

I can't believe that nearly a whole week has gone by without a post. I put all the blame on the weather and the air quality here in Greensboro. It is difficult to work up any enthusiasm to go out to the parks or lakes or downtown or wherever when the heat index is over 105F and the ozone level so high that it creates an orange haze in the air. Saturday night brought some rain and along with it the promise of slightly cooler weather and clearer air.

I took this snapshot over at Price Park's Bird and Butterfly Meadow. No butterflies were seen, but I did get some dreadfully blurry pictures of a Hairy Woodpecker above its nesting hole in a half-dead pine tree. The flowers are gone by and the meadow is full of seed pods and dried grasses. It will be a great place to go back and take some more good snapshots.

I'm doing this with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine as an ongoing series of sunset posts.

Crepe Myrtle "Sioux"

The only thing that is doing well in my small garden is the crepe myrtle. This particular variety is called Sioux, a tall narrow variety which works well in the corner of the garden.

The roses are doing alright, not terrific, but they are watered on a daily basis. I've given up on the daylilies for the summer. Even though they've been watered regularly, they've mostly given up the ghost. Maybe next year.

Even the Forest Pansy redbud is suffering. Probably a tenth of the leaves have turned red and fallen off and some of the branches are completely bare.

Will the heat ever end? Will fall ever come?

Stunning Sunday Skies

Another standing in the parking lot and shooting blindly above my head since I'm using the little camera and I can't see anything on the digital display (which is why I like the big camera with the viewfinder).

We get these big puffy clouds at lunchtime, but by the afternoon they (and any promised rain) have completely dissipated, leaving us with an orange ozone haze and heavy, choking heat.

I was hoping for rain Saturday afternoon, but all we got was one clap of thunder and three drops of rain. Nothing on the horizon for next week either, just more heat.

I'm doing this in conjunction with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine. Wonder what the skies look like in Vancouver?

Brown Turkey Fig

I bought this Brown Turkey fig tree three years ago out at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market where you can get all sorts of good things - organic fruits and vegetables, baked goods, flower bouquets, plants from local nurseries, etc., etc.

The first year I planted it in the small garden where it did so-so, but not well. That fall I transplanted it into a large container and moved it to the patio.

The second year (last summer) it just absolutely went into collapse by July. No figs had appeared and the leaves had turned yellow and fallen off. Nosing around some of my other blogs, I saw that other gardeners were having the same problem and Jane over at Small But Charming agreed with me that perhaps it was the extreme heat.

Generally I am impatient with my plants and if it doesn't do well two years running, it is out of the garden (or in this case, off the patio). For some reason I decided to give it a third year and see if it would produce any figs. And, much to my surprise, it did.

Now, the yellow and larger of these figs is the crop called the Breva or First crop. I'm told they aren't as tasty as the second (which are the smaller, green figs) and so I'm throwing them in the small garden near the chipmunks' hole for them to eat instead of chewing on my rose bushes (They do! I've seen them do it).

I'll let you know how the second crop fares.

I may be off-line for the next couple of days. With last weekend's day trip being a bust and the next few days being the hottest of the year (and maybe record-breaking) with an ozone haze that makes it next to impossible to take a decent snapshot, I may put off blogging until after the heat wave breaks next week. We'll see. Don't hold me to this; I can always change my mind.

The Cat Who Went Out

Joe

I've always been more of a cat person than a dog person. I love dogs, but cats have always fit better in my lifestyle and personality than dogs.

And since I realized that cats are better off living indoors only, for the past thirty years they've always stayed inside. Even Smokey (gone six years now) who came to me as a semi-feral 4-month old kitten, never again asked to go out or even tried to sneak out an open door the entire 12 years he lived with me.

I now have three elderly cats - Miss Mouse, a tuxedo, who is 16 1/2  and Joe and Zoey, solid black cats, who turned 14 years old this month. They have always been strictly indoors, never once asking or trying to go out . . . until the past month.

I went out to take the garbage to the can on the patio and to my great surprise, Joe came outside with me. He's never shown any interest before and the one time I tried to take them outside (the patio is surrounded by a six-foot high privacy fence, so no chance of anyone wandering off), the hysterics were so great I thought someone would call the cops and report me for torturing animals.

Now, he wants to go out all the time. But as with all cats, it's out, in, out, in until I get tired of being the cat's butler and make him stay inside.

I wonder what brought on the change of heart about going outside after all these years?

Geranium on the Front Step

I bought the most unusual geranium from a local nursery. It is dark red with a nearly black center. I've not seen anything like it at any of our other nurseries here in Greensboro.

I've ignored it, forgotten to water it and yet it blooms and blooms despite our horrendous heat. This week we are looking at head indexes of close to 110F, high humidity and no rain in sight. Can you say "Climate Change?"

Giant Leopard Moth

I was walking through the parking lot at work when I noticed something on the curb that I first thought was a piece of paper with lettering on it. When I moved in closer to take a look, I saw that it was a moth - an enormous moth. Since I always carry a camera with me (in this case, I had the small Panasonic FP8), I took some quick snapshots and went home to look up this behemoth.

It turns out that this is a Giant Leopard Moth (or some parts of the South call it an Eyed Tiger Moth) which has a wing span of over three inches. It is only found on the east coast of the US and its caterpillar is one of the "Woolly Worm" types. Old-timers here in North Carolina believe you can predict the upcoming winter's snowstorms and cold by the bands on the wooly worm. We even have a Woolly Worm Festival in Banner Elk near Boone every fall.

Considering how this summer has been so far with 25 days over 90F and several days recently with heat indexes above 105F, my hope is just for a cooler fall much less a snowy winter.

Sunset Sunday

This week has been a wash as far as snapshots were concerned. Our temperatures soared into the high 90's with heat indexes close to 110F. The humidity was so high that it felt like you were stepping into a sauna everytime you walked out the door and that was not a good feeling.

With the air conditioning kaput in the car, I just stayed home after work instead of taking off to look for interesting pictures. Even when the weather cooled off, it still conspired against me. When I went to the mountains yesterday to take more barn quilt pictures, it started to pour rain and the fog got so bad that I was sure that I was going to be stuck on the top of the mountain for days. I came home yesterday afternoon snapshot-less.

This sunset is from last month when I chased the sunset from parking garage to church parking lot to abandoned housing development.

Stunning Sunday Skies

When I went to the Bellemeade parking garage to take a picture for last week's Sunset Sunday, I got there long before the sun started to set.

So, I took a ton of shots of the clouds while I was waiting on the sun. Looks like I'm up in an airplane rather than on the top floor of a parking garage, doesn't it?

Here's hoping that Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine gets her computer fixed soon and is back blogging. I'd love to see her stunning skies over there in Vancouver, British Columbia.

South Fork New River

But it wasn't all barn quilts, all the time along US 221. The South Fork New River is a huge draw for fly fishers -

And canoing -



And kayaking!

The North Fork New River and South Fork New River meet up just over the Virginia border to make the New River, which despite its name is considered the second oldest river in the world. And it is the only major river in North America to flow from south to north. It finally ends at the Ohio River between West Virginia and Ohio.

I wasn't thinking about taking a snapshot of the general store which sits right next to where all this was taking place on Saturday. Here's a link to their website: www.canoethenew.com in case you have a hankering to come to the mountains of North Carolina to visit the New River.

We only stayed long enough to take a few pictures and then off to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Alleghany County Barn Quilts

But when we crossed over the county line into Alleghany County, I saw lots of barn quilts along US 221, but no website for information and names. Here they are and if anyone can name the pattern, please let me know.

(Actually I do know that is the Dutch Girl and Boy Quilt Pattern. Not one of my favorites)

Squares and Stars

Back to the mountains again - doing the opposite of what ever other North Carolinian was doing for the holiday weekend. While they were stuck in a mass exodus to the beaches, TB and I went back to the mountains where there was hardly any traffic.

And while I hadn't printed out the Ashe County Barn Quilt trail, we saw this one as we left Jefferson going north on US 221. This does have a name; it is called Squares and Stars. It was also an easy snapshot as the barn faced onto an elementary school driveway.

Happy Fourth of July!

The flag outside of my mother's independent living facility made for an appropriate snapshot for the holiday.

Sunset Sunday

Today is Sunset Sunday!

I decided that I needed to find a different place to take my sunset snapshot and had the brilliant idea to go downtown to one of our parking garages and take it from there.

I was really pleased with myself and figured that no one else would have the same wonderful idea until I got to the top level (there are eight levels in the Bellemeade parking garage) and found . . .

A professional photographer who was taking video of the wonderful clouds and sky to use in his portfolio, a dogwalker who had a tiny Chihuahua and a point-and-shoot camera, a walker who was using the top level to speed walk and two kids who were whooping and hollering and riding their skateboards up and down the ramps.

It was fun to talk to the professional photographer and get some tips on how to get better pictures, play a little with the Chihuahua, wave to the speed walker, and hold my breathe while the two kids did all sorts of acrobatic stunts and occasionally fell off their skateboards.

I guess my bright idea is shared by many other photographers, both professional and amateur according to the two who were up there with me. But it does make for a wonderful view.

I'm doing this as an ongoing project with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine. Unfortunately she has a computer motherboard issue, but I hope to have her back doing this with me in a couple of weeks or so. This was inspired by Scott Law over at Just Used Pixels.

New Roses in Bloom

New roses blooming in pots on the patio:

This is Clotilde Soupert, a Bourbon antique rose. Right now it doesn't look like the picture in the catalog. My hope is that it is due to our extreme heat; we'll see in the fall if it comes closer to the catalog version.

And Gruss an Aachen, also in a container. The full flower looks fairly close to the catalog picture, but the catalog describes the bud as "colorful, with tints of orange-red and yellow" which isn't how they appear right now.

Gardener blogger friends - Will they look better as they get more established?

Chasing the Sunset

After taking the snapshots in the church parking lot, I continued to chase the sunset. I had never seen such colors in the sky before - gold, pink, blazing red and a velvety blue.

I finally found myself on a hill in an abandoned housing development. The streets had been paved, the utility lines laid, but the houses were never built due to the collapse of the housing industry. It made for a great location to get out of the car once again and take snapshots of how the sky looked after the sun had completely set.

Looks like a fire ablaze behind the treeline, doesn't it? It's just the last light of the sun.

Here's something interesting. Go to the location I've marked on Google Maps and choose the Street View. You'll see how it looked back in 2008 when the red-hot housing construction industry was still flourishing. Today it is waist-high in weeds.

Stunning Sunday Skies

I went chasing after the sunset this past Friday so that I could get good snapshots for Sunset Sunday which will be next Sunday.

I pulled into a church parking lot to figure out where the next best place would be to go get a good shot without trees and power lines in the foreground. When I turned around, I saw this sky. The clouds are pink from the sun's glow, but despite their ominous look, we never got a drop of rain . . . again. Our drought has inched up from abnormally dry to moderate drought. Perhaps a stray thunderstorm next week, but the weather forecasters don't hold out much hope from a break from the extreme heat and dry weather.

I am doing this as an ongoing project with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine.  Go over and see what she saw in her skies.

A postscript. Blogger has added a location button. When I can, I'll add the location so you can see where I got my snapshot. Most of the time you can also use the Street View function, too. So take a look at my world - I will try to take more pictures in my hometown in the near future.

Lovers Leap Birdhouses

One of the nice things about staying off the main roads is that you can find the most interesting shops. One of our favorites is the Lovers Leap Birdhouses in Virginia. Inside is a collection of birdhouses that are handmade by Henry Mickles.

I don't have a spot for birdhouses, but I like to stop and pick up a new rubber ducky (this time it was three different ones - one like a cat, one that was rainbow striped and one that was a devil). If you're not sure what I'm talking about, here is a good link to go to - Century Novelty. Dumb, I know, but I line them up on the shelf in my cube at work.

Anyway, Henry has a cable with six or seven thistle feeders on it and when we were there, they were all covered with goldfinches (I get them in the winter when they are drab and olive colored). I went outside to take a snapshot and they all flew off except for this one that just ignored me.

And why does he have these feeders strung up high on cables? Go here to find out why. Henry also has three bird cams streaming on his site 24/7. For my friends overseas, go and check out what the weather looks like just 50 miles north of here. I'll admit, it is a little more interesting in the winter as Meadows of Dan gets a lot more snow than we do. But you'll be able to see the birds at his feeders, and if you're lucky all sorts of wildlife.

Flowers on the Parkway

Here are some pictures of plants that I would normally just zoom right by. This trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway I took the time to stop and get out of the car to take macro snapshots.

Black Eyed Susan with Some Unknown Butterfly

Tawny Daylily

Common Yarrow

Goldenrod

Deptford Pink

I certainly wouldn't mind a garden full of these - if I only had the space and the sun for them.

Japanese Beetle

There were not only butterflies on the milkweed plants, but also the infamous Japanese beetle.

A serious pest in the eastern United States, it destroys the host plant by skeletonizing the leaves. I didn't see any damage to the field that I was shooting snapshots in, but I'm sure by the end of the summer considerable damage will have been done.

But the iridescence of his exoskeleton creates an interesting juxtaposition to the green of the milkweed.

Common Milkweed

Along with the butterfly milkweed there was also fields of common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) which was also attracting butterflies. I stopped alongside the road onto the berm so that I could walk into the field and take more butterfly pictures. Except as soon as TB opened her door, she looked down and said "Oh my God, it's full of poison ivy." I decided that it would be smarter just to stay in the mowed area and take pictures using the macro zoom. 

Doing a little research on the milkweed plant, Wikipedia had this interesting observation:

Pollination in this genus is accomplished in an unusual manner. Pollen is grouped into complex structures called pollinia (or "pollen sacs"), rather than being individual grains or tetrads, as is typical for most plants. The feet or mouthparts of flower visiting insects such as bees, wasps and butterflies, slip into one of the five slits in each flower formed by adjacent anthers. The bases of the pollinia then mechanically attach to the insect, pulling a pair of pollen sacs free when the pollinator flies off. Pollination is effected by the reverse procedure in which one of the pollinia becomes trapped within the anther slit.

And I have a picture of the Grand Spangled Fritillary doing exactly that on the Butterfly Milkweed (if you look closely, you can see his proboscis in the flower).

I'm beginning to see that these common weeds are not quite as uninteresting as I had always thought.

Great Spangled Fritillary

The best thing about blogging is that I am now noticing things that I used to walk or drive by in the past. The picture above absolutely illustrates this.

TB and I went up to the Blue Ridge Parkway as I wanted a redo on the prior Saturday's trip. That was the one that turned from a four hour trip into a seven hour one complete with hail, thunder and lightening.

I had wanted to take pictures of the mountain laurel which had been at the height of its bloom, but with that storm and several others during the week there were no blossoms to take snapshots of. But along the berm were tons of a tall plant with bright red blooms, so I stopped and went into the field to take photos.

I must have taken about 20 pictures of the blooms and the butterflies in that field. Coming home I fired up the laptop and went to the wildflower database at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin to find that the plant was called butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa ) and the butterfly on it is a Great Spangled Fritillary.

And that is the best thing about this blog. Because I need to find things to blog about it forces me to slow down and look more closely at the places and things I used to just drive right by and I'm also learning more about these wonderful things that nature puts out right under our noses.

Sunset Sunday

I was absolutely despairing of taking a sunset snapshot for today this week. Any clouds we had in the morning were gone by the afternoon, making for blah sunsets. I started going through my archives to see what I could find to post that would meet the sunset requirements.

Yesterday TB and I drove back up to the Blue Ridge Parkway (flora and fauna shots for this coming week! Hurrah!), but instead of going all the way down to Sparta (we started at Meadows of Dan in Virginia and headed south), I decided to end the trip early and left the parkway at Low Gap, NC and went back home.

It turned out to be a good move, since a heavy line of storms tracked down from Kentucky and hit Greensboro about a half hour after I got home. If we had continued on to Sparta, it probably would've ended up as a repeat of last Saturday.

So, by the time for our sunset here there was plenty of interest in the sky to make for a nice snapshot.

I'm doing this with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine as an ongoing project. Go over and see what she saw there in Vancouver.

Fledgling Robin

While I was out taking pictures of my rather pathetic looking garden, I could hear a robin calling out in the common area. It dawned on me that it wasn't out there by itself as I could here a high pitched answering chirp.

I opened the back gate, looked out and found this fledgling robin just a few feet away. The adult robin backed off a few feet and then started sounding an alarm call that got the fledgling all agitated. I took some not-quite-so-good pictures as I didn't want to harass either bird and then left them both alone.

Robins fledge from the nest about four days before they can even fly. They will hop short distances and perch in low lying bushes and foliage. The parents will remain near the fledglings for up to two weeks after they leave the nest, feeding and protecting them. I read that the adults will even dive bomb humans who get too close like mockingbirds, but this adult just hopped around and called as I took snapshots. Less than 25% of all robin fledglings make to their first birthday.

I went out the next morning to the common area near the white oak where I left him the night before, but he was no longer there. I hope he made it to somewhere safe.

What's Blooming Now

Here is what is blooming in my garden right now:

Nameless Daylily from the Lost Tag Bunch

Another Nameless Daylily

Oriental Lily

Outside of containers of annuals from the various big box home improvement stores, those three plants are the only ones blooming in the small garden. That is the drawback of buying lost tag daylilies - you have no clue when they are going to bloom. It is catch-as-catch-can and looks rather pathetic. Plus it takes daylilies around two to three years to really mature so I have all these bald spots.

Perhaps I need to rethink the small garden. . .