Sunflower

 

Swallowtails

"The male is yellow with four black 'tiger stripes' on each forewing. Females may be either yellow or black, making them dimorphic. 

The yellow morph is similar to the male, but with a conspicuous band of blue spots along the hindwing, while the dark morph is almost completely black." -- Wikipedia

"The black swallowtail [above] has a wingspan of 6.9–8.4 cm, and females are typically larger than males. The upper wing surface is black with two rows of yellow spots – these spots are large and bright in males and smaller and lighter in females." -- Wikipedia

Gourds

I'm thinking of making a birdhouse out of a gourd for this upcoming cold season.

"Gourds continued to be used throughout history in almost every culture throughout the world. European contact in North America found extensive gourd use, including the use of bottle gourds as birdhouses to attract purple martins, which provided bug control for agriculture. Almost every culture had musical instruments made of gourds, including drums, stringed instruments common to Africa and wind instruments, including the nose flutes [GROSS!!!] of the Pacific." -- Wikipedia

Mackerel Sky

 

One for Skywatch Friday (above)

And one of what I guess I would call pond watch. :-)

Trail Nuts

Virginia Capital Trail

Soybeans

Over on Governor's Land, farmers have once again planted soybeans.

One of these days, maybe I will be lucky enough to find out how these soybeans will be used. 

Mushrooms!

 

 

It has not been too long since I last hiked at Greensprings . . .

 

 

so I was quite surprised

 

 

 

to discover such a trove of mushrooms that had popped up since.