Wordless Wednesday – allow your photo(s) to tell the story.
Linda Schaub
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Linda Schaub
- Woolgathering at the water’s edge. #Wordless Wednesday #Reflections and long shadows
- Some days are diamonds, some days are stones.
- Someone told me it’s all happening at the zoo …. #Wordless Wednesday
- “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood” …
- Fellow Canuck kindred spirit. #Wordless Wednesday #National Walking Day!
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FIFTY FAVORITE PARK PHOTOS
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- Parker noshin’ nuts
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- Fox Squirrel
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- Black Squirrel
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- Parker, my Park cutie!
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- Pekin Duck
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- Mallard Hybrid Duck
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- Midnight munchin’ nuts
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- Mute Swan
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- Goslings
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- Mama Robin
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- Seagulls on ice floe
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- Great Blue Heron
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- Parker chowin’ down
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- Mallard Duck
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- Northern Cardinal
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- Great Blue Heron (“Harry”) fishing for shad
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- Parker: shameless begging
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- Viceroy Butterfly
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- Great Blue Heron
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- American Goldfinch
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- Seagull
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- Robin baby (not fledged yet)
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- Mallard Ducks
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- Robins almost ready to fledge
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- Parker angling for peanuts
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- Robin fledgling
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- Parker making a point that he wants peanuts
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- Parker smells peanuts
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- Parker with a peanut
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- Red-Winged Blackbird
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- Seagull
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- Red-Bellied Woodpecker
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- Pekin Duck
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- Starling
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- Canada Geese family
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- Canada Goose and goslings
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- Red-Winged Blackbird
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- Parker says candy is dandy.
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- Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly
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- American Goldfinch
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- Hunny Bunny
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- Parker looking for peanuts
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- The pier just past sunrise
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- Mute Swan
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- Parker in the snow
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- Parker and a treat
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- Great Blue Heron
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- Me and my shadow (a/k/a Parker)
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- Fox Squirrel
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- Seagull
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- Canada Goose
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- Mallard Ducks
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- Mute Swan
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- Fox Squirrel – Parker
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- Northern Cardinal
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BADGES
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- 02-02-2018
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- 03-13-2018
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- 03-25-2018
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- 03-26-2018
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- Year #6!! 02/2019
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- 04-13-2019
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- 11-21-19
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WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY 
Just gorgeous Linda, and I love the second butterfly. I have not seen any butterfly’s except that one Monarch this year. Those are the same flowers. That is so cool. 🙂
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Good morning Sandra – glad you liked these photos. The second butterfly was my favorite shot too, as you could see the powder on the wings as it sipped – it was like I wasn’t there, just a foot or two away watching it. I thought it was the same flowers as your photos – that was a beautiful plant. I could not believe how all the blooms had died when I went back to that garden yesterday just 10 days after taking these pictures. I have to look and research a bit if Lantana blooms all Summer, or once then dies. I was mixed about using the photo with the Monarch and Tiger Swallowtail up top as it was not as clear, but it was the only photo with both of them in one photo. I didn’t know where to look first at all this beauty!
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I love flower gardens. If there was one around here with a park bench, I would so enjoy sitting there watching all the birds and bees and butterfly’s. How relaxing is that. 🙂
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I know – at Heritage Park there are different types of benches everywhere and two look to be made of petrified wood. There is no shortage of ways to admire the beauty there. They have concerts at the Gardens every Wednesday night … different groups and they have food vendors, so they usually have it in the pavilion area – now you have to bring your own chair though due to COVID-19.
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I noticed down town here they were building an area with these giant cement areas that they filled in with dirt. Last time I went down there they had put a tree in each one of those cement squares. I will have to go down there again to see what exactly that area is. Maybe they put flowers in it also. I might do that today.
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Well it sounds nice – will they put the fake coyote there again to keep the geese from going there (which lasted a couple of days and then the geese were roaming around again)?
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I walked down to that spot yesterday and the little island is covered with weeds now because the geese have already left the pond anyway. So you can’t even see the fake coyote. But the island looks terrible now with all the weeds. The geese kept all that cleaned up nice before.
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Yes, that’s how it looks in the Park now – they have cut it maybe 2 times since it opened on June end. Everything is overgrown and looks raggedy.
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I’m jealous that you could capture butterflies. They fly away at my approach.
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I was lucky here Ellie. This is a volunteer flower garden at Memorial Park. Probably 15-20 years ago, some women planted and tended a rose garden there, then people must’ve lost interest and it languished, full of weeds and looking raggedy for many years. Then, a couple of years ago, some volunteers for the City planted Milkweed to encourage butterflies. I’ve been going over there to see if I can get butterfly shots – there are no Milkweed blooms there yet, but these orange flowers had these two butterflies … they were so busy, they never paid me any attention, though I was just a few feet away from them.
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Beautiful photos. I’ve been grooving on the color orange this summer, so dare I say these photos are perfect?
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Glad you liked them Ally – the orange flowers and the Monarchs flitting around them were just gorgeous in these raised gardens. And all are tended by volunteers. I I went back yesterday – not a single orange bloom remained. The wind and/or that pelting rain did a number on them.
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These colors are just beautiful Linda!
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Thanks Jeanine – I think the Monarch was competing with the flowers for the award of “who is the most colorful here?”
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Lovely colourful picture – words not needed.
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Thanks Andy – I got up really close as those butterflies were busy sipping nectar and paid no attention to me so I could capture these vivid colors. You are right – like your sunflowers … no words necessary.
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Just beautiful!
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Thanks Kate- what a find … beautiful orange flowers and these butterflies, especially the Monarch!
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One of your best series!
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Thank you!
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WOW! Such beautiful photos!
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Thanks Ruth! This is at Memorial Park, a few blocks from me, where volunteers tend to raised bed gardens of perennials. The Monarch and orange flowers were competing for most-vibrant orange color. 🙂
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Orange is my least favorite nature color, but these are beautiful shots!
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Especially the monarchs! I haven’t seen any here at all, hardly anything other than those small white ones….
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Yes, the orange flower and the Monarch – very vibrant! I was lucky to find the butterflies on this flower at Memorial Park. It is a perennial garden tended to by volunteers who live in this City. I have a Tiger Swallowtail that must like something at or around my house. He/she is always flitting around here. I’ve not seen the white ones (Cabbage Whites) this year either. (It’s not like it has not been hot enough for butterflies.)
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Thanks Joni – I can’t say I’m particularly fond of orange either, but this bright orange really grabbed me. 🙂
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Monarchs! My all time favourites!
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I love them too Margy. These two butterflies were so engrossed in sipping nectar they never saw me creeping up close to them.
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Miss Linda…………………….beautiful bright butterflies!……………………………thank you!
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Glad you liked them Ann Marie – these beauties are from the gardens at Memorial Park, tended to by volunteers from the Lincoln Park Green Team. The flowers and butterflies could glow in the dark!
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Your oranges are so vibrant!
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Yes! Thank you – that Monarch seems to blend in perfectly with the flowers (which I think is Lantana). They were both gorgeous.
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Oh, so pretty, Linda. Those Monarchs and Spicebush Swallowtails are just gorgeous!
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Glad you liked them Laurie – I didn’t know there was a Spicebush Swallowtail so I learned something new from you. They were beautiful and paid me no mind as I got closer and closer to them.
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Your blog title is perfect for the pictures!! Lovely shots of the butterfly.
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Glad you liked it Esther – the photo seemed to scream the color orange, Butterflies are so delicate and gorgeous aren’t they?
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We’re huge butterfly fans at this house! Two summers ago, we raised butterflies from a kit we got from a company called InsectLore. The kit arrived with larvae and we went from there. You could look at our pictures from this link: http://singlikewildflowers.com/2017/06/28/butterflies-in-our-house/
We also raised ladybugs and ants.
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First off, look how your kids have grown in three years! That is interesting how you had the kit and lucky you getting to see the entire metamorphosis! Were the ladybugs and ants kits too? My neighbor Marge and I tried raising Monarchs one year. While she was not experiencing any health issues she had worked at a tea room (where they have psychic readings – she was the hostess). The tea room was part of the City of Wyandotte’s big street fair every year. She was out walking around and saw “Monarch Kits” … she called and asked if I’d like her to buy one for me as she was getting one. It was a milkweeed plant in a big canister and mosquito netting over it. The caterpillars ate through their milkweed in no time and I had to find someone who could “donate” to the cause. At that time no milkweed was at my regular Park where I go daily. We finally had to donate them, half of them already in their crysallis to someone who had unlimited milkweed to give them. That was an interesting post Esther.
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I get amazed to see how much they’ve grown in the past few years! They are not toddlers anymore and developing their own personalities. I like how you can talk to them now rationally. When they were younger, it was out of control. For a picture day, Elliot refused to wear a button down shirt…he wore his pajamas for the pictures. I almost lost my marbles that morning as my MIL was coming with us and I could feel her disapproval lurking in the air.
Yes, you can get kits that provide you with everything you need to raise these insects and amphibians. Yes, they have kits for ladybugs, ants, and praying mantis. You can also get tadpoles through the mail, but they poop so much that you need more than the plastic bowl they send.
Those caterpillars love Milkweed. I gotta see for myself what this milkweed looks like. The crysalis is am amazing process because they hang upside down in their cocoon. In some cases, they wiggle inside and the crysalis swings from side to side.
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The Monarch kit we got did not work as well as we thought it would – it had mosquito netting over it and so was a bit of a pain to water it and you couldn’t put it outside in case the squirrels or a bird pecked the netting to get inside. I had it in the basement and it didn’t get enough sun. My neighbor and I thought it would be a very fun experience but it was not. We pictured the “release date” for our butterflies and it didn’t happen because we gave the kits away to a butterfly enthusiast who was used to taking care of them, had a yardful of milkweed and had released hundreds of Monarchs before. I was at one of the Metroparks last year when a Monarch was going to be released – they walked outside with it on their hand – I caught the tail end of it and rather than take a picture, she was going to transfer it from her hand to mine and take a photo then (either me if possible or someone else and e-mailing it to me) but the butterfly (Monarch) flew off into the woods … if I had only gotten there a few minutes earlier!
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I know! It’s always like that with photographs. I’ve had a few of those moments too. And last week, I accidentally deleted all the photos we took on our nature walk. nice, huh?! Always learning the difficult way.
Hmmm, I wonder why the Monarch kit was unsuccessful although lack of sun might have contributed to that. These kits are not always successful. May ant farm was disastrous; the first tubes of ants all died upon arrival. The next batch thrived and all died within a few days. Frogs…well you know what happened. If you ever want to try again, Insect Lore is pretty good. They give you all the supplies you need and very detailed instructions.
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I will remember that name Esther – thank you for the recommendation. It was pretty abysmal and I was so hopeful that I even went and bought a butterfly net to catch it if it flew around the house (if it escaped prematurely) … remember the song “High Hopes”???
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Ellis’ hip hop recital song was “High Hopes” by Panic! at the Disco. But I think you’re referring to the Sinatra. We’re actually playing this song on Goggle Home now. lol They’re humming along to it.
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Yes I was referring to the oldie but goodie. song – I will have to give the other song a whirl though.
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Please do! It’s a very upbeat and fast tempo song. You can watch the music video on YouTube and it could make you do a little jig. heheh
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I just went to YouTube – no, I had not heard of that, but watched the video – it is pretty energetic!!
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It’s very upbeat and catchy. Last night we were watching a video of her practicing the dance for that song. It was only a year ago but she was much smaller.
We practiced our butts off…I’m the at-home coach. I needed Advil those nights.
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Ha ha – it sounds like a real workout. I notice when you show prior pictures how much the kids have grown!
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Haven’t they?! It surprises me as well. On some days it’s apparent they grew overnight and their mannerisms change too. Growing pains are involved for them and for me too in keeping up with them.
Yes, it was a workout. I knew it was time to slow down when my knee pain started flaring up. But then everything came to a standstill with COVID shut down in March. No dance lessons for now. they’ll probably start in the new year. Hopefully, conditions will have improved by then. 🙂
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Yes, I hope it is normal in the new year – it will depend on the arrival/distribution of the vaccine as well. Are there any reasons why Ellis cannot get the vaccine? I suppose the rest of you could get the vaccine then to help protect her from getting COVID.
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It seems the COVID is here to stay for a while longer as schools are set to open in limited fashion. Hard calls for teachers and parents to make when you are risking your health and possibly life if you get really sick.
I hope the vaccine arrives soon too, but those things take time. And will they have time to do clinical trials before regular population gets it? Side effects? I’ve read that kids are getting COVID too when in the past it was reported they didn’t.
Ellis has taken all of the regular vaccines. And if a new vaccine comes out for COVID, that would be up to the cardiologist to decide. It may have adverse reactions with her other medications or on heart function. The pediatrician and cardiologist work closely together, so they’ll contact me right away if anything is available.
We are the first ones in for the flu shot. When she was a few months old and flu season kicked in, she got a vaccine shot every month. But she still got sick and ended up in the ICU. Hope you schedule your flu shot for early September!!
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Here we had school board meeting last night where people stormed the meeting saying they want kids back to school. I am wondering if some are parents who have careers which take them out of the house and are worried about their career.
It sounds terrible to say that though. A woman on the news said she was concerned about her three kids, as the two older one have depression issues and the youngest is eager to start school.
People downplay the flu as something seasonal. I used to get the flu shot in mid-October, but now they advise to get one right after Labor Day (which surprises me a little). Sorry to hear Ellis had such a bad case of the flu to end up in the ICU, despite a monthly flu vaccination.
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I was just talking to my parents about the monarchs. I haven’t seen them yet this year. Great shots of the monarchs and swallowtails!
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I was lucky to see these Diane – this was at Memorial Park at the volunteer “Green Team” garden. I went to see if there were butterflies at/near the Milkweed, but found these two beauties on what I think is Lantana. They were oblivious to me so I could get really close to them. Glad you liked this.
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Great macro work Linda!
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Thanks Wayne! Those butterflies were so busy sipping nectar that they paid no attention to me, so I was able to get really close to them. The Monarch and Swallowtail gave me lots of opportunities as they flitted from flower to flower.
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whether it be a butterfly or a Blue Heron,If they are busy “fixing dinner” they are the ones you can sneak up on and get those close up shots
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I was excited as I could see the powder on their wings as I was so close. And that orange Lantana really set them off. The purple coneflowers will not be as striking, maybe even blah. I’ll be happy if they came out as well. I got some bees who were busy in the flowers.
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It’s moments like this that will fuel you to do more! Careful,…it’s addicting!
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You are right about that … a walk is no longer a walk with an occasional snap of a shutter; it is often a photography expedition with a walk on the side!!
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most great shots are because of the “leg work” (in my case….boat work) done first! It leads you into unique opportunities!
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Yes, this is true – I would not have driven through all the construction I did yesterday to see sunflowers … I saw that field of sunflowers 40 years ago, but I wanted to take photos of them. On Saturday I drove 32 miles round trip to see the lotuses in bloom. So I think this hobby has hooked me for sure! Now I am going to see what the pro in his boat has posted. 🙂
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Oh how lovely these are! Indeed, why not sit and sip a bit? Amazing little creatures. Whenever I see them I think of Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful book, “Flight Behavior.”
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I was just mesmerized watching them Barbara. I had my small camera I always carry on me and visited this volunteer garden and was able to get so close to them. They were sipping nectar and never moved. Oh butterflies are not only amazing but beautiful creatures. Tomorrow I have a post that will show some butterflies from the Botanical Gardens., (Cabbage Whites and Painted Ladies). I’ve had the pictures for awhile but had to write the post for it. I was on a hike near a wildflower garden in August and saw a butterfly with such tattered wings that I don’t know how it could fly. I took a picture of it as it perched on a leaf.
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Just gorgeous!!
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Thank you M.B. Henry. That orange Lantana and Monarch were so perfect together.
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