Leaf Sunday

Today we had our third annual leaf raking party at my father's house.

My dad has nearly an acre of property surrounded by trees and it is too much for him to take care of by himself any longer.

We decided we should all share in the job and keep him sane.

As always, I took the opportunity to look for interesting photo subjects.

This is some moss on one of my favorite trees.

We bagged 59 bags of leaves in an hour and a half and he still has two or three trees that are green and need to fall. Also, his neighors trees have not fallen yet and they never pick up their leaves so they all blow into my dad's yard. So, there is more work to be done.

It was a beautiful day here, a break from the rain we've been having. When we were done we went inside for hot cider and chocolate. Then we had a dinner of homemade soups and subs.

Hope you had a great weekend! :)



Fluttering Beauty

Today I had one of my favorite monarchs in the garden wafting among the last of my zinnias.

This lovely creature let me creep ever closer to it.

It even let me touch its wing a little before it flew away.

I noticed that the center of the zinnia contains a bunch of little flowers. The butterfly had this long tongue-like thing (it probably has a name) that it would stick into the flower to get pollen or nectar or whatever it was after.

Maybe in this picture you can see it coiled up.  The butterfly was moving its food along the tongue-like thing into its mouth. It was fascinating. I couldn't believe I got this close to it.

 

 

Even though we have passed the end of summer on the calendar, we have had some great weather here for the past week. It was nice to spend some more time outside today. I feel like each day we have that is nice out also keeps winter away for one more day. What a nice treat for "end of summer". :)

Hope you are enjoying your end of summer/fall!