September Beautiful!

September, 2017

Our days are getting shorter but our wildflowers and other plants are showing off here in Massachusetts.  Take a wildflower walk with me - and see a couple of tiny critters too.

Evening primrose after a rain.

Evening primrose seeds.

Jewel Weed otherwise know as Touch-Me-Not.

A bee harvesting the Jewel Weed.

Large lily pad with middle "moon drop".

Green and purple.

Lily seed pod

Graceful Blue Vervain

Seed cluster

Climbing False Buckwheat - one of my favorites.

Climbing False Buckwheat vine on Winterberry

Bumblebee and buckwheat

Showy Tick-Trefoil

Monarch caterpillar on Milk Parsley (this plant is rare in these parts).

Extremely prickly Burr Thistle

The "down of a thistle" - the plant is prickly but the seeds are indeed downy.

Meadowhawk dragonfly

Tiny Green Peeper - only 1.5 inches.  He was in my last blog, but had to add him to this one too!

Last but not least - poison ivy, so pretty this time of year.

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Milkweed is for Monarchs?

August & September 2017 - Concord and Tewksbury, MA

Monarch butterfly numbers are on the rise thanks to many people and organizations in North America who have worked to save them.  There are still threats, but there is hope.

Monarch butterflies need milkweed plants to survive as milkweed provides food for all phases of its life.  

But other critters seem to enjoy milkweed leaves too, for whatever reason - even just to relax in the sun!  Hope you enjoy some of the other critters I saw.  (By the way, some of the photos look like there is flash used - but it is just the sun!)

Colorful monarch caterpillars feeding on milkweed leaves.

Eat up!  This is the generation that will become the butterfly and fly thousands of miles to Mexico!

Now for some other fans of milkweed I saw...grasshoppers, a tiny frog and more!

A handsome fellow (if he is a fellow).

So Cute!  This is a 1.5 inch Green Peeper frog!  I had never seen one - but heard plenty of them as I'm sure you have! Glad I have a close-up lens.

This a nymph (baby) green stink bug.  (I had to look that up!)  At first I thought it was facing me...

...but here is the nymph turned sideways for a more realistic perspective.

This is a second grasshopper sunning on a milkweed leaf.  At least I assume it's sunning....

Another monarch caterpillar.

A bumble bee too.

I'm sure there is a whole ecosystem of beings who enjoy milkweed.  These are just some I happened to see.  

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