Day 234

Today John and I went to a river overlook that is famous for the origins of naming Richmond.

Female Tiger Swallowtail butterfly

Cicada

If you look carefully on the left flower, you can see a light colored bee.

Gerber daisy bud

Overlook

Crape Myrtle

Sign explaining how the city was named.

Day 208

This morning, I met up with my friend Amanda Erickson to take some photos at Maymont. I haven't been to Maymont since March and the temperature was about 80, so it was a great excuse to go there.

Yoshino Cherry

Hemlock

Some type of pine tree maybe?

Southern Magnolia

In the Japanese gardens, there were a lot of dragon flies...

...and bees on these purple flowers.

Water lily and pads

Day 175

Today, we left Orlando, FL for Myrtle Beach, SC. This is a long drive, so I slept most of the time. While awake in the car, I took a few photos of the sky, which looked great with the bright sun.

The straight lines across the sky are from plane exhaust. The more vertical ones are natural.

Went we got to Myrtle Beach, we changed for dinner into something nicer than traveling clothes and headed for the beach. We walked along the beach to our dinner destination.

This bee was dead in the sand.

We found 3 dead jellyfish. This one looked the most like a jellyfish.

This broken conch shell was among the thousands of broken shells that were left in huge piles on the shore. I can only assume that the tide brings in huge amounts of shells nightly and leaves them there as it goes out.

Since we are on the east coast, the sun rises over the water and sets across the land...unless you are farther down in Florida on it's west coast. I took this photo through the window of the hall way to our room. We were on the 19th floor. I'm not sure why the glow of the sun created a large blurred circle and a small concise circle, but it's very neat to see. Also, if you look closely, you can see rays radiating from the sun

Day 169

Today, I was getting ready for our trip, so I took photos by our house. There have been multi-colored flowers dropping down from a tree in front of the house. I googled to figure out what they were from. I found out they are from a tulip tree. I had to squint hard to figure out which tree they were coming from. It helped that blooms were dropping as I was searching. Once I figured it out, I took more photos of the tree.

The rhododendron is in full bloom and the bees are abundant.

The sun was coming through the trees in a glittery way. It took a few tries, till I could capture the broken up light.

Day 165

Today, I took photos of new plants along the main path.

I think these are some type of rose.

These came from the pine trees.

We have lots of caterpillars and inchworms who have been busy chewing on leaves

This weed like plant has a very long stem. I'm trying to convince my neighbor not to cut it down, just in case it has beautiful flowers.

These are vivid red azaleas

Pink and white azaleas

My white azalea is already losing it's blooms. This bee was taking advantage of the pollen in this one. You can see that a petal of this one has a hole in it. That might be from caterpillars or inchworms.

This is from a tulip tree. Tulip trees are tall  like oaks and maples, so it's hard to see their blooms way up high, to see which of the trees is a tulip tree. I will try to find the tree though.

The rhododendron started opening up it's blooms. I walked around to the back of the bush and was greeted by two large bees. They were so big that the clusters shook when they entered the flowers. It was amusing to watch them from a safe distance, as they gathered and dropped pollen.

This the second bee. It looks like a weird little alien.

Day 154

Today, I looked on our pathway for different kinds of azaleas.

Light pink

White

Hot pink

White with yellow spots

The trees above were brightly lit by the sun. You can see the new green leaves vividly.

While I was headed to the car, I heard a bee near by. When I looked for it, I noticed it was a large one pollinating our white Azaleas. I would have gotten a closer and clearer photo, but it's a bee and I prefer not getting stung or killing something for photo sake.

On the way back to the house, I noticed the moon was showing already, before the sun had gone down. I love that the camera picked up the crater shadows of the moon.

Day 147

Today, I took photos while Alex and the neighbor girl played and learned about different nature things.

The blooms on the white Dogwood tree finally opened fully.

These white flowers are high up on this tree.

The red Tulip by the bus stop, opened up. I love the contrast of the colors inside.

The girls and I were impressed with this ant carrying a flower bud.

These are two huge black bees flying high up. The ripples are due to this photo being taken through my 40 year old vaulted living room window.