This and That in Nature

Don't you just love this picture of Sarah Kate? Of course you can tell it was taken several years ago, but I just thought it was one of the cutest picture I'd ever seen when John sent it.
I remember thinking how cute it would be on the front cover of Better Homes and Gardens or Good Housekeeping. I did send it to one of those magazines and got a reply thanking me but saying they had all their covers planned for the year. Oh well, their loss!



One evening a few weeks ago Mel called me out to the patio where he was about to fire up the grill. Lo and behold we had had a visit from Charlotte. Click on the picture and see her amazing handiwork. I was anxiously awaiting the next morning when I thought I could get a great picture of the web with the sun at my back and maybe morning dew on it. Have you ever experienced that amazing sight--beautiful! In the morning the web was gone (Mel did move the grill carefully away from the web before lighting it). Haven't seen it or Charlotte since.

Once Jill gave me a pack of sunflower seeds and I decided to plant them on either side of the pool. The tiny little seeds grew and grew and before I knew it, I had gigantic flowers as you can see from the picture. They were pretty enough but the problem was with bees. They would come during the day and swarm all over the sunflowers then fly across the pool to the other ones. We had bees everywhere in the yard. I finally ended up knocking the flowers down one night when no bees were in sight. I'm sure the bees and the giant who was waiting for those gigantic stalks to grow to his house in the sky were sad.