Summer Mutant Flower Weirdness (for my Gardening Guru) plus a few more normal flahrs.

Summer Flowers At Sebago...

Bee balm (note arriving & departing namesakes).

Black-eyed Susan:


Bastard child? (whoops, there goes my G-rating...)


Adele the Gardening Chair had asked me to take a picture of the funky mutant that she & Jen the Other Gardening Chair found one day. Strange, isn't it? Jen was going to take a bunch more, so I wandered on to my overdue appointment with the hammock - that afternoon nap was actually a crucial part of the weekend's plan.

7/31 update: A Google search under "mutant black-eyed susan" led me to this page about aster yellow disease. Bummer.

The rest of the following flower pictures were taken the next day, early on Sunday morning 2 weeks ago & the fact that I was taking pictures of flowers at 7 am instead of schlepping around on a bus was due to another pretty good call - last weekend's good call was to not get electrocuted in a dinghy on Sunday; weekend before was to be clever enough to simply go out & spend the 2 hottest yuckiest days of the heat wave on or by the bay. Here are some of the results:

1st three in my garden.

Ageratum (oooh fluffy!

A small poppyish thing?

OK, um, these & the poppy are all out of a mixed-flower seed packet. I have no idea what they are, but it was a nice mix!

Here are some wild ones -

Chicory

Queen Anne's Lace

Dandelion (a weed, but a cheerful one)

Clover, with another bee...

Finally, an unidentified small white flower that sprinkles the lawn. The fly was much prettier in real life - a shining bronze color, looked like something a jeweler might like to recreate. I'm quite bummed that the one that almost caught the shine was out of focus, while the in-focus one didn't catch the metallic gleam at all.

And then, it was time to go for the 3rd paddle of the 2 day weekend. Ambitious, eh?

I was so glad I'd just stayed out there. What I bought with that decision was the hammock-napping, and the flower-picture-taking, and sitting with Prof. M. eating breakfast by the dock watching a skimmer fishing for it's own breakfast.

Just the sort of thing I reallyreallyreally need more of this summer.