More fireflies

They're flashing from ground level to canopy again this evening. Magical.

I poked around to see if I could find a decent image to share, with no luck (either highly enhanced images or not very good ones).

Certainly my camera(s) can't do justice to the biological flashing in the dark, programmed by selection to attract mates. It's lovely to watch and an unexpected summer treat.

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A pop-up flower shop

My garden group (an eclectic federated garden club) recently had a meeting where we created flower arrangements to go to a local hospice care facility.

One of our members is a nurse there, and a couple (that are new members) suggested the program.

It was delightful.

We all brought flowers and foliage from our own gardens, or snagged flowers from commercial outlets, and we created MANY lovely arrangements.

 It was a great experience, and hopefully brought some remembrance and respite to folks at the hospice facility.

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Fireflies

It's not easy to get photos of fireflies, but just imagine their flashing from ground level to canopy.

We've been treated to evening displays for days now. Lovely, and unexpected.

Normally, we'd have sucessional waves, from ground to canopy over weeks, not days - so it's a treat to see the night sky full of flashes.

Years ago, in Maryland, we saw similar views in the canopy forest below the house we rented in summer (while during field work). Nice to see that again in our urban ravine forest behind the house.

 

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Morning view

Orchid, cyclamen and banana bran muffins

 

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Sunset at Beaver Lake

A favorite morning walk (at Beaver Lake in North Asheville) is also a wonderful evening stroll. 

The light and clouds were exceptional this evening, with Woody on a post-dinner walk.

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Another bear saunters by

Eating dinner out on the deck this evening brought another bear sighting.  This fellow was larger, with an ear tag, so wasn't the younger fellow of a couple of days ago.

He checked out (the empty) bird feeder, poked around a bit, and headed up the ravine (towards town). 

I hope he turned around and headed back down, towards more woods and the larger neighborhood...

So this is the 4th bear sighting in our urban Western NC site.

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A young bear helping himself

A morning fuss from Woody (our Golden retriever) had me looking from the deck (what was he barking so vigorously about?)

It turned out to be a young (presumably) male black bear, quite small, who was helping himself to the black oil sunflower seeds in the feeder.

According to our neighborhood list-serve, he must have just been wandering through our end of the neighborhood.  We're close to downtown, so don't normally get visits. 

This is just the third bear we've seen in 7+ years.  They've all involved the bird feeder -- so no seeds for a while...  He was so small, I just let him eat the seeds, without doing too much shooing away.

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