Happy Monday and happy new week! I am going to start off the week with something that makes me happy, butterflies and flowers. This is a Painted Lady butterfly that I was able to capture recently visiting my Zinnias. Remember when you are planting next spring, Zinnias are great flowers to plant to draw in butterflies. They grow from seed and are fairly low maintenance.
It's Steamy Sunday here on the Blog! Last weekend I was in Abilene Kansas for their Heritage Day at the Dickinson County Historical Society. That weekend, the steam engine is fired up to run the CW Parker carousel. The engine is from 1901 and is original to the carousel and is the oldest operating CW Parker carousel. I have helped operate it for the last 2 or 3 years now. It was a good day and the firing went well, it has no draft door so keeping the fire even is a bit of a challenge. It is fired with wood that is mostly hedge. Someone there called it "Kansas Coal". It is a quite hard wood.
The Frontiers in Flight Air Show at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita had several performance planes. The old WWII planes were very cool to see both on the ground and especially the ones that flew. This is Swamp Fox, a P51 Mustang that was very cool to see. The hubster's grandfather help to build them during the war.
It's Friday, TGIF! I finally have an Aster plant that I bought and planted that is doing fairly well. Yay. It was blooming recently and attracting the small butterflies that have been around this year. I captured this Clouded Sulphur enjoying the blooms one afternoon. The image has some great bubbly bokeh so sharing it today because Friday's Are Bokehlicious here on the Blog!
It's a double digit day here on the Blog! 😀 I saw this cool guy on the roof of one of our cars one day recently. It stayed fairly still and I was able to get up close to it with my phone. This is a fairly large Katydid. I like how the wings really look like leaves, they would blend in well on a tree. Not so much on a car. 😆
It's Wildflower Wednesday here on the Blog! I don't think I have shared this flower this year and it is one of my favorites! These are Black-eyed Susan that are growing on the bank of my Gazebo Pond. They usually bloom May through September. They are also known as Rudbeckia Hirta and are in the Sunflower family.
Today's image is one from this spring when I was able to view several groups of ducks passing through the area. I captured this group after they took off from the pond I originally saw them on. There were some Blue Wing Teals and a couple of Buffleheads in the group I believe.
