It's Friday, TGIF! Today's image is this bubbly bokeh filled image of some of my Zinnias from this past summer. Zinnias are a nice easy flower to grow from seed that are butterfly magnets. I chose this image for today because here on the Blog, Friday's Are Bokehlicious!
So late this summer, early autumn, while I was watering my mums I would see this gal hanging out on them for a few days. It must have been a good spot to catch dinner for this female Praying Mantis. She was pretty cooperative with me taking a photo or two. 😁
It's Wildflower Wednesday here on the Blog! Today's image is of a trio of Missouri Evening Primroses. They usually bloom May through July. The flowers generally open in the evening and close by mid morning the following day. Night flying moths are the pollinators. They are very drought hardy plants and can be found growing in very rocky soils.
The Bald Eagles come to our area to over winter because, usually, there is plenty of open water for them to hunt in. This winter we have had some extreme cold and heavy snow so there have been areas of the lake that have actually frozen over. This is one by the dam where a couple of them were standing on the ice looking for food. I was rather happy with this image because I shot it rather quickly from a moving car. No, I was not driving at the time. 😂
Happy Monday and happy new week! My mother-in-law had a beautiful Orchid that was blooming while I was there in late December. It was so pretty and full, I thought it was fake at first. I had to take a photo of it. I did a little processing to make it more of a high key look to it.
It's Steamy Sunday here on the blog! It's also a double digit day! 😀 Today's image is a perfect one for today as it is very steamy. This is the Wagner locomotive being "blown down" to have some work performed on it. To "blow down" a locomotive means to let the pressure off fairly quickly, usually by opening a special valve on larger locomotives or boiler plugs on smaller ones. Under normal circumstances, you don't want temperatures to change quickly on a locomotive as it stresses the metal. However, blowing it down a bit at times can help clear and sediment or gunk that couple be in the boiler. Generally you want the pressure on the boiler to drop to 0 before you drain it. On this day we were wanting to do a quick repair so we could resume running for the visitors to the show.
Happy first day of February! The year is really moving along which is nice because I am tired of the cold and snow. The snow hasn't even been good for snowflake photos which has been horribly disappointing. It has been pretty good for ice crystal images of the storm doors though. This is one I took on a cold morning on the west side of the house when the sun had not melted it off yet. I love the fern-like patterns the ice makes on the glass.
