Showing posts with label sunflowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sunflowers. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

A Study in Sunflowers

These pics should warm me up--forecast is for 35 tomorrow night with potential frost... a good 2 weeks ahead of schedule. I had a nightmare a week ago that the asters were covered in snow. If it comes true I'll just have to put space heaters in the garden. And I bet you think I'm kidding.

As always clicking on the pics and expanding them may be a treat. Look for Waldo while you're at it.

Afterglow


















Bee's Knees



















Centrifuge













Flight



















Mantis



















Pollen

Shyness

Sunrise

Yellows




















Female monarch on stiff goldenrod

Monday, September 22, 2008

Lincoln, Nebraska Hates Flowers--A Rant

I drive Rosa Parks Way every day, twice--no, it's not Rosa Parks Parkway, which makes more sense to me. It used to be called Capital Parkway, which also made sense because it leads straight to the penis of the prairie, uh, capital building. I don't want to get in to too much trouble, so let me move along.

There were hundreds, if not thousands of sunflowers lining this four lane, 50mph, 3 mile stretch of road.

They are all gone now.

The city crews brought their big mowing tractors in and that's that. No more gorgeous yellow blooms in the twilight of summer. No more pollinator heaven. No more nature. I mean, who doesn't like flat, browning expanse? Oh, the migrating geese do like this spot....

These plants were far from the road, in fields and gullies, nowhere near sight lines or such that might imperil drivers. This just really @^^&**$^!~@#$$^ pisses me off. It's like the trees they cut down on campus to make room for building new dorms / unions, trees that stand at the FRONT of where these new buildings will be, not in the MIDDLE. Will they replace the trees? Hell yes. Will they be small and marooned in concrete planters like the union plaza? Indeed. Will they drop leaves early, stressed because their feeder roots are under 10,000 square feet of concrete sidewalks, like the many maples in front of the union? Hmm.

Anyway, back to the sunflowers that used to make my drive in to teach at 9am and my zombie like drive home at 2 delightfully bookended and uplifting--here's to you, helianthusized, euthanized, pulverized. May the sunflowers along Highway 77 remain untouched and find their seeds blown your way. Damn Lincoln.