Another Vetch...

All of the flowers I've posted so far have been on my road. The other day I noticed a mass of pink on the main drag, Rt. 196, so when I got home I took a walk to investigate what it was. It ended up being a big batch of this crown vetch. It looks like clover but the aroma was very sweet. That is something I've discovered doing this series, a lot of these flowers have surprisingly sweet scents.

Spreading Dogbane....

Originally I was just going to have this roadside wildflower series this week but I ended up taking so many photos that I'm going to continue it into next week. I love this time of year, it seems every time you turn around there is something new to photograph. In some cases I had only a few blossoms to take a photograph of, I found only one blue eyed grass. With this dogbane there were thousands and thousands of blossoms, I wandered around looking for a nice clump in a pleasing composition. At the end of the series I'll give some tips on how I took the pictures and what techniques I used.

Fleabanes....

Here are two different fleabanes, the top photo is a daisy fleabane. The bottom photo is the common fleabane, they have similar blossoms but the leaves on the two plants are different. The common fleabane also has a little more pink in it. I got lucky while photographing the bottom photo, the hoverfly landed on the blossom and stayed there long enough for me to take one photo before it flew off.

Blue Eyed Grass....

Most of the blue eyed grass have gone to seed but I found this late bloomer the other day and since it was near the road I had to photograph it. It's easy to see how it got its name, its stalk looks like a blade of grass and the blue blossom sits at the top of it.

Vetch...

Vetch is a very common sight on the roadside during the month of June. Later in the summer the blossoms turn into what look like miniture peapods. Usually they appear in a jumbled mass but I isolated this single batch of blossoms so they would show up better.

White Clover....

This weekend I decided to just photograph common roadside wildflowers to see if I could get any pictures worth posting. These are the type of flowers that people see so often that they barely pay attention to them. The only requirement I had was that they had to be right on the edge of the roadside and most of the flowers I photographed were only a couple of feet from the edge, the furthest was maybe 6 feet. Good thing I live on a quiet street. Each day this week I'll be posting pics of these common flowers. Today is a white clover but this particular blossom had a lot of pink in it.

Mass of Purple....

The other day was a yellow theme, today it's purple and blue so here are some more lupine photos. The lupine season is almost over here in Maine.

Orange Hawkweed.....

I took this photo at the same time I took yesterdays yellow flowers but since it didn't fit the yellow theme I'm posting it today.

Mellow Yellow....

It's been dreary and rainy all this week so during a break in the showers yesterday afternoon I went out to take some pictures. I decided to photograph some yellow flowers in the neighborhood, they're blooming everywhere.

Baby Grasshopper....

I took this photo about half an hour ago on a milkweed leaf, this grasshopper was real small, about half an inch long.

Lupines Are Peaking Now.......

Lupines are at their peak right now here in Maine. Here are some photos I took last season.

Atlantic Ocean Sunset....

Last Saturday Mike and I photographed a wedding down in Wells. At sunset we took the bride and groom to Wells Beach to get some photographs of them on the beach. Sometimes good photography is 90% luck. Imagine the bride and groom posed on this beach with this as a backdrop, they were quite happy. When we were finished photographing them I took a few shots to post on this blog, this was my favorite.

Another Comparison Photo...

Here is another photo of the honeysuckle I photographed last week. The rock on the left side of the photograph is the same rock in the second picture which I photographed last winter. I was standing on the rock when I took the photo I posted on June 2nd. It's quite apparent there's no way I would've been able to stand on it a few months ago.

One of Maine's Wild Orchids....

In keeping with the close up flower shots this week, here's a photo of a lady slipper that I took on Monday. It's been a few years since I actually took a picture of one and I was able to take this just before the sun came back out. A few minutes after I snapped the photo, this blossom was in the bright sunshine which is the worst kind of lighting for flower photos.

Blue Columbine...

Here's another photo from my flower garden that I took this past weekend.

Bearded Iris....

We had a lot of rain last week but it got real hot over the weekend. My irises are growing beautifully this year and I took this photo Friday morning during a break in the rain showers.

Another Violet.....

Here's another photo I took at the river the other day.

Invasive Species....

When I was a kid I never saw honeysuckle but now it's everywhere and is considered an invasive species. I even have one growing in my yard, it's hard not to like them because they smell so sweet and the birds feed on the berries in the fall. I guess that's how it gets spread.

Spring Violet....

I took this photo Monday morning along the bank of the river. There was no dew but this one water droplet was clinging on the end of the blade of grass right next to the violet.

On a separate note, I haven't seen the chickadees that were going to nest in my nest box for a few days. Yesterday I noticed an eye pearing out at me from inside the box and it looked bigger than a chickadee eye, it turned out to be a red squirrel. I guess it drove out the chickadees and decided to take it over.

Same Subject, Different Season....

Here is a photo of the same bunch of beech trees but two totally different looks. Obviously the top one was taken last winter and I was experimenting with long shutter speeds. The blue cast is caused by the blue of the sky, the sun had set and so the only lighting was the sky itself. I've posted the photo before but I wanted to repost it as a comparison to the picture I took yesterday. It's absolutely essential to use a tripod for this type of photography because of the long shutter speeds.

Spring Flow...

This photo is similar to ones I took this past winter in the same area, although this one has a lot more green and a lot less white.