Black Swallowtail Butterfly on the butterfly bush.

I apologize for the wordless entries. I just don’t have any words this week! I hope you’re enjoying the photos anyway. Every time I walk down into the garden I see a different butterfly or bug and I just can’t resist trying to capture them with my lens.

More Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird moths.

You’ve heard of the phrase “I’d like to be a fly on the wall”? How about on a flower? I don’t think it was just a normal fly, too iredescent.

The nearly spent orbs of the bee balm appear to be floating like small gas station satellites. The Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird approaches like a tiny plane looking for a spot to refuel.

They have all finally arrived. Right on cue the cicadas have amassed their counterparts for their summer symphony. The same time every year they all gather round for their summer performance. Tonight is the first night I’ve heard so many. One thing that is different this year is that they have a backdrop of crickets. My Mom always said that the crickets are a sign of fall. To have them both on stage at the same time is a bit puzzling. I don’t remember them in the previous two years of our living here. But yet, there is no mistaking them. The crickets sound like a soft violin backdrop for the chit-chit-chitting back and forth of the cicadas. Talk about a soothing sound to lull one to sleep ... yawn... I can feel my eyelids drooping sitting here typing with the windows open for maximum volume.

Sorry, Colorado, right now you seem pretty boring in comparison to my life here. Fireflies in June/July; then cicadas in August. Bear, turkeys, deer, and coyotes (we heard a pack with pups twice over the weekend very close) and who knows what else.

This evening Rick was in Philly on business and I took the dogs for a walk. Myrtle and the Fab 5 were down at the end of the street. All five cubs were up a large tree in a neighbor’s yard. The dogs were well behaved and we just watched as each cub made their way down the tree and off to Mom Myrtle. Wonderful. How many people can say they saw a mother bear with her five cubs on a routine walk down the street where they live?