Flowers advertise to passing bees

Summer flowers abound these days.  Just along the roadside, this bee attractor was advertising its remaining nectar and pollen.  It had several buds that had not yet bloomed, so this business was going to be open for a good while.

Summer's swan song splashes past.

The end is coming for the cooling spray of water and the splash in the pool to beat the summer heat.  School starts back up Monday. The fun will be missed, the heat will not.  

The splash pads have sprung to life

It is that magical time of the year when the splash pads that have been sitting idle suddenly spring to life.  Suddenly, kids are told the weather is "warm enough" and the world returns to the magical place it was last summer.

If you are five years old, you may only remember this happening twice before.   Strange.  Wouldn't it be nice if summer and "warm enough" came around every year?

Tales of summer won

It was just a simple flower on the side of the road.  But the more I looked at it, it appeared to have a summer's worth of tales written on it.  Close encounters with bees, wasps, butterflies and who know what.  Maybe even some swashbuckling over who would get the first sip of nectar.  Not that it was ever part of the brawl.  It just provided the ring so that it could have a front row seat to a summer of feasting.  On the side, it was a ancient mating ritual for the flower -- one it never revealed to its nectar-toting stinger-swingers.  They flew away with the nectar of the gods. The flower's dream had just begun.

flower

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Glass-hugging tree frog

This fellow had chosen one of our windows for a day of relaxation. He was clinging there when I spotted him and stayed put while I ran and got my camera. I wasn't very comfortable with what I shot. There wasn't enough room to get above him, and the lighting was surprisingly dim for outside.  So I ran in to check my shots on the computer a couple times before I decided this was about as good as I was going to get.   Next time, I will ask the tree frog to move out into the light.

tree frog, nature

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Reminiscing the past summer's pastimes

Pardon my passing musings on the passing of summer's pastimes.
Were that it were crawfish season year round.

Crawfish, Beaumont, Texas

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Freez-frame, in frozen light

Emerging after a massive cannonball in the backyard pool, the diver shakes the water from his hair with the pool light as a backdrop.
(I took this shot from a video shot on my Kodak PlaySport hand-held video camera)

Pool, Splash, Beaumont, Texas

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