David's Images of the Day Photoblog
I continue to get new poppies blooming every day. The most are red, some are pink, and one was white. The flowers attract tiny hoverflies.
Daily Power Use (54.0 kWh) from Sense and Solar Production (38.75 kWh) from SolSystems and Locus Energy. Power use is down since I adjusted the thermostat to 72°F.
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Wildflowers in bloom and my urban garden. The yucca plant sent shoots up to flower. The local deer really like these, and if I don’t catch and protect the shoots I don’t get any of the yucca flowers. These flowers bloom at night, around a full moon and attract some large moths. Lots of red poppies and cosmos flowers. Other flowers include the blue spiderworts (open for a day, every day new ones), cornflowers (bachelor buttons — attract goldfinches), morning glory vines, and daisy’s. The garden towers are full of fruits and vegetables. One of my sunflower plants is taller than I am. It is also supporting a burma gourd (water gourd plant) that I hope to get some gourds this year.
Daily Power Use (74.2 kWh) from Sense and Solar Production (42.05 kWh) from SolSystems and Locus Energy. Power use is up since I reduced the indoor temperature provided by the WaterFurnace Geothermal HVAC system. Will raise the indoor temperature to 72°F for tomorrow. The power was also out for a little over one hour in the morning. For safety/code reasons, if the PSE&G power is down, my solar panels are disconnected from the grid. I’m thinking of getting a couple of Tesla PowerWall batteries so this doesn’t happen in the future.
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A poppy about to pop and an orange poppy bloom. Back then, I had to go across the street to a neighbor’s yard with a high fence that keeps the deer out to take pictures of spring flowers. Now I have my own wildflower garden/meadow with an electric fence.
Monarch Butterfly. Eleven-years ago while driving home from work I saw purple wild flowers on the side of the road at an abandoned golf course in Hillsborough. I pulled over to see if there was a picture. The purple wildflowers attracted dozens of Monarch butterflies providing more colors. I took this image with my favorite 80-400 mm telephoto zoom lens. The hard part was working at the minimum focus distance for the lens (~ 7 feet). I needed to keep stepping back to get the image in focus. One more reason I always have a camera with me.
Every year after that I would check the place at the same time of the year, but never saw as many wildflowers or Monarch Butterflies. The last several years the place became a construction site for a highway bypass and interchange. Now that the construction is complete and the bypass open, it looks like wildflowers may come back. We will see if the Monarch Butterflies come back in the future.
Individual images in the slideshow can be viewed here.
Morning walkabout in the yard with a macro and telephoto lens. Flowers, wildflowers, black swallowtail butterfly, and the immature American Goldfinch that has been pulling the petals off the Zinnia flowers.
