Butterflies, Birds, and Blooms

Just sharing some pictures today — from my birds, butterflies, and flowers albums [you can click on the pictures, if you'd like to get a closer look]. Cardinal on Ice Japanese Magnolia Blossom Gulf Fritillary on Chaste Tree Blossom Little Robin Red Breast Silhouette This one reminds me of Batman Red-Bellied Woodpecker Wistful Wisteria Hummer with his tongue out ... Queen Anne's Lace Pascagoula Pals Dewberry I hope these brightened your day. It is a dreary, stormy day here in Vicksburg, and they helped to brighten mine.

Country Roads and Fence Rows

Last Friday, I grabbed my cameras and set out to explore some of the pretty country roads around Vicksburg. I had a wonderful time capturing God's "Fall decorations," in the form of wildflowers, berries, vines, and leaves just beginning to turn — and He gave me a brilliant blue sky as a backdrop. It just doesn't get any better than that, unless the temperature had been in the 70s, instead of the mid-90s.

This is one of my favorite country roads, which is about 20 minutes from our house. Even on a hot Indian Summer day, it looks cool and inviting.

(You can click on the pictures to enlarge them, if you'd like)

This aluminum cross is nailed to one of the trees, and it seemed to glow in the shade of those old oaks.

The fence rows were vivid with colorful wildflowers and leaves, and I love the way the sun filtered through the yellow leaves of this tree.

Leaves of three, Let it be! came to mind as I captured (with my zoom lens) this patch of Poison Ivy. Isn't it glorious this time of year!

A little farther down the road, I passed by an old cattle-holding fence and loved the green moss or lichen covering the posts.

I wasn't brave enough to risk getting stung by wasps, or bitten by goodness knows what else, in the grass between me and the fence posts, but I did manage to capture a few pictures.

These pretty purple wildflowers were in abundance along the roadside ...

More wildflowers

I took the next few pictures on Old Highway 80, between Bovina and Edwards, Mississippi ...

Can you imagine traveling on Highway 80 back in the days before interstate highways? It's a narrow two-lane road, by today's standards, and I can remember some truly scary trips in rainstorms following behind and meeting 18-wheelers zipping by, seemingly only inches away from our car. Country roads are nice, but I'm glad they're not the only way we have to travel these days.

This is a common sight this time of year, up and down Mississippi country roads:

And, of course, mile after mile of cotton and soybean fields, ready for harvest.

I stopped at a cotton field (not the one shown in the picture) and spent about 30 minutes (did I mention that it was HOT and DUSTY?) capturing fat, fluffy cotton bolls "up close and personal." Cotton is one of my favorite subjects to photograph, and I will share those pictures in my post for tomorrow.

Even though I've lived all my life in the "Deep South," I've never taken the time to see a soybean field up close — that is, until Friday.

If you are a regular visitor to Southern Lagniappe, you know that I can usually find beauty in just about anything (even wasps!) ... but I'm sorry, I just couldn't find anything pretty about soybeans! Interesting, maybe ... but not pretty.

I discovered, through Google, that these plants with beautiful clusters of purple berries are called Pokeweed.

I think the red stems are as striking as the berries ...

In closing, I'd like to share a little lagniappe I captured in these last pictures, which I wasn't aware of until I was editing the pictures. See if you can find it ...

Yes, it's this little dragonfly who was just "hanging out," enjoying the day, I suppose. I wish I had noticed him, but I was so intent on capturing the berries that I totally missed him.

I hope you will join me tomorrow for my post featuring macro photos of the cotton. I promise it won't be as long as this one!

A Beautiful Flower with an Ugly Name

I love wildflowers, and one of my all-time favorites is a beautiful little exotic-looking blue flower that has a very "un-beautiful," if not downright ugly, name ~~ Spiderwort. The name Spiderwort is presumed to come from the way the flowers hang like spiders from a web off the main stem, and "wort" is the Old English name for "plant."

During a drive down some country roads last week, I found a clump of Spiderworts growing in a ditch beside the road and stopped to capture them with my camera.

In this picture, you can see how its purple
center resembles a spider's tangled web ...

If you would like to see some pictures I captured of other wildflowers while on my "country roads adventure," you can click on the links below.

Honeysuckle and Wild Roses
Roadside Daisies
Buttercups Blowin' in the Wind

Also be sure and click on the "lagniappe" picture at the bottom of this post to see what I found nestled amongst a patch of pretty little lavender wildflowers.

Lagniappe