Flower Friday with Jake

When Mom got home from work tonight, and after I had my dinner, she wanted to do a photo shoot for Flower Friday. I had to humor her. She put me atop our fence and asked me to pose with the dusty rose-colored Joe Pye Weed, a native wildflower that grows tall and is a magnet for tiger swallowtail butterflies. Mom even saw some monarch butterflies on them a couple of mornings this week.


Once up there, I wanted to explore the arbor. The darker purple flowers are New York ironweed which is just beginning to bloom. It also attracts butterflies. The orange flowers are trumpet vine, and they attract hummingbirds.

It's actually a bit treacherous up here as you can see from this photo taken from the back yard. I'm way high up! The birdhouses are what Dad dubbed the "chickadee condo" that he built a few years back. We get birds nesting in them every year, and this year we had both wrens and sparrows, but not at the same time.

Mom says that because she's going out to California on Monday she won't be able to post a man cat Monday photo. I think that this one would have been an excellent choice for the occasion, so I couldn't resist posting it today.

My older sister Bathsheba keeps talking about being "Sweet 16." Her birthday is Sunday. She may be 16, but she's not sweet to me.

~Jake