More persistence

 Not giving up ...

A thistle, at the end of the season, still producing new growth, alongside the ripening seeds.

Bull thistle, Cirsium vulgare

I'm working on a series of images from the aquarium. I'll start on those tomorrow.

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No se da por vencido. El cardo "borriquero", Cirsium vulgare, sigue produciendo brotes nuevos al mismo tiempo que están madurando las semillas.

Estoy trabajando con una serie de imágenes del acuario. Mañana empiezo a subirlas.

Thistles and critters

A patch of thistles between the blackberry bushes (with burdock alongside; it was a prickly field!) was a-buzz with flying and crawling critters.

Skipper, and a syrphid fly. I think the skipper is Ochlodes sylvanoides, the Woodland Skipper, very common here in BC.

The bees were busy, but in a great hurry, never parking on a flower long enough for me to focus on it. A lot of work to be done; there are blackberries and flyaway thistle fluff to be made, and it all falls on the bees' shoulders, or at least their leg buckets.

More thistles, more critters.

Most thistles are edible, but grazing animals, such as the deer that was browsing in the blackberry patch, usually ignore them. The leaves are spiny, and those spines are sharp, where the blackberry leaves are mostly thornless.

Prickly!

Thistle buds, Serpentine Fens

Bull thistle, Cirsium vulgare. Also known as Spear thistle.

Bed of thorns

Another day of snow with rain for a chaser. Another day of sifting through old photos; my neck is sore, but the computer's happy.

I found these photos of a pair of weevils in the thistles beside the White Rock beach. I had intended to crop and post them in June of 2011, but procrastination won the day, and they were filed unexamined. Today they were a nice reminder of hotter, drier weather.

Wicked-looking spines. I didn't dare move in closer.

The weevil is a lighter colour than the ones I see around the house. They're mostly dark brown, sometimes almost black. This one has brown stripes, but a definite yellow tinge. And a pale yellow fringe around the tail end of his elytra.

And he had a mate waiting for him under the shade of the thistle head.

Two weevils

The male holds his mate by the shoulders and sides. Prickles be damned! This is true love!

I'm still here

... haven't blown away yet.

Thistle fluff

We've been out and about, and have taken oodles of photos, now in the process of loading to Flickr.

Laurie saw the ophthalmologist yesterday. His eye was pronounced "fine", and the next one will be done a week tomorrow. Another 5 weeks of eye dropping, and we're done! (I never realized how much time a simple schedule of eye drops could take up. But 3 drops, 5 minutes apart, 4 times a day, 7 days a week, adds up to one full working day per week. Do the math.)

Tomorrow: some reflections on abandoned "stuff."
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Thistle heads and bee tails

Thistles in Cougar Creek Park, yesterday afternoon:

With fluff


and with bees. Black bees ...


... and yellow.

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