June 16: Hedgeworld
Jun. 16th, 2010 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neverspentAt work, I park in a parking lot that's bordered by a tall hedge. I say hedge... it's more of a giant, overgrown wall of plantiness. There's a hedge in there somewhere, but it's barely visible, grown through and over and around with trumpet vine and and another one that's very familiar but I can't identify.
I park the nose of my car as close to this leafy wall as I can, hoping it will provide some shade for part of the day, but it probably doesn't matter; by the time I return in the afternoon, even with a windshield shade and the windows down half an inch, it's 130 degrees in the car. So I open all the doors and stand next to the car for a few minutes, admiring the hedge.
Trumpetvine is also very popular with hummingbirds.
It's a very popular hangout for insects. I have never seen trumpet vine that didn't have little ants all over it, so there are the crawlies, but mostly what I see are the pollen seekers: honeybees venturing down the long tunnel of the trumpet blossom into the delicious depths; wasps and hornets and flies exploring. There's also the odd dragonfly. Today I saw the prettiest one I think I've ever seen. It was bright green with black stripes, and its wings were only visible because of their faint rainbow shimmer. I'm pretty sure it was an Eastern Pondhawk. The males are dusty blue, but the females and juveniles are green.
Photo by Mary Hollinger, NOAA (Wikimedia Commons)
I park the nose of my car as close to this leafy wall as I can, hoping it will provide some shade for part of the day, but it probably doesn't matter; by the time I return in the afternoon, even with a windshield shade and the windows down half an inch, it's 130 degrees in the car. So I open all the doors and stand next to the car for a few minutes, admiring the hedge.
Trumpetvine is also very popular with hummingbirds.
It's a very popular hangout for insects. I have never seen trumpet vine that didn't have little ants all over it, so there are the crawlies, but mostly what I see are the pollen seekers: honeybees venturing down the long tunnel of the trumpet blossom into the delicious depths; wasps and hornets and flies exploring. There's also the odd dragonfly. Today I saw the prettiest one I think I've ever seen. It was bright green with black stripes, and its wings were only visible because of their faint rainbow shimmer. I'm pretty sure it was an Eastern Pondhawk. The males are dusty blue, but the females and juveniles are green.
Photo by Mary Hollinger, NOAA (Wikimedia Commons)