Friday

While the showers forecast for the overnight never really materialized into more than a sprinkle, we did have a nice drop-off of temperature, down to the low sixties, making sleeping last night an absolute joy.

Outside the kitchen door, our latest lily--a white Asiatic--has come into bloom this morning.

Nearby, a few stalks of harebell (campanula sarmatica) are also displaying their delicate lavendar-blue bells.

The Orchard Garden is a riot of color this morning, with an initially strong show this morning from the orange daylilies. It certainly has been fun watching these new plants put out more flowers and more flower stalks with each subsequent summer.

You can see, in the lower left, the dark long foliage of the butterfly flowers, which will be echoing these daylily colors shortly. The tiny blue bits are tiny spiderwort blossoms.

Along the front margin of that same bed, this yellow coreopsis is also joining in the chorus with this first blossom of many.

Where the yard and the meadow meet, I discovered these white pretties this morning. I hadn't realized we had a mock orange in that part of the yard!

In the cold frame at the top of the meadow, this black-eyed susan began unfurling today, too.

And out in the front garden, the Chrysler tea rose has opened.

Here's our nearly full moon, rising over Orleans around 11:00 this evening.


A few minutes later, I captured this (below) shot of the moon over the First Encounter Marsh.


And in my search for a luna moth (I've seen them only a few times in my life, but they are always a pleasure!)amongst the usual suspects around the porch light, I found this lacewing when I got home.