Butterflies on a Sunday afternoon

I've been trying so hard to stay focused and stay in my shop and continue working on my frog and not wander the countryside looking for nature's beauties. It worked for awhile, but Sunday afternoon this lovely blue butterfly landed in my yard and I knew that it was all over. I put my stuff away, grabbed the camera and headed to a local county park to see what was happening. I admit I have a problem~I'm a nature junkie and have to get my fix but I really don't think I need help...sometimes my husband thinks I do...
By the way, the above butterfly is called a Red-spotted Purple. Its considered a mimic butterfly~~it mimics the coloring and markings of a similar butterfly called a Pipevine Swallowtail. The Pipevine is toxic so by mimicking it the Red-spotted Purple avoids being eaten up by birds.

Here's an update on the frog suncatcher taken Monday afternoon. All of the pieces have been foiled and with any luck I'll have this piece soldered on Tuesday--if I feel up to it.

Back to the Sunday butterflies. This butterfly is the Pipevine Swallowtail. I caught up with it on the shores of the Tennessee River probing the sand for mineral salts. This is a common activity in butterflies. Unfortunately, this one wouldn't open its wings so I could show the similarities to the above Red-spotted Purple. The undersides are just gorgeous. This butterfly looks pretty fresh like its just come out of its cocoon recently.

Another flying beauty found probing for salts is what I think is a Tawny Emperor. Their markings can vary somewhat within the specie. The patterning and coloring are just gorgeous.

Similar to the bold orange and black Monarch~this is another mimic butterfly. This is a Viceroy butterfly. Monarch butterflies are distasteful to birds, so again by mimicking the colorings and markings of another specie this butterfly avoids becoming lunch.

While checking the shoreline of a smaller river that feeds into the Tennessee River, I spotted this beautiful American Lotus. Funny, I have never ever seen this lovely flower up close and personal and just by coincidence I'm working on the frog suncatcher that has a yellow water lily as part of the background. These types of coincidences happen fairly often to me. A few years ago, I was working on a different dragonfly project. The day that I started cutting the glass pieces a very large dragonfly flew into my shop~this is before I put a screen door up. Hummingbirds have made their way into my shop also~around the time I was working on hummingbirds. Good thing I have the screen door up now--I'm going to be working on a bigger owl project soon.

Another lovely find for the day was this Cardinal Flower in bloom. This wildflower is a favorite of hummingbirds~insects find it difficult to get at the nectar in this long narrow tube like flower. Nice to see this flower in bloom, hummingbirds are starting their southward migration and by having little pit stops like these flowers, those amazing flying jewels stand a better chance at reaching their wintering destinations.

Its been kinda froggy for the past few days

I've been wanting to redo this frog/dragonfly suncatcher for the longest time. I designed it last year and built just one of them, but there were things about the pattern that I wanted to make changes to before I'd build another. Finally, I sat down and figured out what was bothering me and got things straightened out.
A few days ago, I got started on the process. I made my carbon copy of the original and started picking out glass. Right about this time, my neighbor came over to drop off a loaf of bread his wife had made. He saw what I was working on and bought it for her as a surprise Christmas gift. Wonderful for me, I won't have to take a million and one photos to get five right like I would if I posted this suncatcher to my Etsy site.

These are most all of the glass pieces that are going into the suncatcher. I've glued down the paper pattern pieces to the glass. I'll save the pieces that are cut off and sort them by color. One of these days I'm going to give mosaics a try.

The pieces have been thinned down a bit--here's how they look after I've cut them by hand with a glass cutter. Some of the angles of these pieces are a bit tight and the type of glass is not all that easy to cut by hand~I'll leave these for the glass saw. Since I don't have any extra of some of this glass I don't want to take the chance of trying to cut it by hand and having it break in the wrong place.

Here are the glass pieces cleaned up a bit more with the glass saw. Its a wonderful tool~I use it quite often. A must have in my shop.

I started grinding the pieces for the frog first. The eye is a black glass glob that I've grinded down on both sides and also the bottom to make it a bit shorter so it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. I like the idea of using a glob--or glass gem, since its round it has a certain amount of reflectivity in that it catched the light and reflects it. This spotted glass is wonderful for frogs. I'm so glad I came across a piece of it years ago in the scrap bin of the stained glass shop that I took my one and only class at.

Here's the detail of the dragonfly. I've used a light green glass glob for its head. This one I couldn't grind the bottom of since it will show--it will look all scratched up and dull. So, this will stick up above the rest of the glass pieces a bit. The wings are an iridescent textured glass with the textured side up and the body is 7 individual pieces in light green.

Here's how things look as of this afternoon. Next, I'll wrap all of the pieces with copper foil, solder the front and the back and wrap lead came around the entire piece. I'll solder two loops near the top of the piece for a chain to be attached and I'll darken all of the solder lines and lead with black patina.
I'm always excited to get a project like this done. I'll post photos again as the process continues.

A little bit of time on the river

In the middle of last week, to celebrate our anniversary, my husband and I paid a visit to the Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge-Busseltown Unit~just a couple of miles away from where we live. The river is pretty peaceful and quiet during the week, I'm sure it was pretty packed for Labor Day weekend-boats of all kinds, jet skis and people enjoying the last holiday of summer. Sometimes, we get lucky enough to see a big barge moving product up and down the river.
Looking south and looking upriver. Sounds funny, doesn't it? Rivers in North America are supposed to flow south-this one doesn't. The Tennessee River flows southwest out of the Knoxville area, west across northern Alabama, then takes a turn north and flows through West Tennessee until it dumps into the Ohio which eventually empties into the Mississippi. We've spent some time swimming in this river, but its not all that clean. You come out of the water feeling that you need a shower.

Lovely golden yellow wildflowers are in bloom all over this area.

Across the river are some nice looking bluffs. The water reaches pretty good depths near these bluffs, usually 50-60 feet deep. The Tennessee River splits the state of Tennessee into three sections- East, Middle and West. We're on the West Tennessee side looking east at Middle Tennessee.

A good find for the day included this White Tail Dragonfly. It was patrolling a small area looking for prey. I got to watch this one as it munched down whatever it had caught. After its meal it was off again looking for another victim.

The purples of autumn are starting to bloom. I'm not sure of what these are but they are very pretty. I was kind of bummed out--when we visited about a month ago there was lots more interesting things in bloom. A lot of it got mowed down, probably in anticipation of all the weekend visitors that were going to use this area for their good times.

Here's an interesting wildflower~Heart's-a-bustin, or Strawberry Bush. These haven't busted yet, but when they do the seed head opens to reveal purple insides and bright orange seeds. I'll have to remember to come back and get a shot of these once they pop.

Off to work I go..

After many, many great big cups of coffee in the morning, I open this door from my kitchen and step into my workshop. I built these 3 panels to replace the regular glass that was in the door--a few too many drinks one night and I put my hand through one of the panes. I gave up drinking--it never agreed with me anyway. But, its great to have the kitchen right close by--coffee and snacks all day long.

This was a carport when we bought this house a few years ago, actually more like a garage that never had a door. My husband and I went window shopping and began enclosing the front. We found these two large windows from a local window business for a pretty fair price--the owner ordered the wrong color (they were supposed to be tinted) for a bank job. But, man--they were really heavy. We had a local boxer who was working nearby come and help set them in place. The windows are great, they let in so much light and I can always look out to see if anything interesting is going on out there--things like butterflies and birds...

Here's how things look on any given day. I thought I would clean things up before I took pictures, but then I would be lost. I figure January will be a good time to clean up. There's some glass stored against the wall, some tools and my glass grinder.

This used to be our dining table--haha! Its just too big to be inside the house, so I got it as a work table. I used to feel bad everytime I'd build a box and scratch up the surface with a razor knife--not anymore. There's some more glass stored under the table along with different size shipping boxes.

This side door doesn't open anymore, we sealed it shut--but its still nice to have more light come inside. I'm sharing this area over here with hubby and some of his stuff.

I had a call from a local business last week to come pick up some goodies. I'm lucky that they save their packaging materials for me--its like a goldmine, really and saves on the environment, also.
The kitties aren't allowed out here--its much too dangerous for them with bits of glass all around and nasty chemicals and such. But, when I feel the need I can sneak back inside and give them all kisses.

Day of the Dragonfly and other curiosities

Thursday afternoon, I decided to get out of the house for a few and take a short ride down to the Tennessee River to see if there was anything interesting going on. After about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, my workshop just gets a bit too warm and uncomfortable to work in. The first stop was a local boat launch area with lots of native vegetation. This big beautiful dragonfly caught my eye and I headed on over to see if I couldn't get a shot of it.

This dragonfly turned out to be the most cooperative dragonfly I've ever come across. It must have been in need of a rest since it let me photograph it from all angles while fumbling with the settings on my camera. I'm not sure what kind it is~my field guide lists a few that are similar to this one but the descriptions don't match 100%.

The closeup of the wings shows a little bit of wear and tear around the edges.

I like this shot from the back end~it reminds me of an airplane ready to take off into the wild blue yonder.

After about 5 minutes it was tired of me bothering it and it took off to find some peace and quiet.

The second stop along the Tennessee River was a local county park. This passionflower and many more like it was found in an area allowed to grow wild~my favorite kind of place to explore because you never know what kind of interesting flora or fauna will be found. According to the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers, "The name relates to the resemblance of the floral parts to aspects of the crucifixion story. The 10 petal-like parts represent the disciples, excluding Peter and Judas, the 5 stamens the wounds Jesus received, the knob-like stigmas the nails, the fringe the crown of thorns." A very interesting bloom, indeed. Another interesting fact about this vine is that its a host plant for fritillary butterfly caterpillars.

This is the fruit of the passionflower, a passion fruit. Its an edible fruit, this one needs to ripen a bit more. I can't recall if I've ever tried one--there were plenty of these fruits hanging around, hopefully this year I'll get my hands on one and give it a try.

My love melons~~the unplanned fruit

This year, we were not going to have a garden. The 'dirt' in the best place for a garden in my tiny yard was so poor that it really needed some help before a garden would be possible. Our neighbor gave us a few loads of nice looking topsoil and my husband and I thought that we would spend some time amending the soil this year and we would be ready next spring. We started saving all of our kitchen scraps to mix into the soil for the summer and fall and we'd let it overwinter for next spring. Included in one of the buckets of kitchen scraps were a bunch of seeds from a melon we had bought. I never thought the seeds would germinate-hoping maybe the birds would find them and eat them up.

After a week or two a bunch of little plants started popping up--I recognized what they were--little melon sprouts. I didn't have the heart to pull them up-let them live! I did thin them out a little bit~by the looks of things now I should have thinned them out a little bit more. The melon in the first image I knew about, I've been taking pictures of it as its been developing. Its the melon in the second image that was well hidden beneath the leaves the I just discovered today.

Here's a little bee doing its job. They have been quite faithful to all the blooms and I've got lots of little melons everywhere.

With any luck, fall will be warm and these melons can keep on growing. I can't wait to be able to sample one of these~I just haven't got a clue on when I need to pull them off the vine! Talk about a bumbling farmer.

Let the wild places be wild

There's a little side road not far from my house that I've been meaning to check out for the longest time. When I travel the highway and look over at this spot, there's a riot of yellow, so I knew that there must be some good stuff down this way. Wow, I was not disappointed. There's a small stream that flows threw this area and the native vegetation was in full bloom. There were lots of butterflies and dragonflies in the area, along with a couple of hummingbirds and other songbirds calling from the trees along the stream bank.

The riot of yellow was actually all these small sunflowers. What a great food source right now for the butterflies and bees. Later, when these dry they will be a valuable winter food source for the native songbirds that call this area home along with our visiting winter migrants.

These ripening elderberries with help nourish our native songbirds and will provide fuel for those that migrate South for the winter.

Found along the banks of the small stream was large patches of Jewelweed, or Spotted Touch-Me-Not. There was a hummingbird feeding on one of these blooms, but I wasn't quick enough to capture it.

Really an interesting plant, I love the orange yellow color of these flowers.

There were also a dozen or so Bull Thistles in bloom. The flowers look quite puffy and soft, but the stems and leaves are quite thorny. I don't what the 'value' of these are, but I'm sure that the seeds are consumed by songbirds in the winter months.

This is definately an area that I'm going to have to come back to very soon.