Rain Everyday But Some Love it!

We emptied the rain gauge several times so probably 8 inches or more of rain in May. Thankfully, the rains did not come in all at once so that we did have flooding like other areas of Virginia.

Spiderwort (Tradescantia) is a native wildflower that seems to love all the rain.  Everyday for about a month, the flowers bloom and then fade by the afternoon.  A friend gave me some spiderwort and they have done well, establishing another patch a few feet away.  I am not sure which spiderwort species this is but my Field Guide to Wildflowers by the Audubon Society states that the Zigzag Spiderwort (Tradescantia subaspera) is found in Virginia.  The guide also states that "Spiderworts are so named because the angular leaf arrangements suggests a squatting spider."  I don't understand that.

The flowers are so beautiful with the bright yellow stamens.  When trying to do a watercolor of them, I had to use the paint straight from the tube (See my first post on spiderworts) to get the bright yellow.

The native wildflower attracts native bees.  These smaller bees (of which we have hundreds of different species in Virginia) are not attracted to most flowers I buy such as phlox or pansies).

Daisy, our golden retriever, also seems to love the rain.  Throw her a ball and she does not mind getting drenched.

Daisies and Vireo

We have had a couple of sunny days so I went up to our back pasture, the one that usually has donkeys on it.


Field of Ox-Eye Daisies (June 13, 2009)

No donkeys but a field of daisies--acres of them have sprung up thanks to all the rain lately.



The Ox-Eye Daisy is not native and common in fields and roadsides. Like other composites, the center is composed of many small flowers, producing many seeds later.


Each little flower must have a dab of nectar for this bee or fly.


Here's another bee I don't know. I looked but there were no honeybees on these flowers. I have seen my bees on Catawba trees down the road but that's it--not much nectar collecting going on now.

A few days later, I spotted two nests in the woods.



This photo of a small nest (about 3-4 inches in diameter) was taken from below so I wasn't sure if it was occupied.




A Red-Eyed Vireo was sitting on her eggs in this nest--not quite as neat as the previous one but similar with spider webbing and some lichens holding it together. I was able to identify the bird by first cropping the photo and consulting Peterson's Eastern Birds' Nests field guide and my bird field guide. I heard the song and saw the bird last year in about the same area. The nest also was where the field guide predicted--in a small hickory tree about 10 feet from the ground.


I confirmed the red eye by cropping one photo more and increasing the color saturation to bring the red out.