Around the Block

The spiders seem to be making the last push of the summer and spinning large, in-your-face size webs everywhere. It is hard to walk between two trees and not get web in your face these days.

E bought a couple ornamental peppers for "spicing" up the front yard. the splash of color these bring is a welcome addition to our lives in these cloistered times.

One of our neighbors has these poppies growing in the front yard. I always find this color difficult to photograph. It seems to saturate so intensely that even when the software says everything is in range, it still looks over the top.

This, my friends, is a special flower that suspect few of you know. I photographed this stalk earlier in the season, but now that it is in bloom, you don't recognize it. This is the flower of the artichoke! I've never seen one before and it seems likely that most folks have not either. Although it is hard to tell, there is a bee in there on the left size burrowing among the spikes of the blossom.