blue crabs

sepals

Witch hazel blossoms after the petals dropped, leaving the four-point sepals behind.

pride rock

Caught the golden hour with some friends today at Humpback Rock, a nearby hike on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  

dusky salamander

Always touch a salamander with wet hands...dry fingers can tear their skin.  Click to enlarge to see its tiny toes!

swallowtail and liatris

ginkgo nuts

Fruits of a female ginkgo tree.  These contain a large amount of butyric acid, which is also found in butter and some cheeses.  When the fallen fruits bruise and rot, they release the sharply characteristic odor of butyric acid (reminiscent of vomit...it's what's responsible for the smell of rancid butter).  The nut, found inside the fruit, is edible, but I've never had the nerve--or the stomach--to sift through fallen ginkgo fruits when I have found them around Grounds.  Better to enjoy them while they are still whole and green--and some thirty feet above me on the tree. 

day's eye

As temperatures slip to the fifties, this usually summer-blooming oxeye is a rare sight.

brown marmorated stink bug

These stink bugs become household pests when they enter homes in droves in the early fall to escape the cold nights.  They purportedly smell pretty bad, but I have crushed a few out of curiosity and it's not as unbearable as Wikipedia might have you believe (kind of like oil paint).

you guessed it

More leaves.  I can't help it, they just look so appealing, and since I know they won't be around for very long I feel compelled to take photos of them while I still can.

scenes of fall

One of the columns on the Lawn against the brilliance of sugar maple leaves.

Sunset through the columns.

Experimenting with my portrait lens.

more leaves

And of course, I had to take some with me to add some color to my note-taking.

rules of engagement

My friend is engaged, and this weekend I'll hopefully be taking engagement photos of her and her fiance--it'll be a good chance to test out my new portrait lens!

autumn splendor

Virginia creeper.

Sugar maple.

jewelbug

Japanese beetle on asparagus fronds.

mackerel skies

Sunset from my friend's dock in Shady Side, Maryland.

opioid

Ornamental poppies.

sonoma

Taken while wine-tasting in Sonoma with my family this summer.

farmer's market

 Wildflower bouquets.

 

A rainbow of autumn vegetables.

boulder

Mountains formed almost entirely of craggy boulders on the drive from Yuma to San Diego.

amphibian

Saw this green frog today in the Dell Pond, a stormwater retention reservoir at UVa that looks like a pretty pond, part of the colonial architecture (but serves a purpose in rainwater maintenance!  I heard a lecture about stormwater in my Restoration Ecology class last year and will never look at drainage ditches the same way again.).  This guy will probably spend the winter hibernating at the bottom of the pond, nestled in some plant roots.

Also, if you click the image and enlarge it, you can see my reflection with the camera in his eye.

housefly

Taken through a standing magnifying glass, the photos of this housefly I killed show that sometimes the closer you get to something, the cooler it looks.

Look at that sweet proboscis--the flat pad at the end is the labellum and the bit that sticks out at the top of the mouthpart (just where the proboscis joins to the head) is one of the maxillary palps, used for tasting and smelling.  I wish these photos could really capture the detail I could see through the actual glass!  I just realized I should have set my aperture smaller to get the whole fly into my depth of focus...

larval

Potato beetle grub on a horse nettle.  You can see its "frass" (special term for insect poop) to the left, and on its head and upper body there are tiny mites that parasitize this agricultural pest.

botany

Indian pipe, a parasitic plant that possesses no chlorophyll and feeds off of other plants.

Wild viburnum.