Hoverfly On The Cosmos Flower Bloom

Hoverfly On The Cosmos Flower Bloom




Meet the Hoverfly. I have several other posts of the Hoverfly. This Hoverfly is busy on a Cosmos Flower Bloom. Hoverflies are beneficial to our gardens!



I ran across someones post gosh it was lately, however I cant remember whose? As if I would name drop anyways which I try not to do..... The thing that was written sounded as if the writer did not realize the Hoverfly is a beneficial insect. The ultimate insect we like to see in our gardens is of course the Honey Bee, however the Honey Bee is disappearing at alarming rates. This is a sad fact. Thus many gardeners are seeing other beneficial insects helping out like this species of Hoverfly.

I also grow plants inside the house. Bare with me here as I get this thought out. I noticed as one of my Spider plants was continuously flowering and giving me seeds what on earth is pollinating this house plant? So I watched..... results? House flies were in fact pollinating this Spider Plant of mine! Of course we are not real fond of these house flies, we also have blow flies here in our area do to the cattle, other lifestock in our area. Same results. These nasty , dirty insects are in fact pollinating our flowers and my house plants! I much rather have the Hoverfly then these kinds of flies! However we do not invite anything inside the house, they just show up just like everyone elses homes. Point being is pollinating. I get seeds off not only my Spider Plant......



You can see by the shadow of these shots I do use natural sunlight. The sun just happened to be positioned in the sky to cast the shadows you see.



I am not sure why we have a healthy population of such things as the Hoverfly? I have a theory that is all it is though. This theory of mine is , we had a neighboring property that was uncared for. Being uncared for , for the years it was resulted in natives plants flowering. Weeds really. These native weeds brought the Hoverfly in. A nice population of them! Now the home and property is cared for, we will just have to see what happens in 2015......



I may allow these native plants, basically weeds do there thing in one spot of the property, however the town does spray chemicals to kill such things. We do not use such things here, however we do understand why the town sprays the sides of the roads. Some of our roads are dirt, then covered with rocks. Native weeds will take over the world! Causing fires when the life cycle is over and the plants / flowers dry up. Driving over these dried up flowering, "weeds", the undercarriage of your vehicle will start fires. Wildfires are something everyone should be mindful of in the High Desert where we can get very dry. How many folks think of just driving over dry vegetation will cause a wildfire? When I first moved over here I never thought of such a thing! A second, (maybe third?), generation rancher / farmer here made this very clear to me!



There are many species of Hoverfly! This is the common species we have. The face I have noticed seams familiar with the Hoverflies I have seen here. Big eyes! Like a fly will have, and of course the different kinds of Hoverfly, hover! They beat their wings very quick allowing them to hover over the flowers in which they help pollinate! Dont kill them, just watch what happens with your fruit, flowers etc. !

Thank you for coming by my post! Happy growing in 2015!

Life on The Columbine Flower

Mrsroadrunner Photography | Life on The Columbine Flower




Meet the Columbine Flower and the pollinators the Columbine attract to your garden!

Many of us gardeners are getting ready for the season of outdoor flowerbeds and vegetable beds. We are no different! The excitement of colors, smells and the visitors can get overwhelming for some of us! Specially those who are dealing with snow and cold weather.



The Columbine that we grow is the "old world", species. That is they have beautiful spikes. The new hybrids do not have these spikes. However we have noticed the hybrids do have more colors. We chose not to grow the hybrids due to Guy. Guy rejects every species of Columbine seeds we find that do not have the long "spikes". Once you get the Columbine established you really do have to keep them under control in some places.



insects. Aphids like the Columbine!! Can not express this enough! Ants of course use aphids as we use cattle. The ants you can watch them take the aphids placing the aphids where ever the ants want the aphids to feed on what ever plant. The ants care for the aphids just like people care for their milking cattle.

We overhead water the Columbine to deal with the aphids. Of course this is not a full prof plan! One drop of water can kill a aphid or any other small bug for that matter. The aphids are nasty creatures, ladybugs can and will eat a enormous amount of aphids. Being organic, we do come up with all kinds of things to battle such things as aphids ........ There are other things that attack the Columbine but aphids are our main concern.



Yellow appears to be the natural base color for us anyways? We have a lot of yellow Columbine, even if they start out another color. Yellow tends to be dominant.... to my observations. We do have wild red columbine here in Oregon that are smaller flowers, smaller plants.

Our Columbine reach are oh three feet give or take. Typically I dont even bend over to clip off the seed pods.



I went ahead and put in several shots of the life on the Columbine Flowers in this post.



Our Columbine are in several places in the garden. They do not seam to care for full sun here in the High Desert. Of course watering is a must for anything one grows here.....



The White Columbine seen above with the Hoverfly was impressive in 2014. Big blooms, long spikes. Flashy blooms.



The Honeybee's really like the Columbine!! Like I said though you got to control those seed pods!! The photograph above shows a seed pod! The seed pods dry up and SNAP!! You can hear them SNAP! The seeds fly!! Walla, another plant or two or more start growing! Like any living creature the Columbine flowers are no different - they want to take over the world!

Noticing the Columbine will also give off these very long flower stems. These flowers will produce seed pods which can fall over reaching pretty darn far for a flower. SNAP, the seeds go flying even further away from the main plant.



Along with the flashy flowers, the pollinators the Columbine flowers attract, the Columbine have great foliage. Or we think so!

The clover looking leaves stay green for a long time!! When the flowers get done just trim back the stems! Walla you have a nice bunch of clover kind of looking, green leaves!



Bumblebee's , oh my goodness do the Bumblebees like the Columbine! In the shot above you see the red Columbine, along with the Yellow and there is a seed pod in these shots.

We have many pollinators here at the house, thus we get a lot of seed pods.



The soil where these Bumblebee shots and some of the others has been fortified with cow manure we get for free at one of the many cattle places here. Not every year of course do we have to feed the soil. Every oh , two to three years we notice it needs done again. You just have to feed flowers ie plants or well you are not going to have them!

We also do something that is a HUGE no no, I do not recommend anyone to copy this and no one should do this in the part of the garden where you or your family will consume what is grown. We throw the dog poop right into the soil! We have a shredder, and that is thrown in there. We also have a mulch pile that too is thrown into the flower beds. People ask us how do you get your flowers to grow like that!! Well, we just laugh..... if folks do not stay on the walking paths, guess what they get on them haha

Of course we add other things, we have a lot of birds here that do there thing, then we buy such things as basic "top soil", and soil places sell in bulk and Guy is afraid some day of coming home from work and seeing a dump truck here unloading soil additives haha! The cattle "stuff", is not "clean". Meaning if you choose to go this route you really do not know what is going to grow!! Talking of weeds, and the bugs! Though really , we do not have to do this every year.

If you are going to add meat eating animal dung into your garden, we feel it is "dirty", to add this kind of stuff into the area where you will eat what is produced. Why it is considered a huge no no..... I could get way more into this topic but you get the idea?



In this post I wanted to show a couple pollinators. SO many more show up here on the Columbine!! You can see some of the photographs I have uploaded so far over on the insect album here

Since we do grow many of the flowers I photograph it is rather easy for me to talk about them. I also do my best in the insect photography album to say what flower which ever insect is on. I also photographs the wildflowers. At times I am invited into other peoples gardens (where of course the gardener gets photographs for allowing me in), and I do on occasion visit commercial business's. I do believe in the barter system hint hint hahahahaha

All in all our property is not huge by no mean, however with a little planning. Some work and money thrown in (how much money spent really depends on you), anyone can grow such things as the Columbine flowers!

Hoverfly a Beneficial Insect

Mrsroadrunner Photography | Hoverfly a Beneficial Insect



Meet the Hoverfly! In the last four years of writing about my photography you may have seen several posts about the Hoverfly? The family of the Hoverfly is a pretty large family. I welcome the Hoverfly to our garden at least this species ( Scaeva pyrastri (?) to be technical), they are a beneficial insect and one who I feel the general public needs to know about. I make it no secrete I am a seed freak, to obtain seeds from any plant it is nice to have help.



Photographing the Hoverfly can be a little tricky , since after all they do "Hover", however when they land they give you a few seconds to get a couple shots.

You may think the photograph above and the photograph below are exactly the same, look again! If you push on the photograph the photograph will come up bigger if you need the photo to?



The plant this Hoverfly just happened to be photographed on is a Columbine. I have been asked about lenses, no special lens. Just my all around lens. I look over my photography, keep what comes out and delete what does not. Name the usable files. That is typically it. You can do this too! Just takes some time and effort!

It helps to have insects the Hoverfly feeds on as well! Good for such things as the benefitial insects, no so good if you want a perfect winning flower and if you use chemicals to achieve this. Kill the bad bugs, you also kill the good bugs. Just the way chemicals work.



Back to doing what the Hoverfly does, Hover!

Thank you for coming by and checking out my photography of the Hoverfly!

Bachelor Button Flower and The Hoverfly

Mrsroadrunner Photography | Bachelor Button Flower and The Hoverfly




Meet the Hoverfly. This is one of the species of Hoverflys we have here at home. The flower in which the Hoverfly is working on is the Bachelor Button Flower or the Cornflower I notice in Europe (or my European friends call them the Cornflower).



The Bachelor Button Flower or Corn Flower is a weed here in my state of Oregon. Very pretty weed with colors of flowers from the basic blue you see here, to pinks,white,on and on and then the two tone colors!! The Bachelor Button Flower or Corn Flower attracts a lot of pollinators!! Like the saying, "a Bee to Honey", well this flower attracts all kinds of insects!! One just has to be careful that the Bachelor Button Flower or Corn Flower does not take over the world!!



Because of the facts above in 2014 I controlled the Bachelor Button Flower or Corn Flower. I left one very nice big "bush", six plants or so growing in the front flower bed near the road where the plant did not get much water, a lot of hot sun, and the Bachelor Button Flower or Corn Flower flourished!! Attracting such insects as this Hoverfly.



The Bachelor Button Flower or Corn Flower being a invasive plant still does good for our gardens!! Like the Butterfly Bush, that has made the State of Oregon noxious plant list, also does good for the butterflies. So ying yang, just depends how one feels and how much responsibility they want to take for what they choose to grow in their gardens? Not sure you can get in trouble per say for growing such plants, just dont let such plants get out of hand...... the pollinators really do like this particular flower!!



In 2014 we had a nice population of Hoverflys! The frogs/toads and the birds, other insects eat the Hoverflys , and the Hoverlies do a fantastic job at Pollinating everything it touches!! Just keep in mind when you see the Hoverfly, they are not bee's , they will not hurt you or the kids (not that you or the kids will ever be able to reach out and just touch one. They are fast!!), the Hoverflys are also fun to watch!

Thank you for coming by and checking out my Photographs of the Bachelor Button Flower and The Hoverfly! Since the Hoverfly is one of my common insects here at the house I do have other photographs of this species and others I placed in the Insect album if you want to check the insect album out! More photographs of the The Bachelor Button Flower or Corn Flower that I have grown here at home can be found in the flower album if you want to check out my flowers (keep in mind I have grown a lot of flowers here at home!), I also added in wild Pacific Northwest flowers, including wild flowers of the Cascade Mountains, and the Ochoco Mountains just to name a few mountains we have been to. Will I ever be caught up naming and posting everything??