Light

For One Word Sunday

A girl’s best friend

I love milkweed, seeds and pods, and their role in providing food for monarch and other butterflies.  But there’s much more to this plant.  The silky floss has good insulation properties and its fibers are used to clean up oil spills.  On the darker side, many natives in Africa and South America use the poison on the tips of their arrows, while milkweed is toxic to animals when taken in large amounts.

Often the floss of the milkweed flies in the wind, like a head of blonde hair. But in the case of the seeds I found in the park not long ago, each strand was adorned with a plethora of tiny, frosty diamonds.

 

 

 

Come and play.

Not everything in the park was bedecked with ice crystals. While this milkweed seed was frozen (at least temporarily) in place, its silky strands were blowing free and although it’s not a leaf, I found this quote more than apt.  Evidently, this little seed wasn’t quite ready to play.

“Come, little leaves,” said the Wind one day, “Come to the meadows with me and play. Put on your dresses of red and gold; For Summer is past, and the days grow cold.”
~George Cooper

Life has gotten rather busy lately, with extra shifts at work, Christmas preparations, and just general life things.  If I haven’t made it to your site recently, it’s not from lack of interest, just lack of time, so please forgive me.  Because I’ve been working Wednesdays, I also haven’t participated in the photo challenge for a few weeks and if you do multiple posts a day, I’m likely not to make to all of them.

I do hope each of you is having a wonderful and wonder-filled December and will come back tomorrow for another frost photo.

Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge: Nature…autumn light

As the days shorten, it becomes easier to catch the early morning light, even if you’re not a morning person.  The colors of summer are fading, leaving a few hardy flowers, bright berries, wild grapes, and the changing leaves.  Wind teases the fluffy milkweed seeds that cling for another moment to their pods, outlined by the sun.

Autumn Movement
Carl Sandburg

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper
sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes,
new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind,
and the old things go, not one lasts.

Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge: Macro…the magic of milkweed

I’m fascinated by milkweed.  In summer, the plants bear pink flowers.  In the fall and winter, the hard pods offer a textured outside with a smooth interior, while the seeds are attached to white fluff that can take off with the wind.  I love the contrast and find them very photogenic.

What I like most about milkweed is that it provides nectar for a variety of butterflies, the monarch foremost among them. Hummingbird, hummingbird clearwing moths, bees, and a variety of insects also feed there.

The name milkweed derives from the milky substance the oozes from the stem or leaves if they’re damaged.  Although the leaves are poisonous, the caterpillars of the monarch butterfly eat them safely, rendering them poisonous to predators. The large milkweed bug pictured below also feeds on the seeds, making them poisonous to predators as well.  The damage the bugs do isn’t great, even though they swarm the plants.  I managed to isolate just this one for the photo.

There are a number of varieties of milkweed.  The one pictured below is the common milkweed or Asclepias syriaca.  Despite their (to me) beauty and uses, milkweed propagate easily and can become a nuisance.

To view Sally’s thoughts and photos or to find the other photos linked to the “Macro” challenge this week, just click on the link.

Wordless Wednesday…milkweed

Wordless Wednesday…Blowin’ in the wind