Of Birds and Bees

My sister Amber sent some photos of her fabulous fuschia plant. Wow. I haven't had a fuschia since I left the "city" (that would be Plattsburgh) and came to live in the boonies (that would be Cadyville--well, actually we have a Saranac phone exchange, we pay property taxes to the Town of Schuyler Falls [pronounced skyler in this neck of the woods], a Cadyville zip code but we live in the neighborhood [?--not sure what its official designation is but we have a road sign that tells you you're in it!] of Woods Mills).

ANYway, Stan & I buy a new hanging plant each year for the front corner of the porch and this year we chose one that we both thought was a bit unusual.
What do you think?

It's a begonia. At least that's what the tag stuck into it said. Who knew there were begonias like this??


There's a hummingbird feeder just behind it (talking about second photo here) and the birds like to hang out in the plant and ambush any bird that's not supposed to be at __(any given bird's name here)__'s feeder. They also sit on the cable TV cable just above and to the left of the feeder and dive bomb interlopers from there. The dogfights are amazing to watch. Stan & I are convinced that one day one of us will innocently step out the porch door and get nailed in the forehead by a mach-speeding hummingbird--looking much like we just got hit with a dart since they fly FASTFAST beak-first!

This last hummingbird one is dreadfully out of focus and I apologize for that but the little bugger was just about to leave and I hit the zoom on my camera and snapped a nanosecond before it took off, so focusing just wasn't possible. You can see the beak that will someday wind up in my forehead if you look at about 2:30 from where it joins the bird's head. It whited-out near its head but the last part of it is visible as a diagonal line.

We really do love these birds, and Stan is filling the 2 feeders we have about every 2-3 days now. We figure all the clutches of eggs have hatched!

As long as I have your attention I'll throw in a couple more pictures--to make up for last night's post. These are Blackberry Lilies, so called I think because of their seeds, which for such small flowers--only about 1 1/2" - 2" across--are pretty big. Think of the seed balls that form on many Asiatic lilies or common tigerlilies. Impressive seeds. These are my only checkered flowers. (I'd love to get fritillaries, another checkered flower, just so I could say "I have fritillaries in my garden," love that word, but we're too cold for them. Check 'em out in a bulb catalog.)