Fall Flower Plantings

Wherever I walk, near private homes or public buildings, there are beds of bright flowers, kept colorful by our occasional thunderstorms despite the drought--and, I imagine, by careful hand-watering also.

One little miniature rose bush bore blooms in all stages, from tight buds to fully opened blossoms, their petals shattering and falling in the light breeze.



Their foliage marked these specimens as gaillardias, which are related to sunflowers and very drought-resistant, although one resembles a rose and the other two might be mistaken for daisies or chrysanthemums.







These tiny yellow blooms were bright in the morning sunshine. I felt lucky to capture them with my Canon G2 digital camera's zoom, since each blossom was only about a quarter-inch tall.

Feisty and Cool

Here's a 10-lb. cutie I encountered on my cool morning walk today:



I took his picture with his owner's permission--they were also out walking, but in the opposite direction from mine. A couple of blocks further on, I caught the early sunlight just gilding this stone stairway up a hillside lawn:

Fire Plugs

At either end of the side streets along the route of my morning walk, there are fire plugs, and on some of the streets, an extra one in the middle, near people's driveways.

In this photo, the fire plug stands in the shadowed background. I am not sure what the installation above is for. At any rate, it does look like double protection.

Below is the rainy-looking sky that I captured on the day that I was photographing fire plugs at dawn. And below that, a mid-street fireplug nestled in foliage.