Path of the Dragonfly, originally uploaded by malyousif.
This guy was skimming the swimming pool this morning, dipping its tail into the water every meter or so, and then going to the start and doing the same action again.
I wonder if its laying eggs, cooling itself or just having fun.
I don’t particularly care as I was able to at last capture it in flight!
Have a wonderful Friday my friends.
… and here’s the movie, enjoy! (updated at 1219)
Comments
Most likely investigating a spot to lay eggs. I’ve seen females do this with shiny car bodies that either reflect the sky, or have a deep blue color. I feel sorry for them, because it’s an effort in vain!
The most spectacular one I’ve seen is most likely the Flame Skimmer
http://southwestdragonflies.net/caphotos/FLAME11.JPG
I was amazed by it. I haven’t seen one in a long time, but then again, we’re far from the city pond!
Love the Friday pictures, but movies are even better! :biggrin:
Thanks M.
Barry, I think I had one of those in my garden this morning and was fortunate enough for it to pose for the following picture:
It definitely looks similar, Mahmood. There are about three different species which have all red males. Considering how mobile these things are, I wouldn’t be surprised if similar or same types are found (afterall, Painted Lady Butterflies are common all over the world).
This is why blue is my favourite color! :happy:
-Ibn
i love the pics/movie. so very nice. are these your fish in a pond at your place? if so, very nice. how peaceful and relaxing.
the dragonflies are just magnificent. i’ve always loved them.
i will say… one shot of the purple blue flowers that you have – the vine flowers – we have those and they look so in need of water compared to yours. yours look very similar to the ones they have at the museum.
are you doing all of your own gardening now?
Mahmood,
I am impressed, this is even better than last Friday movie 🙂
I really loved it this time, the pictures and a.Majeed song so niceeeeeeeeeee :wub:
Great shot, but still doesn’t have the transcendence of your dragonfly on your finger shot.
tooners I do a lot of my gardening but I am assisted quite a lot by my part-time gardener too. He does a lot of the “heavy” things; I concentrate on the design and maintenance.
The fortunate thing is that the garden’s permanent plants are much bigger now that I can envision them in a few years time, and based on that we select the annuals per season to fill in the gaps.
The purple flower you’re talking about is the Morning Glory, yes I did notice that the museum have them growing in pots with trellises and they look very nice. My daughter Hanan calls this plant the “purple people eater” as it has spread from its original location to take over the whole wall! Now it is competing with the Rain of Gold (yellow) but both the jasmine and the bougainvillea are swamped by both.
The fish are ours. We have a very small pond in the front garden and they obviously reside there.
Acid of course! I love that picture too. I tried to get it to sit on my finger this time but no luck, and frankly it was too hot to continue to be patient at the time!
Thanks butterfly and all for your comments.
so they are Morning Glory’s…. i had no idea. ours are taking over the wall as well… and i love it. they’re so beautiful, when they’re healthy. how often and how much do you water yours? we have a guy helping us in the yard but he’s terribly moody and isn’t giving the proper amount of water, i think.
we went to the museum yesterday and the Morning Glory’s are so beautiful there. i love the huge pots they have them in w/ the trellises… so lovely. this is when i realized ours were in serious need of water because they’re not blooming… and then when i saw yours…. just more evidence that our guy isn’t doing his job.
lovely yard you have…. it just gets better and better w/ every season. 🙂 or mini seasons!
actually if you over-water a plant, it will just concentrate on growing rather than producing flowers!
I have a drip system watering all the borders, and that comes on for 10 minutes (under pressure) one time a date at 4.30PM when the weather cools a little. I am about to change that routine due to the Summer and will water for 8 minutes at 6pm and 4am.
That particular area also gets sprayed with sprinklers at 2am for 7 minutes; that’s because the climbers in that area are planted in a grass lawn so they get double watering by default.
Also make sure that you give them some feeding. I don’t know your soil, but you probably can’t do any damage to your plants by lightly sprinkling NPK pellets (Jassim garden centre and others have them, get 15-15-15 concentration) and water lightly after sprinkling. If you find that the leaves have turned yellowish and unhealthy looking, then the plant would probably also benefit from some Iron supplement (just a little and away from the roots! Al-Bader on Janabiya highway has that in stock, a 1kg box is for BD7) This will also help your indoors and other plants too. I normally supplement once a season.
I’ve bought a composter now and the first batch is ready to spread in about 4 weeks! I’m looking forward to going organic! That will lessen the need of NPK I think.
Mahmood: one of the best things about compost is it will really, really help your soils out better than just fertilizer alone. I don’t know much amending you’ve done, but if your soil is like mine (all sand), compost helps a lot. There are certain nutrients only organic matter can hold onto for plants, so it really goes a long way. I personally don’t really use it, only because the plants I have can tolerate (and don’t get all rangy and ugly if kept in poor soil) going without. Still, I’ve got big piles of weeds I really need to do something with. I’ll have to invest in one. I would really like this one: http://www.composters.com/docs/bins_p5.html#ct
We have a type of perrenial morning glory that I should never have taken a cutting from my Neighbor’s plant. Hers covers her entire fence (about 30 feet of it). It even kept trying to do a border crossing into her neighbor’s yard across some rocks. I can’t tell if yours is the same, but here’s a page with an image:
http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/31759/
I do like its flowers, but it gets into everything and just won’t die. Its got a foothold under the cement slab of our porch so I’d have to do constant pulling to get rid of it. It’s also trying to eat my pink jasmine.
mine is about the same, but smaller leaf and smaller flowers:
I’ve seen so many of them in various sizes, the common things as far as I can see are the shape and colour of the flower, and the shape of the leaf.
We have a Bahraini mechanical engineer who designed a composter based on a plastic water drum mounted on an A-frame with ball-bearings and a cross-bar so that it could be tumbled. The ingenious thing about his invention is that he put an aerating tube in the middle (hence no bad smells) and a drain in order for the “tea” to seep out (and spread in borders if captured.) I asked him if I can interview him for a vlog and he agreed at the recent garden show, so it’s high time to contact him and actually interview him about his invention soon!
Here’s Ebrahim Isa and his composter (more pictures if you click the following):
1) Excellent photography!
2) Compost idea is great too. I wonder if large scale production
can be made.
Mahmood: Yeah, it looks like yours is diffeent from mine. You wouldn’t want mine though, unless you want to curse an enemy’s land :).
That’s a pretty awesome he makes them himself. There are similar designs sold online. It would be interesting to hear Mr. Isa’s thoughs about it as well as gardening and the environment.