Showing posts with label plants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plants. Show all posts

A surprise giant pumpkin patch!

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This pumpkin patch was a surprise! It was in the middle of a local park and these photos are from yesterday. If there had been a pumpkin patch there in past years, I hadn't been aware of it.


All the pumpkins growing there were massive! And it appears they're still growing. I wonder if we'll see any of them in this year's village Halloween display? I also wonder how much larger they'll get.


This one looked like a giant ghost pumpkin. I don't think I'd seen a giant white pumpkin before this one.


So far, there are five big pumpkins out there. They're being shaded and supported well. As you can see, the pumpkins had a nice wood support under them.



And the vines went on and on!



Making this area even more Halloweeny was the nearby flower patch full of black velvety petunias.



So, how about that? A little Halloween surprise a few months early!


In other Halloween type news, I got around to seeing Hotel Transylvania. After hearing there was a third one out, I figured it was time to see the first one. It was very cute and funny. It's one of those animated movies where it's fun to see if you can recognize the celebrity voices. I loved every moment of Steve Buscemi as the werewolf.

Plants fit for a potion

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Several days ago at our local park, I was taking some photos and felt a theme coming together. Something about the light at that time of evening and the unique plant names I saw made me feel like I was in a fairytale. The kind of fairytale where a witch lives in a forest and goes out to collect plants for her brew.

So after noticing a few unique plant names, I started looking for the most witch's brew-worthy ones I could find. If you're ready to use a little bit of imagination, you can take a fairytale tour of our local park and gardens with me.


Care to take a trip into the woods? Legend has it that there's a garden of magical plants on the other side of this forest. People say there is a witch who lives near these woods and collects the magical plants nearby for her secret potions. Let's see if we can find some of those plants...

Deeper and deeper into the forest we go...


There is a wise old tree gnome in this enchanted forest. Can you see him?


The tree gnome says "Just walk straight down this path and you will make it to the forest's clearing. You'll know you're in the right place, because you'll find a magic walking stick. Take it with you and you'll be sure to find all the magical plants you're looking for." Sure enough, at the forest's clearing it appears that someone has left you a walking stick for your journey:


And here is the herb garden!


What will we find here?


Our first find is The Wooly Woundwort:


Yes, this is as soft as it looks!


Sneezewort:


Sneezewort has some cool, patterned leaves:


Soapwort:


I wanted to see the results of boiling the roots/leaves of this plant, so I looked up some videos. You can get some pretty good lather out of these flowers! I was surprised to also find tons of recipes and soapwort products for sale!


Sneezeweed (not to be confused with Sneezewort)



Rough Horsetail:


It looks a lot like bamboo and has these cool little pinecone things:


Snake's Head Fritillary:


I love the name of this one, but it turns out I didn't take a picture of it! I took photos of three other plants, not knowing which was the Snake's Head. Turns out, this is a spring flower. So that's why it wasn't there. I had to look up Snake's Head Fritillary to see what it actually looks like. It's beautiful:

The Snake's Head Fritillary - A Chequered History

I'm trying to figure out the "Snake's Head" name. Maybe the checks on the flowers look like a diamondback snake? Those snakes have check type shapes on them anyway.

Dark Vader Lungwort


How threatening does this sound? Even the "Lungwort" part. It's a cute little polka-dot plant, though.

Primal Scream Daylily:



Prince Tut Papyrus


This made me wonder if there's a King Tut Papyrus that's maybe larger. I took a look and yes there is: King Tut Papyrus And yeah, King Tut is pretty big. The King can grow 48-72 inches tall!


Bonefish Coleus:


These really do resemble fish skeletons, don't they?


Dark Towers Beardtongue:


Dark Towers is a foreboding name. It makes me think of Dark Shadows. And the "Beardtongue" part is pretty creepy too if you visualize it. I wonder where that came from? OK, I just looked that up and got a result that has nothing to do with this photo. Supposedly, some types of beardtongue have the appearance of a hairy tongue protruding from a mouth. Eww.


It has a fittingly Gothic look for a plant named "Dark Towers".

Last but not least, Elvis Lives:


Appropriately, it looks like "The King" of hostas. It's massive!



So here we have what sounds like the perfect ingredients for a Witch's brew:

Wooly Woundwort
Sneezewort
Soapwort
Sneezeweed
Rough Horsetail
Snake's Head Fritillary
Dark Vader Lungwort
Primal Scream Daylily
Prince Tut Papyrus
Bonefish Coleus
Dark Towers Beardtongue
Elvis Lives

Wow, what do you think would happen if those were all mixed together?


Well, you have the chance to find out because guess whose house we've come across!


I think she'll be nice enough to cook us up some of our little finds from the garden. The kind old witch says we picked the winning combination for a lucky brew!


Well, after finding all these mysterious plants, and sampling some brew, it's time to head home. There are some curious creatures to see on the way back, like this friendly fish.


He looks so happy because he spotted that clover. The purple fish ate the clover right after I took this picture.

Another cool creature in the park was the hummingbird moth. If you've ever seen one of these, you know why they have that name. You'll see a large buzzing flying critter coming toward a flower and swear it's a hummingbird, but on closer inspection it's an insect.



I've seen orangish ones like in the first photo, but I'd never seen one with yellow stripes before. Their wings move incredibly fast, so they're a challenge to photograph.

Well, here's your entrance back to the woods. Hope you enjoyed this garden tour!


P.S. ~ A little piece of trivia: The word "wort" in a plant's name comes from the old English word "wyrt". "Wyrt" means "plant". You can go back further with the word and read a list of "wort" plants here: List of Worts

Halloween and Autumn Scenery around Town

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The area where I live is all dressed up for Halloween, and I'm going to give you guys a tour of it! I'll start with some very cool yard decor. Those floating ghosts look genuinely spooky when the wind blows, and that was luckily happening as I took this picture. I was reminded of this:

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That's the way they were moving in the wind. There was a whole cemetery of ghoulies next to the flying ghosts.


Parked across the street from this cemetery display, was The Mystery Machine!


As in The Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo! Just parked on the street. Someone actually painted their van to look like this! That's a lot of work and I think they did a pretty good job.


I'd love to know who this van belongs to. Probably someone who owns a Great Dane. :)

This autumn has been a beautiful time to walk in the park.


Thanks to Lorelei, I know this is a Burning Bush.


I just learned this is The Spindle Tree. The pink part is a little fruit that opens up to drop those orange seeds. I had thought these were flowers, but it turns out the tree's flowers are very small and light green.


A little heart-shaped tree.


I can almost hear the leaves crunching looking at this.

Check out this fallen hornet's nest! Doesn't this look like a head? You see the little nose and the frowny mouth?


And check out this one! It's like a little monster with eyes, a nose, and a mouth. He's a little more friendly.


I was so thrilled with how these two photos turned out. Although, this looked even wilder in real life. I wear sunglasses with a real red tint, so from my view it was like the leaves were on fire.


Actually, it was just the good timing of seeing them at sunset as the light was hitting the bright leaves in the background.


I took this picture looking down from the side of a bridge. It looks like a Monet painting, doesn't it?


There are lots of colorful berries out at this time of year.


I love how this photo turned out! They're like miniature oranges.


I'm not sure what these berries are. I'm calling them the little honeydew berries.


Anyone know what kind of spider this is? It's new to me! It almost looks like it has a spiny little armor on.


The trees here are in full color.


I love this tree. It has a little bit of everything going on.


The village where I live has some nice autumn decorations up. You might remember seeing the Christmas decorations here in one of last winter's posts.


This is kind of a little pickle gourd, although I suspect it's missing a part. Maybe something chewed on it?


This mysterious jug of Witches' Brew was sitting outside a shop. "Witches' Brew to grow warts" it says. Because everyone wants to grow those, right?


And then there's Skull Maggots, "to enlarge your brain". If you look closer, it says "eat five maggots before dinner". Eww... Actually, the more you think about this, the less sense it makes. Wouldn't you lose a bit of brain with the maggots in there?


This bicycle display looked so cute. You'll see more of it later on.


I loved this black iron piece behind the spider! There were some very nice displays out, and when you crop in on a favorite part, the picture becomes more enjoyable somehow.


This is so clever. The mohawk pumpkin was in the window of a hair salon. If you enlarge this pic, you'll see that he's covered in glitter with rhinestone eyes.


A few flowers were still out, like this black-eyed Susan. At least, I think that's what we're looking at here. 


A bluebird was browsing the shops. I don't have more of an explanation.


There were some exotic pumpkins around town. I felt like this was Cedarburg-lite. You know, the way Cedarburg goes all out with the decorating.


A warty one.


This is nothing I've seen before. An exploding brain pumpkin? A waded up piece of chewing gum pumpkin? Anybody know what this is?


Some kids were carving pumpkins and setting them up on bleachers. I think there was some charity involved, like they'd pay for the pumpkin and that money would go to charity. You'll see these pumpkins again in a bit.


Now we'll revisit the village at night. This is outside that same store with all the cool outdoor decorations. The jugs of Witches' Brew and Skull Maggots were sitting around this trunk before. Pretty spooky. I didn't think to open it at the time, but I'm thinking about it now. Wonder if anything was in there?


A little silver tea set in the window. It's funny how something like this can look spooky at night, like something out of Disney's Haunted Mansion.


This too! What I'm assuming was some light reflecting on a dirty glass window looks ghostly at night.


I wonder who this lady was? Her picture looks right with this typewriter. She looks like someone who would have been typing away.


I should go in this place when it's open. I'd like to see more of these pieces in the light, like that cool mirror behind the little Steampunk girl.


There's that bicycle again.


And here are those carved pumpkins I showed earlier, all lit up on display.


As you can see, there were a lot more of them at this point. They're all lit up by a string of lights. A girl was threading the lights one by one into each pumpkin.


This photo is the wallpaper on my computer right now.


That one with the jagged teeth is my favorite. I always like the wicked looking pumpkins.


There was something wholesome about seeing rows of pumpkins that kids had carved. This hasn't happened around here before, so it was a neat surprise. I hope the pumpkin carving and lighting becomes a tradition in the village.

Have you guys been seeing any good decorations while you've been out and about? I'd love to see some of your pictures!

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