Theme Day - Winter Crisp Apples

It has been a great season for our apple trees this year. We have two trees: a 'Golden Delicious' and a 'Honeycrisp' - a hybrid which yields these pretty, pink-blushed tart & juicy apples; great for eating and cooking.

I'm a day late with this entry, but you can see more "pink-themed" posts for September at City Daily Photo.

Jack and the Beanstalk

Happy 'sunnies' for a Sunday. Each year I grow a row of dwarf and hybrid sunflowers in the back of our veggie garden to use for bouquets throughout the summer.  Most of the plants reach anywhere from 4 to 6 feet tall.  However, this giant sunflower stalk was a "volunteer" in the middle of the garden this year and topped out at over 12 feet!  It looks somewhat shorter here because the multiple sunflower blooms were weighing it down a bit. The Goldfinches are in heaven!

Neon Sunflower

Autumn is closing in upon us and all the sunflowers in our garden are in bloom. This pretty one stood out especially because of the neon-green center.

Clematis Bloom

I've been playing around with "Instagram" features recently and liked how this one turned out.  It's a clematis flower bloom from our patio.  The vine is doing quite nicely this year. Happy Summer!

Tu-Lips? No, Tree Lips!

The shelf mushrooms are back again this spring, growing on an old tree in our backyard.  There are two, one growing on top of another... they kind of look like a big pair of cartoon monster lips!

An Apple a Day...

These are "Honeycrisp" apples that are growing on one of the trees in our backyard. Ours are a little smaller than the original Honeycrisps that were developed at the University of Minnesota, but just as sweet, snappy and juicy. It's hard to get perfect apples as a backyard grower, and most are mottled or spotted. However, we were lucky enough to find at least one perfect specimen. :-)