Water Lilies

Having been raised in the desert Southwest for most of my life, I am fascinated by water lilies. Not only are they beautiful flowers, but they grow in water. In an around Arizona, they are a rare sight. They are almost as rare in Utah. The largest and most extensive growths of water lilies I have seen are along the banks of the Mississippi River. These particular water lilies are growing in an artificial pond in Utah.

Sunflowers

I began to realize that during the course of a year, the flowers changed. Living in the low desert, we had seasons and I did realize that the cactus bloomed in March and April and some on into June, but for the most part, annual flowers were in the background. Here in Utah, we have definite flower seasons. There are flowers that are actually planted in the middle of the winter and others that bloom in the spring, summer and into the fall. Sunflowers appear in August. I guess I had associated to change of the seasons with Fall leaves rather than flowers.

Chile Peppers

I have acquired a taste for chile peppers over the years. They are rated according to the "Scoville" scale of hotness. A mild chile pepper might rate below 500 on Scoville scale. But a hot pepper can reach to the stratosphere of hotness with the Bhut Jolokia pepper at over a million. The latest world record holder for the hottest chile is the Carolina Reaper. I thought it might be interesting to see what Wikipedia had to say about this chile:

The Carolina Reaper, originally named the HP22BNH7, is a cultivar of chili pepper of theCapsicum chinense species. Bred in a Rock Hill, South Carolina greenhouse by Ed Currie, who runs the PuckerButt Pepper Company in Fort Mill, South Carolina, it has been rated as the world's hottest chili pepper by Guinness World Records since August 7, 2013.[1][2] The original crossbreed was between a ghost pepper (a former world record holder) and a red habanero.[3] It averages a 1,569,300 on the Scoville scale with peak levels of over 2,200,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU). Recently, there has been some debate over whether the Carolina Reaper is genetically distinct from the Trinidad 7-Pot Primo strain, another hybrid species of Caribbean chile which is very similar in heat level and appearance. There are YouTube challenges about eating these.[4] At the 2nd Annual New York City Hot Sauce Expo on 30 March 2014, Ed Currie was presented with his world record by Guinness World Records and an eating competition was held in which the fastest time to consume three Carolina Reapers was determined for a new Guinness World Records at 12.23 seconds by Russel Todd.[5][6]

I left in all the links in case you want to try some of this type of pepper yourself.

Frog in a Pond

I was walking along, looking at flowers, and I spied this frog sitting in a small pond. From my perspective, the water didn't look all that inviting, but if I ate bugs for a living, I suppose that the quality of the water would not be an important consideration. I am not sure that the frog's passive hunting tactic was getting him anywhere, since I did not see him so much as blink an eye while I took his photo. No, I did not get a model release from him so I suppose he could come back and sue me.

Zinnias

When I think of flowers, I usually do not think of zinnias. They are colorful and have lovely shapes, but they seem to me to be planted merely for the purpose of having a spot of color. If they were not so common, they would be spectacular. But they are usually planted in large beds that hide the individual flowers in a swatch of color. It is interesting that those who sell seeds, classify zinnias for the "beginning gardner." Of course, the implication is that any experienced gardner would not spend his or her time planting zinnias. Why is this the case? I would be glad if anything I planted grew. I have spent a long time gardening. I was once considered an "expert" and taught classes around the community on gardening, but I would still plant zinnias.

The first snow of August

I began wondering about the seasons. Since most of my adult life has been spent living in the low desert of Arizona, we only had two real seasons; hot and warm. Snow was a novelty and almost completely unknown except on very rare occasions. Last year, I was surprised to see this snow on Mount Timpanogos in August. This year has been warmer without the cold snap that gave us snow on the mountains. But I can see that that weather predictions indicate that the temperatures are dropping and Autumn is just around the corner. I will try not to get so busy this year that I miss the changes as they come.

Black Eyed Susan

We have been seeing these black eyed susans (Rudbeckia hirta) all over the past few days. they are apparently the late summer flower of choice. We even saw them blooming out in the desert along the highways. I speculated that they must have been planted, but there they were.