Lots of color in the gardens

On December 29, 2025January 3, 2026 By dinajohnstonIn flowers and plants2 Comments

In early September I went for a walk at the Florida Botanical Gardens in Largo. It was still pretty hot and I left my camera in the car and just walked with my phone. My first stop was the butterfly garden and it was pretty quiet there. I was hoping for some hummingbirds but I didn’t see any this morning.

Color along the path.

The spatterdock made pretty patterns in the water.

A few of the critters I saw.

Pretty fungus growing from the summer rains but the above in red is a stinkhorn mushroom and has a foul smell if it breaks apart.

The banana plants were blooming.

I grabbed my camera out of the car to catch this green heron catching a bug. He was feeding in a small pond next to the parking lot.

Linking to Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday) at Image-In-Ing.

Sunflowers on a cloudy day

On October 13, 2025November 9, 2025 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography, flowers and plants4 Comments

I made another trip to a sunflower farm at the beginning of June. Jimmy Mc’s farm is closer to home and was a quick trip. They only have a small sunflower field and a few cows. Brett came as well since he had not been to this farm before. It had rained most of the night and I wasn’t sure if we would get rained out but at least it was cool.

One of the cows came over to the fence to see if we had sunflowers to feed him but it looked like he already had plenty to choose from on the ground. Maybe he remembered me from last year when I fed him some sunflowers and came over to say hello?

Just past the sunflower field I could see turkeys running for the woods.

This was the last day of picking season and many of the flowers were getting old but I still managed to find several handfuls to take home.

Some of the little critters out in the field.

As usual I try and check the ones I take home for hitchhikers but I had so many that I barely looked. When I got home and was getting them in vases I found one that had to go outside but not before taking a quick shot. The green lynx spider is good to have in the garden since they eat a lot of moth larvae that are pests.

Playing around with my phone camera. I used stage lighting on portrait mode to take the above.

As we walked to the car I noticed the great blue heron sitting along the edge of a small pond. It looked very peaceful.

Then I noticed these guys strolling around to my side of the pond. Sandhill cranes with 2 almost grown juveniles (with the orange beaks). They were just cruising around out on the farm. Two years ago I saw them here as well so I’m wondering if it’s the same parents.

A quick video of them yelling as they walked by.

Linking to A Stroll Thru Life.

A rainbow of flowers and a new bird

On September 17, 2025October 15, 2025 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography, flowers and plants9 Comments

During my visit to Sweetfields Farm in May I spent a lot of time in their zinnia field after walking through the sunflowers. They have rows and rows of different colored zinnias and the butterflies were having a convention in the flowers.

I only saw swallowtail butterflies but there were a lot of them, posing nicely on the zinnias.

They had every color of zinnia there. I picked one of each color to take home.

The butterflies were so busy feeding that I was able to take the above with my phone.

There were lots of grasshoppers in the field.

The bonus was seeing the above birds. I saw them on a wire at the far end of the sunflower field. When I got closer they moved into the nearby tree. They looked like finches but I have never seen them before. Both Merlin and Picturebird apps identifies them as Indian Silverbills. There was no record of this bird on Ebird being in Florida so I posed the question to a Florida bird identifier Facebook group and they all came up with the silverbill. A few thought it might be a juvenile tricolored munia which has been know to breed in central Florida. If it is the silverbill then it must be an escaped pair of pets that had been breeding now out in the wild.

Sunshine out in the field

On September 8, 2025October 15, 2025 By dinajohnstonIn flowers and plants, Tampa bay sights2 Comments

Even though I had a few sunflowers blooming in my front yard I still made the trip up to Brooksville to Sweetfield Farms for their sunflower festival. There is something therapeutic about walking around a big sunflower field and then clipping some to take home. I had not been to this farm for the last 2 sunflower seasons, only stopping at a closer farm that doesn’t have events to quickly cut sunflowers.

This farm is very Instagram worthy. Lots of great photo ops here and they have lots of activities for little ones.

But the sunflower maze and fields are the main attraction.

Along the back fence the sunflowers were towering way over my head.

There were lots of fun critters here including grasshoppers. I saw a ton of them on this trip.

I think these are strawberry fields amaranth flowers. They were really pretty.

They had rows of zucchini and squash and many still had the blossoms on them.

The baby chicks are always a popular.

A picture perfect barn. Inside were just-picked vegetables to buy.

Some of the goats were eating the grass on the roof.

There are a lot of bees here. I didn’t get too close and was using my camera. They fly away if you get close and are picking the sunflowers. We need the bees so it’s better just to let them go. This is a big fundraiser for this farm to sustain their business without outside help. It gets really crowded on the weekends (I went on a Friday) and luckily I think they only had one rain day. I picked a few sunflowers, a few zucchini and a ton of zinnias to take home but more on those later.

Linking to A Stroll Thru Life.

Chilly bike ride

On May 4, 2023April 29, 2023 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography, Florida animals5 Comments

It was a little chilly in early March (meaning 60 degrees) and I decided to bundle up and go out for a bike ride on my favorite cow pasture trail. There were a few cows near the trail but the almost grown calves were far back.

This time the turkeys were fairly close to the fence. Tom was really showing off for the ladies. The ladies were ignoring him.

A kildeer was cruising along one of the ponds.

This was an interesting grasshopper. Not the usual lubber but I’m not sure what kind.

Blooming along the trail.

I found a big invasive rosary pea plant near the beginning of the trail. Most of the pods had opened up and revealed the bright red seeds. These seeds are highly toxic to humans and many domestic animals but birds can eat them without any problems. I’ve read that one seed can kill a horse or cow and this plant was right along the cow pasture with a horse barn on the other side. I’m surprised they haven’t pulled this out.

“I’m walking on sunshine, yeah!”

On June 30, 2022March 22, 2024 By dinajohnstonIn flowers and plants11 Comments

There’s something magical about standing in the middle of sunflowers.

There were all types of sunflowers here at Sweetfield Farms in early May. Some had yellow faces and some had black faces. Some had big faces and small petals and some had small faces with long yellow petals. I grabbed a pair of clippers and went out to pick a bunch to take home but it was tough to decide which ones to pick. I ended up with a bunch of different ones.

Most of the faces had bees on them but when you clipped them the bees flew off. If you are really afraid of the bees, you can buy the ones in the barn that are already picked. Either way they were $2 a stem. I really didn’t feel like there were a lot of bees swarming around me though. There are plenty without bees as well.

There were other critters on them as well.

It was a beautiful morning out and I was loaded down as I was walking to the car with my camera, zinnias, sunflowers and a few vegetables I picked.

Fun on a farm

On July 19, 2021March 11, 2024 By dinajohnstonIn Florida animals1 Comment

I love going to see the sunflowers at Sweetfield Farms in the spring. Not just because there are fields of flowers but there’s also farm animals. They had baby goats when I visited in mid-May. They were so cute They would come right up to the fence and you could feed them hay. The kids were going crazy over them.

It’s always fun seeing the male turkey showing off when the female walked by.

And you know I love chickens.

They also have vegatables that you could pick. I think the zucchini blooms those yellow flowers.

A grasshopper on a leaf. I’m sure it’s not a good thing to have a grasshopper on your farm. Assuming a lot of them would eat through your plants.

I found a bluebird near the edge of the farm.

So many sunflowers. These were some of the smaller ones. More to come on those.

Tampa across the bay.

On July 30, 2020July 29, 2020 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography3 Comments

A fever of stingrays came by just as I walked out on the Safety Harbor fishing pier. They must call a group of stingrays a fever because you’re going to get a fever if you step on one. I’ve seen grown men cry from getting stuck with a barb from one after not doing the stingray shuffle. It’s supposed to be very painful. Luckily I don’t know that personally. Brett and I saw a man get stuck in the ankle at the beach a few years back. He could barely talk and was turning blue. It was a big barb. I helped his wife pack up their stuff and 2 sons and Brett helped him walk back to their car. We told them to stop at the ranger station on the way out to get some relief. The rangers would have put his foot and ankle in a big bucket with the hottest water he could stand to help stop the pain along with pain relievers.

Standing at the end of the fishing pier, I could see Tampa. Zooming in I could make out the airport and the football stadium. It was hot and hazy in early June.

Not many people on the pier.

I found some osprey taking a break in the water in the shallow area and one flew right over my head.

People have started putting locks on one end of the boardwalk. What they may not know is that so many people were putting love locks on the bridge in Paris that part of the bridge collapsed. They have since removed all of the locks in Paris but now people are putting them everywhere. This is symbolic of “locking” in your love for someone. Eventually the rangers will take them down so the rail of the boardwalk doesn’t collapse and cause injury to someone. And those locks are going to rust quickly in the salt air.

A small mangrove growing along the water.

Grasshoppers are everywhere.

Pretty things in early April

On May 18, 2020May 18, 2020 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography5 Comments

Blooming things at the Florida Botanical Gardens in Largo.

Critters at the gardens.

Baby moorhens are popping up everywhere now.

Yes, the botanical gardens were open during the “Stay At Home” phase. Lucky for me most people must have thought they were closed because there was only a few other people there. Lots of space to move around in.