As soon as we entered this small, two pathway long butterfly garden in Washington, DC, I thought of Rambling Woods and Nature Notes. How pretty were all the flowers in the garden!

The butterfly garden is near the National Gallery of Art and next to the Natural History Museum; both are on the National Mall.

Despite all the butterfly-attracting flowers such as butterfly bushes, we didn’t see any butterflies. Perhaps the many people and cars and big, concrete buildings of Washington, DC scared them away?

I am guessing this lovely red bloom is a cardinal flower.

On the last day of our vacation we visited Mount Vernon, Virginia, home of President George Washington. There I spotted – a butterfly!

There is a lovely butterfly park in East Brunswick, New Jersey.

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There is a lake at Batsto Village in the Pine Barrens in southern New Jersey. There one can see all sorts of natural elements, like wildflowers and a pretty butterfly.

This star-like lavender flower (spotted knapweed – thanks to EG Wow) was also growing next to the lake. There is a nature center at the village, but we didn’t get a chance to visit.

This cattail is situated in a man-made pond created by 19th century businessman Joseph Wharton.

For more nature notes (and this week’s post about lawns) visit:

This family of birds was living in the rafters at the Longstreet Farm in Holmdel, New Jersey.

 
My daughter had the opportunity to milk a cow at the farm. On the left is that cow’s calf, whose birth helped the cow be a plentiful nurser.

In local sad news, the mama of the guinea pigs we adopted for the summer has died. We buried her in our backyard. In the words of my veterinarian friend, she was “geriatric” (over four years old). The guinea pigs’ original owner comforted me over the phone, saying, I was afraid this might happen. I think I was more upset than my daughter. My daughter noticed that I’ve been checking on the remaining two a lot, and she said I’m glad you don’t fret over me like that.

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In memory of Bobbie (click to read Michelle’s memorable post about her dear friend):

My daughter and I were on the porch yesterday, and we heard a cat cry. No, maybe it was a baby. No, it was two birds, meowing at each other. Now I know why these are called gray catbirds. Here is my gray catbird photo from last summer.

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Last week I featured a radish; this week here are homegrown strawberries. Can you guess what the bright blue background is?

For more photos with red, visit Ruby Tuesday:

On Sunday we rented one canoe and two kayaks (each of my sons had their own kayak) down in the Pine Barrens in southern New Jersey.

We started our canoe trip down this skinny, windy river.

On the way we saw swamp azalea and mountain laurel, lots of pale pink mountain laurel flowers that looked a bit like rhododendron. We also saw what was probably a small eastern painted turtle, resting on a log. A few twists and turns later we saw a great big turtle, a similar one with the bits of red, also resting on a log. We saw hawks flying over head, and there were many different bird sounds in the trees.

We saw two types of lily pads. I only took my oldest camera on the trip, which was a good thing because at one point after banging into a bank we tipped over into the water! My husband lost his hat, but my old camera seemed to be OK (it was in its case inside a backpack). I was afraid to take my camera out – there was too much concentration needed in traversing the river. So I didn’t get photos of the lily pads, but this was how they looked (not my photos):

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