Yeah, that was a really lame pun. Bee-lieve me, I’m usually not that bad. But sometimes my puns leave people somewhat bee-mused. As opposed to amused…
Anyway, this is a bee (if you didn’t get that already) clinging to a flame azalea. When the flowers of a flame azalea die, they drop the trumpets of their blossoms down the stamens to dangle in pink rows all over the bush. This is one of the few plants I know of that looks as cool when it’s dead as it does when it’s alive. It’s beautiful either way. And it really is reminiscent of its fiery namesake, especially when it’s in the morning sun. I really like the way my camera rendered the colors in this photo, even though I wish the focus down the bee’s body were more consistent.
And this is a tiger swallowtail butterfly, one of the most common we see. Black swallowtails, as well as the occasional mourning cloak butterfly, also frequent the azaleas. The tiger swallowtails also adore pink zinnias, but the zinnias aren’t doing too well this year. In fact, the flame azalea is one of the few plants that seems to have escaped the effects of the sharp, violent cold snap we had at the beginning of the season. It froze the buds on the trees and the leaves of any precocious plant that rose from its winter slumber too early. The mountains basically were cheated out of spring, because the temperature hopped straight from cold to hot, and the trees never had that bright, ethereal glow of buds that you only see in spring, because the buds were destroyed.
