Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #147: Gardens

Subtitle: Garden not my garden.

This week’s LAPC challenge is to share the beauty of gardens, whether your own garden, another’s garden, or the experience of gardening. I don’t have a garden, unless you consider 15 potted plants to be a garden, which I suppose they could be but maybe that can be a blog post for another day.

For this challenge, I’m going to define the word garden rather loosely. A couple of blocks from my house sits a stormwater facility. (I keep calling it a pond and my engineer husband keeps correcting me … which is funny because the city thinks it’s a lake hence the name Lake Le Marc (major eye-roll here)). I digress (which I often do …).

As I was saying, there’s a stormwater pond a couple of blocks from my house. I often visit it on my walks, checking for litter (of which there’s often quite a bit) but also checking for new or strange flora. I am rarely disappointed.

Firstly, the setting.

Here’s a long view of the pond, at least one-half of it. The water is low but all about the pond are lovely green hues with some strikes of purple if you look closely enough.

Nice, but let’s get a little closer.

And here we are! Pickerel Weed (Pontederia cordata), an aquatic plant native to Florida. They are in delightful abundance at the pond.

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Also in abundance are dandelions. I guess you could say these are before and after photos (grin).

This delicate flower is either a Broadleaf or Lance-leaved arrowhead. Google Photos says it’s a Broadleaf but my Audubon Florida guide says it’s Lance-leaved. Even though we’re not talking a huge difference here (Sagittaria latifolia vs Sagittaria lancifolia), I’m going with Audubon.

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This gladiolus was a true surprise for me. All the years I’ve been visiting the pond, I’ve never seen it before this weekend. The stalk is taller than me (5’3″) and is so top heavy that it’ll probably wind up buried under the bushes. I had to hold the stalk with my thighs in order to get the two close-ups. Fun.

The Florida Native Plant Society tags this plant as meadow garlic (Alliaceae). Initially I thought I had not seen meadow garlic before, but, in fact, I have seen their delicate white flowers around the pond. I always wondered what they were and could rarely get a good enough photo for identification. (I still struggle with getting good shots of white anything.)

And last but never least, a bug! What’s a garden without bugs … even if they are the kind to mess up your garden. This critter is a blue and red flea beetle. From what I’ve read, it’s a pest for home vegetable gardens, but here I always get a bit of a thrill when I see one. They are very accommodating for photo shoots.

I hope you consider sharing photos of the gardens you have visited, your own garden, your experience of gardening, or anything to do with the idea of gardens. Please include a link to Amy’s original post here and use the Lens-Artists tag so that everyone can find your post in the WP Reader.

I hope you all are safe, healthy, and happy!

Categories: iPhone photography

Marie A Bailey

Writer, blogger, knitter, cat lover, and introvert.