Food and Flora!

All right, guess who's back from traveling! The NY-MD journey took nearly 60% longer than usual both ways due to heavy traffic and road construction but being the mellow yellow fellow that I am, I actually rather enjoyed the drive. The past week was hot and stuffy but weather was soon forgotten once I was immersed in work, which in turn was forgotten once I was sitting in front of delicious food!

As hard as it is to believe, I didn't take photos of everything I ate because the food itself distracted me. What was captured though (with my phone camera), could be said to be the highlights of the week's dining experience. We start off with steak with macaroni and cheese prepared to perfection. I ordered the steak medium-rare, which was just right and the flavor really popped in your mouth.

On my last night in MD, we journeyed to a Japanese restaurant in DE. I've only ever had sushi in NY and wasn't sure what to expect down south but was pleasantly surprised. My order comprised of two rolls: a tempura shrimp roll with avacado, eel sauce, Japanese mayonnaise, and breading and a king crab roll topped with tuna. These two rolls, especially the tempura shrimp roll, easily rivaled the NY sushi I've had.

While the sushi was excellent, the dessert was even erm...more excellent! My coworkers and I each ordered a tempura brownie topped with coffee ice cream and caramel. I'm generally not a dessert-person but I'll be damned if I don't order this again! This dessert was so rich that it was effectively a second meal. 

All this talk of good food has me salivating so let's move on to the main event. I arrived too late Friday evening to take any photos so I woke up early Saturday morning and went to work. As with a lot of the recent photos, these were taken with the DMC-FZ35 configured with the DMW-LC55 close-up lens. I can't identify the flowers in the first three photos, so anyone who know what they are, please speak up!

A lot of hover flies were busy swarming these flowers as evidenced in the photo above. These little flies are quick while in-flight so I patiently waited until they touched down on the the flowers to gather nectar.

At night, these flowers actually close up and look as if they never bloomed until the next morning when they re-open to their full glory.

This year, I didn't take as many photos of peonies as I did last year. During my week away, a lot of them opened up and ran their course. A number did remain in-bloom so I seized the opportunity to take some photos. In the first one below, we have a mean-looking black fly perched on a pink peony.

I like the next photo below because it looks as if the peony in focus has a "tail" or "train" of peonies. In the front yard, we have an entire row of peonies that have dozens of flowers in peak-bloom.

 

  

The small flowers in the first of the next two photos are also unidentified to me. They are roughly one-quarter inch in width and grow in small clusters. Again, if anyone can identify it, please let me know what they are! The second photo is of a leek flower head in bloom. We have a couple of these plants growing in the backyard.

The multi-layered clematis that I fondly photographed and posted in the last couple of posts mostly lost their main petals over the week. Nonetheless, the remaining petals retained their porcupine-like spiky appearance.

 

The next flower is yet another one that I have not yet identified so please help me out! I've actually identified this particular flower with the help of Wikipedia. I have photos from last year that have an even closer view of the central structures of the flowers. Since the LC55 lens was attached, I have a longer minimum focusing distance, hence the not-as-close view as last year.

Rosa multiflora

To finish today's post, we have an assortment of roses (actually beginning with the previous photo). Red, white, pink, yellow, and purple - we have it all between the front/back yards!

The roses in the next two photos give off an incredible fragrance that wafted in the air as I moved around to compose the photos. I think they they, along with some other of roses below, may be cultivars of Rosa chinensis.

We're due to have weather above 90*F (32.2*C) over the next couple of days this week and I expect the heat to cause a lot of the flowers to wither quicker than usual. After the roses and peonies finish up, we'll see the hydrangea come out. In the mean time, I'll try to photograph as much as I can before the heat wave takes its toll so stay tuned!