Prince’s plume (Stanleya pinnata, or Stanley’s Piñata Rosie called it) waves brilliant yellow behind purple and pink salvia, firecracker penstemon, blue flax, gallardia, silver sage, and milkweed.

Prince’s plume provides a wealth of lovely insects sipping at its flagrant flowers.

A Saturday. A morning rounds day. The dogs agitate restlessly, subtly, for a W-A-L-K. But I can’t go yet. I must spend this morning among the wildly blooming flowers of such variety, and the infinite shades of green in the lush growing leaves. Winecups, Callirhoe, with pink salvia; palmer penstemon at its best. Time to pick up all the buckets, pails, bales, bags and hoses strewn about, and make this garden the showplace that it is.

Cloud cover rolls in as I’m photographing flowers with bugs and bees, sun in, sun out, the wind stirs and calms. Camera is best set aside. I have another day of roses, of pink penstemons; yellow and orange columbines, creamy panicles on the golden elder, aromatic lilac twigs of Larry’s eyebrow, purple penstemons will last at least a few more days. Gallardia, salvias pink and purple will last a long time. The roses will be gone overnight when they go, replaced by swelling green hips then ripe red ones. A bumblebee lands on a wild rose blossom… I cannot resist despite the fickle light, and move to the rosebush camera in hand.

These two tiny bugs danced around the same rose for awhile before meeting face to face and greeting one another.

It looks like this insect is eating an ant. I can’t be sure.

Rose bee.

Though I couldn’t catch the bumblebee on the rose, this wasp cooperated.

All kinds of bugs disappear into the corollas of penstemon strictus, then either turn around to leave…

… or back out.

As the honeysuckles wind down they continue to attract wild bees.

Still and overcast, excellent for the firefighters throughout the state, and the west. Last night smoke from a new fire on the western slope, just north of I-70, layered the northwest sky purple and pink as the sun set. Today, after a calm morning with clouds intermittently obscuring the sun, the winds have picked up and thick grey clouds are trying to spit rain. One brutal long gust and one rolling thunder lay all my peace of mind to rest.