North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina
This will be my third Walktober post from North Carolina; my first three were posted while living in Connecticut. Again this year Dawn, over at her Change Is Hard blog, will be hosting. There is still time to participate if you wish to share a walk or other experience this month, and you can find the simple instructions to do so here.
I decided to try a new location for the walk this year. The North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh is 27 miles away from home so it was a bit of an expedition getting there. (And due to rush hour traffic in the late afternoon it took us one and a half hours to get home afterwards!) The museum is surrounded by a lovely park with walking trails, so we picked the Upper Meadow Trail.
Butterflies and bees were all over the hillside meadow we explored, and we spotted two new-to-us kinds of butterflies. We even saw a honey bee with a pollen basket on her leg, filled to the brim. There was an interesting sculpture to ponder, and wildflowers and grasses as far as the eye could see. It was definitely worth the trip!
I don’t build small models or draw detailed plans first.
I start with a vision, a dream of what I want to do, and see where it goes.
~ Mark di Suvero
There blows the yellow crested reed,
The autumnal queen of flowers.
~ Samuel Alfred Beadle
(The Golden Rod)
To see my past Walktober posts select the Walktober tag in the categories below this post. When Dawn collects the links to everybody’s posts in November, and then posts them on her blog, it’s fun to take a look at all the different places other bloggers have visited, and read about the experiences they have had.
I love watching bees go crazy over asters in the fall. You had the bonus of butterflies as well! 🧡
It was quite a show! I was thrilled to get the picture of a bee hovering with her pollen basket. 🐝
I like the butterflies! We are getting a few more this time of year. They appear to be going somewhere important.
So happy to hear you’re also getting to enjoy some butterfly magic! I think you are on a busy migratory path, too. 🦋
Today we had a very nice light rain for a few minutes while I was sitting outside on my front porch. Afterwards a yellow butterfly actually landed on a grass blade right in front of me. I had my binoculars because I was really bird watching. It stayed a long time. I think it might have been a type of sulfur butterfly. Pretty and fun.
This was a wonderful Walktober Barbara – what a treasure trove of pollinators you saw! The bees were busy buzzing about and doing what bees do, but those butterflies were beautiful, from the Passion Butterfly to the Sleepy Orange and I believe you are correct, the Painted Lady. Wild daisies all over too, a perfect Fall walk!
Thank you, Linda! I’m starting to think I should create a life butterfly list to go along with my life bird list – lol. It seems like every time I take a walk I see at least one different kind as they pass through here on their migration paths. If that is a painted lady then that was 3 new-to-me butterflies in one day. 🦋 🐝 🦋
I’ve seen many butterflies I’ve not heard of in your blog Barbara, so I definitely think you should start a life butterfly list. Go through your posts and you’ll probably be surprised just how many you have seen and photographed since you moved to North Carolina alone, let along back in Connecticut. This trio of butterflies posed for you for your Walktober walk. Yesterday we got to 82 degrees (I heard that this morning) and I saw a lot of Cabbage Whites flitting by as I was walking home yesterday. The Monarch sitting on the chain link fence the day before – that was a first for me. I wanted to put out my finger for it to alight then carry it to somewhere where I knew there were flowers. 🙂 We had some strong winds and heavy rain most of today, so I hope the butterflies here had a place to take refuge.
Well, I decided to do it, Linda, and went through my posts with butterflies. Twelve kinds here in North Carolina, two kinds in Connecticut, and two kinds (monarch and eastern tiger swallowtail) in both states. Wow! Who knew moving to North Carolina would turn out to be such a butterfly bonanza? (And I have a feeling that if I got outside in the summer I would probably see even more.) I don’t have any of your cabbage whites here yet! How lovely you got to see your first monarch! I’m sure it found a leaf or branch to hide under when the weather turned. The gulf fritillary in this post of had a missing chunk in its left wing. The weather probably batters lots of butterfly wings by the end of the season.
That’s quite a variety Barbara – I know I’ve not seen that many in my lifetime, at the most eight maybe? I’m glad you did this – now you can keep track of them going forward. I once saw a Swallowtail at Memorial Park that I truly wondered how it could fly as its poor wings were in such tatters. I thought about that Monarch on the chain link fence yesterday as we had stormy weather and high winds. Although it was gorgeous today, we have rain and high winds, maybe some hail, over the next three days. I hope the Monarch picked up some speed today and got out of Michigan.
Thank you for sharing your Walktober! I will add it to my growing recap post right now! What a beautiful day you had. My immediate thought when I saw the large sculpture was that it was an elephant! Did anyone else think that too?
Many thanks to you for hosting Walktober, Dawn! We couldn’t have asked for better weather that day. I didn’t really see anything in the sculpture but now that you’ve suggested an elephant I can see it there quite well, trunk and all.
What a lovely place for your Walktober, Barbara! I loved seeing the asters and the butterflies. I’m looking forward to seeing Dawn’s roundup post and enjoying everybody’s take on this annual event. That sculpture does kind of remind me of an elephant — nicely pegged, Dawn!
It’s always fun to see what variety of places people come up with to feature for Walktober, isn’t it? Now that I’ve stopped clinging to the idea of finding fall leaf colors in this month I’ve discovered other beautiful things to see in the natural world.
I had popped over here to see if you had written a Walktober post and then saw your devastating news about Tim. I want to gush about how lovely this post is, but I imagine it must be quite bittersweet for you now. Sending virtual hugs your way….
Thank you for the hugs, Karma. It is bittersweet, especially since it turns out this Walktober walk was the last walk we ever took together, with no idea the end was so near. But it will likely now be more firmly etched in my memory than all our other walks.
I’m glad you have this nice memory, along with all the other wonderful ones you have from a lifetime spent together.
💙