Mid-July Blessings

July is one of my favourite months of the year.  It's partly because that's when my poppies start blooming.  It's partly because that's when the garden starts really producing.
  And that's part of what I'm going to share somewhere in this post.  The first small yields from the garden; blessings

from our Creator, without Whom a garden couldn't grow.
  So I had an idea for a bit of a different post today.  I'll put up the normal selection of photos, but then I'm saving something for the end.
  First, back on July 12th, my brother found out there were ducklings in the dugout.  (Later I accidentally scared the mother half to death, and when she flew away from me I identified her as a blue-winged teal.)  There are eleven ducklings that I've been able to count so far!

On July 15th, Dragon was curled up on the deck, probably feeling like he was going to die from the heat, but the position he was in looked kind of cute.  And then later, the sunset.  (Or anyway, the clouds on the opposite side of the west that the sun was going down in...)

Thunderhead in the southeast on the evening of the 18th, and next is Rex sitting on the driveway . . . he looked like a rat, sitting like that.  And then one of my poppies.

And then these next several are all from today (the 19th).  The first two are nanking cherries; then a photo of some unripe hazelnuts; then two pictures of the saskatoons; one of a poppy that I think just bloomed today . . .

. . . and then a little arrangement of the fruit and vegetables that are starting to ripen around here.  Clockwise, starting at the top: wild nanking cherries; saskatoons, peas, beets, carrots, celery.

Now, this chain of photos following the life of a ladybug from egg to adult was my idea.  As a child I always loved ladybugs, and then I think I was in my early teens, maybe a little younger when I realized what baby ladybugs looked like.  And from there on, I've always found it really neat to watch them go through their life cycle.
  The first two pictures are old, from back in 2018, but the rest of them were all taken within the last week.  I'm going to post

1 - June 6, 2018

2 - June 25, 2018

2b - July 15, 2024

3 - July 18, 2024

4 - July 15, 2024

5 - July 18, 2024

6 - July 18, 2024

7 - July 18, 2024 *Notice the faint spots starting to show through the wings

8 - July 18, 2024

8b - July 18, 2024

(My apologies if I got a couple of the stages in the wrong order; I just guessed based off of how they look overtime.)