Life found on the roadside verge, a short drive from our home in Gore. I noticed these pink achillea recently and Nigel took me back yesterday to get some photos. Some feature small-animal life as well. Taken with Nigel’s cellphone, both taking turns at being photographer. Southland, New Zealand
Pink achillea with a colourful little blue-green fly and another insect
Bumblebee and pink clover flowers however the plant is called “red clover”
Along the verge a bit further I was excited to find this colourful utility thing
Nigel was excited to find a cute spider visiting
Despite its long legs it could run fast
Landscape including gorse hedge, white convolvulus and white achillea
Take care and keep an eye out for others’ wellbeing too..
Text by Liz, photos by Nigel and Liz; Exploring Colour (2019)
Exploring Colour 
That’s a colorful utility thing indeed. Its utility seems to be in attracting photographers.
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Nice harvestman and beautiful lichen as well!😊
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A very nice collection, Liz, from out and about! The spider and then the eyes on the cupcakes did make me smile!
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Oh good, it’s always nice to hear I’ve helped to bring on a smile 🙂 🙂
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Impressive!
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Hello urzre, thank you!
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Hi, Ms. Liz!
You rock!
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Aw, that is so sweet! Sending love and hugs your way 🙂
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Ohh you have Pink achillea too! I found it last year here in the forrest!
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Yes! I actually re-found your post not long ago and then noticed these local ones just down the road! They do turn up here-and-there and are always a very nice surprise!
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Crazy!
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The achillea and the clover both pop up through the lawn here, so I guess our soils may be similar. The bees love the clover! (We get white clover too.)
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Our lawn has heaps of white clover (which is everywhere pretty much in NZ and part of many pasture mixes). The red clover is more random but also utilised (with care) by some farmers for pasture – it can have a negative effect on animals in too great a quantity although I don’t recall the detail.
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Hubby avoids moving the lawn when the clover flowers (mostly white ) are out, so that the bees have them. 🙂
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Shame the bees can’t drop you off some honey in return!
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Now that would be good, hehe!
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Love the cupcakes!
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Great aren’t they? Our local supermarket deli always seems to stock them but vary the colour with each batch. There’s other cupcakes like these in a previous post: https://exploringcolour.wordpress.com/2018/07/11/food-colouring/
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The colours on that Utility thingy are amazing, it actually looks like it grew out of the nature around it. The spider on the other hand would have had me running!!!!!
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hahaha you have to be kidding me re the spider! the bright colours of peeling paint and lichen did look amazing, really beautiful too.. a most unexpected find!
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I’m not kidding, they have too many legs, I never can tell which way there are going to run and where they are even looking!!!
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Their legs are fascinating! Mike Powell via comments on my latest post Hiding in Plain Sight has alerted me that these are probably “harvestmen” rather than spiders. Info in a link he gave me.. “Like all arachnids, harvestmen have four pairs of walking legs, a pair of chelicerae, and a pair of small, leg-like appendages called pedipalps.” Isn’t that a great word.. pedipalps !!
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me again, I was wondering if you have seen these pictures, his own website also has some stunning shots of New Zealand, black and white though…
https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/23191541/posts/2212795044
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b-and-w fine, have learned to appreciate it! i enjoyed his work very much with a favourite being the devonport fountain, also the mt victoria mushrooms which we saw years ago. the clyde and roxburgh hydro dams are in central otago so i’m quite familiar with them and appreciated his skill at composition with difficult subjects. great find, thanks for sharing!
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