Tropical Storms and Butterflies

Tropical Storm Beryl is off the coast of New Jersey today. We have been seeing some interesting cloud formations, along with a bit of rain, as the bands cross over us. I decided to walk down to the park/retention basin at the end of my street to get some pictures of the clouds, because the trees in my yard blocked my view of most of the clouds.

Our park/retention basin is interesting. It serves as a park when it's not full of water. Right now, it's only slightly squishy, and only near the cement culvert, which runs most of the length of the park. It is usually overgrown, which lets the water spread out and makes the ground real marshy. I've had my shoe sucked right off my foot several times. Right now, the water is running down the small culvert, which is small enough to jump over. One of the nice things I noticed is that the township is not mowing the strip of land between the culvert and the woods, and it is really overgrown. Why is this nice, you ask? Because there are a ton of wildflowers growing there, including milkweed. Milkweed = butterflies. I enjoyed watching an Eastern Swallowtail (yellow) and two or three Monarch butterflies while I was there. It was nice to see all the butterflies, but especially the Monarchs. They have been having a tough time lately, and their numbers are greatly reduced.
The Monarchs were quite playful - it looked like they were playing tag. In the picture below, you can see the butterfly in the upper right hand corner zooming around to tag the one on the milkweed. I was going to jump the culvert to try to get closer but decided against it because: a) I was wearing flimsy sandals, and b) there were several extremely large black wasps on the milkweed. I didn't want to mess with them.

Anyway, the sky was amazing today. It went from sunny to partly cloudy, to grey with a quick rain shower.
The formations changed quickly. Right now, the storm seems to have moved off enough that we have clear skies, and a beautiful sunset, which I got to a few minutes too late.I have so many trees around my house, that I can't take a picture of the sky during summer. That's not a bad thing; it just means I have to hoof it down to the park to take any pcitures of the sky. By the time I realize it's sunset, and take a peek out the door to see what it looks like, it's usually perfect. Then I grab the camera, and zip down to the park. Well, I try to zip, but with a bad knee, zipping is not all that possible. It's easier in the winter, when the trees are leafless.

Oh yeah, this is a knitting blog, isn't it? Well, I am up to the second row of fish on Creatures, but i just got called in to work tonight, so I won't be doing any knitting, especially since I'm working the whole weekend. Oh, well.