Scenes from my garden - July 2014

I've spent the past few years building up my perennial collection in the front and back gardens. The nice thing about perennials is that you can divide them after a few years to increase the number of flowering plants. This is great for attracting all sorts of insects and the local birds. Every-once-in-awhile I take some time to do some macro photography, or to just photograph the flowers. Here's a sampling from July 1, 2014:

Purple cone flower

Purple cone flower

Purple cone flower

Purple cone flower

Red Rocks penstemon and a cerotina bee

Red Rocks penstemon and cerotina bee

Gooseneck loosestrife

Lucilia spp fly on gooseneck loosestrife

Lucilia spp fly on gooseneck loosestrife

Foraging flies

Fly, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

In the subalpine zone of the Snowy Mountains of Wyoming there were numerous flies foraging on the flowers of Asteraceae. I'm not sure if they were after pollen or nectar or both, but they sure were attracted to these plants.

I'm not sure what species of fly this is. It's much smaller than a common housefly, but it doesn't have the long proboscis of a hoverfly.