celosia pinks

Some of my celosia have bloomed a lighter shade, pinks and creams. I went out to take a few pictures.

One of the plants toppled over during our last heavy thunderstorm. I was going to just cut it back (and plant maybe some young echeveria in its place) but when I looked closer saw that it is sprouting new blooms along the horizontal stem, thus growing numerous upright flowers. None of the other plants do this- all their blooms are just on the terminal end, none along the stem. So I think it is in response to the position of the fallen plant. It is so cool I let it be, even though it is trailing across the grass and in the way of the lawn mower.

Celosia is definitely a magnet for insects. I have not managed to get many pictures of them, but I've seen big fat bumblebees, smaller carpenter bees and even smaller flies and wasps working methodically across the broad pink and red blooms. I've seen these wasps with incredibly skinny waists on the celosia, several times a pair of them mating. Here one on the nearby coleus. And the other day I saw that delicate little butterfly the gray hairstreak, rubbing its wing tails together which always fascinates me. Of course when I ran inside to get the camera and came back out, it was gone.

I got a compliment on this planting recently. I had stooped to pull some weeds from the succulents around the stump and a neighbor walking her dog paused to tell me how nice the plants looked around my mailbox. It made me feel good (especially because the lawn is in terrible shape, which I'm also trying to work on this year).