Thank You Wade Olson

Spotted this welcome home sign in South St Paul the other day. It put a smile on my face that a family would welcome home their loved one in this unique way. They were certainly proud of their father/son/husband for serving his country. We at TwinCitiesDailyPhoto.com say thank you and welcome back!

Young Grasshopper

Spotted this green cadydid in my garden over the weekend resting on my orange lily's.

Wild Weather

The Twin Cities has seen some substantial thunderstorms roll through this area the past couple of nights. A combination of humid weather from the Gulf combined with a cool front from the north have made for a couple of interesting evenings. Friday evening, I had minor power outages, to the point where I powered my computer off line for the evening. Saturday night, I didn't see any rain around my part of town, but 20 miles north of me say a nasty storm pass through with reports of tornado touchdowns and 65+ miles per hour winds. Sunday we'll get the reports of any storm damage that occurred.

More Rooftops

Lines And Angles

This reflection caught my eye. It is located in just north of downtown Minneapolis, along Interstate 35W.

Hawk Moth

This contribution photo from swc of a Hawk Moth taken in his flower garden in New Brighton. The wings of this moth are clear, it sips nectar from flowers and the wings beet extremely fast. Not surprisingly, it's also been called a hummingbird moth. Now to me, it looks similar to a crawdad, but with wings. Getting a clear photo was a bit difficult with the moth buzzing around as fast as it was.

Another recent photo of the Hawk Moth can be found on Abe's Brookview Daily Photo site. Abe's photo was viewed by swc and to his surprise, he found one a couple days later, otherwise, we would be guessing what kind of moth this was.

Looking Through The Bars

The decorative fencing, which separates the east bound traffic from the west gives a unique view of south bound 7th Street. I took this one while I was stopped for a red light on 7th Street and Wabasha in downtown St Paul. The fencing also doubles as crowd control while people in the Xcel Energy Center leave the building. The fencing forces those walking to their vehicles to cross at the street corners.

Rain Or Smoke

Driving home in late July, I noticed this very large flume of white smoke trailing up to the sky off in the distance. Now I knew it couldn't be smoke, it was too large of an area. Perhaps I caught a photo of the sky falling and those are clouds trickling down to earth. From where I took this photo it was mostly sunny, with the sun behind me, but across the Mississippi River and into Wisconsin, it was rainy weather. I figure the suns rays were at the right angle to brighten up the raindrops to give it the appearance of smoke or the clouds falling.

Skygate

Smack dab in the middle of downtown St Paul is this artwork sculpture by Ron Fisher.

Theme Day: Night

Hello all you Daily Photo viewers from around the world. I'm glad you stopped by on theme day, one of my personal favorite theme days we've had. I will be stopping by your blog later to see your 'night' photo first hand.

The photo I've selected for theme day comes from my garage as I look out between my two parked vehicles in my driveway. On this particular evening, there was a fantastic lightning show on display. I was in the process of snapping several outstanding lightning shots when the rains poured from the sky. When I say poor, I really should be saying buckets of rain were falling. I retreated to the quickest dry location I could get too, my garage. Since I was still setup for photo taking with my tripod, I decided to take a few more shots from the safety of my garage. Honestly, I was just experimenting with some techniques, but when I looked at the photos on my computer monitor, I really liked what I saw from these shots. It has become one of my most commented on photo on here and off of the blog. I had to repost it once more for today's theme day photo.

To see additional theme day photos around the world, stop by the portal page for a convenient thumbnail view of all participants. As the time zone changes each hour, more photos will be added.