This is the Cashmerian Cypress tree. I thought I'd better show what it looks like from a bit of distance. It's an absolute beauty, one of my favourite trees in the garden. This one is just a few years old but growing very well - about 4 metres tall in just a few years. 
garden

 
I am trying to learn more about cypresses. This is a gorgeous Cashmerian Cypress flowering or sending out pollen or whatever it is that it does. I have been researching on the internet but not really learning a lot. Like for instance does this tree have male and female whatevers on the same tree?
This picture is greatly magnified (aren't the new cameras wonderful?) and the first day I spotted these little thingies they were all closed up and the next they were brown and opening. What happens next? I hope to know soon but if you know then please tell me. 

 
I haven't put up any pictures for ages - just been too busy, plus there didn't seem anything good happening in the garden. We are so much in drought that I have huge cracks appearing in the lawn and I've lost some of my more tender shrubs. Even things which are supposed to be able to withstand drought, like pokers. My beautiful 'Winter Cheers' are non existent this year. I hope they have surviving roots under the ground and if it ever rains again they will pop up and surprise me.
Which reminds me. The autumn colours this year are glorious. Even my flowering peaches have managed to muster up a little red and gold to match the fiery persimmon nearby and the yellow of the liquid ambers in the background.
The swamp cypresses are a glorious orangey brown and the crepe myrtles are deep red. We don't have the sheer numbers of colourful trees like our friends in Canada but what we have is looking good.

This little insect was sitting on a rock sunning itself. When it flew away it went straight up like a miniature helicopter. and fast!. I was expecting it to fly forwards not straight up.