Dry

    Here is a great comparison photo below.  I never knew that snow-on-the-mountain changed the white edges of its leaves and bracts during the period when its flowers are developing.  The first photo of two blog entries ago shows the plant as the first flowers were blooming, and the one below displays the full-bloom stage of the leaves.  Such a change obviously augments any of the flower's attempts to draw the attention of pollinating insects.

What might be a carpenter bee (Xylocopa) on snow-on-the-mountain (Euphorbia marginata)

     When things out at the Creek get just too hot for us to work at anything productive (we hit 112 degrees yesterday), we take to the purely useless.  Like stone-balancing.

     I really didn't think that the Creek would still be wet this deep into the hot drought, but water continues to seep up into the upper stretch of the stream, and if not exactly working a brisk flow, it at least is able to keep up enough of a presence to sustain the usual Creek life.

     The Pond continues creeping northward, away from us, now at a distance of about seventy-five feet from the original water-meter.  I don't know, but this comes to about an eight-inch step per day, and down about four or five feet in actual elevation fall.

  (The water-meter stick is hidden in the dry grasses bottom left.) 

   

Purple bindweed/Sharp-pod bindweed/Tie Vine (Ipomoea cordatotriloba)   

Honey bees (Apis) scavenging for water among wet and muddy stones.

     And a couple images of the progress on the Creek house.