September 2017

And into September.

A favorite month because the sun’s arc across the canyon shrinks towards the south, bringing with it angled lights and yellowing cedar elm leaves (the first ones to indicate approaching autumn).

Here are some of the plants that flower around the first of this month (and for most, extending till the end):

Cowpen daisy

Silverleaf nightshade

Common wild petunia (purple and white)

straggler daisy

Tube-tongue

Velvet-leaf mallow

Baby’s breath bluets

Zexmenia

Snow-on-the-mountain

Stickleaf

Clammy weed

Palafoxia

Senna

Purple bindweed

Buttonbush

Wood-sorrel

Widow’s tears
Broomweed
Common Mullein
Lindheimer's Morning Glory
Rock Rose (Rose Mallow, Pavonia Mallow)

Central Texas is said to have an absence of seasons, which is, of course, quite an interesting thought considering the sorts of discomforts we subject ourselves to each August and each February. But maybe they mean the changing seasons. The colors. So here are a few of the changing colors of this September season.

A rare ringed kingfisher spending the month with us

2 Lambs Born the First of the Month

January 2017

A sunshiny day in the first week of 2017

Little red sweet potatoes warming up in a bit of olive oil

     Kate dug red sweet potatoes the second of January, and we set them in the dark to cure for a few weeks. These little things were mostly only an inch thick and five or so long because I failed to plant them early enough. But tasty, damn!

     On January six, I took the life of a free-living, innocent wild hog, fearfully and wonderfully made. One doesn't just casually squeeze the trigger of a .243 rifle while it's aimed at another life. 

     That same day I butchered it cleanly and ground up all the meat, half going to pan sausage and the other half to link sausage we smoked over oak and peach wood a couple days later. In a light drizzle, we kept the oak coals going all day, adding every now and then pieces of green peach wood just recently pruned from their trees. The result was the most delicious sausage we've ever enjoyed. Spicy, smokey, and raised free on wild grasses, acorns, roots, fruits, and tubers.

Wild hog link sausage smoking 

Hind quarter of the pig

The pig

     Six lambs were born the second week of the month, two sets of twins and two to two mothers. The first ewe to deliver did so shortly before sunrise, but by the time I found her an hour or two later, one of the lambs was dead. Still slightly warm, but limp and lifeless, his death left us without a known cause. 

     These two little ones below were only hours old and as healthy as one could hope for. 

Birthday twins (January 9)

     Our blackberries have left us disappointed with their flavor, so we're trying again, this time along the east fence of the sheep field. We've tilled the sandy soil and amended it with sulfur, peat moss, and compost from the highly organic soil beneath the Boulders.

Making the bed (for blackberries)

Looking north across a foggy pond--January 16, 8:30 a.m.