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Pink Evening Primrose, Showy Evening Primrose, Mexican Evening Primrose, Showy Primrose, Pink Ladies, Buttercups, Pink Buttercups (Oenothera speciosa). Most species of this flower open in the evening and close in the morning, but others such as this one, apparently, open in the morning and and stay open all day. For years, good people have grown the evening primroses in their gardens for root- and leaf-food.
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| Buffalo pea, scurfpea, largebract Indian breadroot (Pediomelum cuspidatum, Pediomelum latestipulatum, or Psoralea cuspidata). Somewhere in the pea family, this rich flower's inclusion at the top of the list (just below my personal favorite) comes because it is the only single one of its kind that I remember seeing on this little piece of land. This one grows at the very top of the hill in the shade of junipers, unlike the usual description of it: "open grass and brushlands." Most sources call it "uncommon." |
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| White Rock lettuce, White Dandelion, Pink Dandelion (Pinaropappus roseus). The usual photograph of said species features a beautifully radi-ant disc of white petals which one can easily see by searching this blog. The unopened pose here in a morning sunlight is this year's choice for the plant. |
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| Indian paintbrush. |
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| Wild garlic. |
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| Bitterweed. |
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| Not at all sure about this one. Maybe a marred and lonely specimen of unusual morphology? |
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| Almost bloomtime. |
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| Sow thistle. |
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| Texas dandelion (?). |
This False Gromwell (or, Soft-hair Marbleseed) always amazes me. Plant some on my grave, please.
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| Yellow sweet clover. |
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| Mustard. |
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| Texas Yellow Star. (Most prolific about two weeks ago.) |
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Engelmann's Daisy, Engelmann Daisy, Cutleaf Daisy. (Engelmannia peristenia)
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| Agarita way past bloomtime |
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| Huisache Daisy, Butterfly Daisy, Honey Daisy. (Amblyolepis setigera) |
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Maybe a version of frog-fruit? This one grows aside the Creek.
Is this what happens when frog-fruit meets water? |
Henbit and Giant Spiderwort. If common flowers want to root on my grave, permit them.
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| Whorled marshpennywort (Hydrocotyle verticillata) beside the Creek. |
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| River walnut (Juglans microcarpa) with drooping catkins here. |
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| Phlox in the Stonefield |
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| Water Speedwell (Veronica anagallis-aquatica) on the Creek's edge |
White Larkspur and Cut-leaf Primrose (Oenothera laciniata). And since we're always speaking of what's for dinner, this primrose's stem, leaves, and roots can be boiled, fried, eaten raw, or otherwise prepared as foraging food. Think spinach.
Wine Cups' roots can be eaten raw or cooked like the sweet potato tuber.
And this False Day Flower grows almost a continuous ground-thicket of green and blue across the shady hillside.
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| Hop tree, Wafer Ash. (Ptelea trifoliata) |
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| Antelope Horns |
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| Young peaches from the Eric Tree. |
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| Young plums. |
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| Inexplicable. |
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| A cloudy-water Pool. |
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| Unblooming water-willow at the Confluence. With leaning sycamores. |
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| A shaded Creek on an April morning in Central Texas. All journeys for Home end here. |
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| Looking back up across Tatum Pond. |
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| Pond meets Creek. And Spring-green highlights a hillside beyond. |
Can anyone help in the identification of this damselfly below?
These sheep are feeling it too. Maybe.
But every year about this time I try to string words on end about what it’s like to be high on Spring. And fail. Of course.
What strange spring-god bothers to inspire me to say what I can’t? Is this waste? Or no more than the waste of these “billions” of new leaves uncounted and unseen except for this symbolic vision of them that I have when I see the hillside opposite our creek or even the view from under a spreading live oak.
I try to speak, though. Mostly to myself as I walk or crawl about a field in the evening haze or morning dew. I look for words at the same time that I am looking for the hollow exuvia of damsel fly larvae clinging to stems beside the creek. I dig for words every time I turn over another streamstone looking for snail eggs. Or climb the bluff itself looking for the elusive vulture “nest” with its two unlikely eggs, green-tinted and splotched with crimson brown markings, just sitting in a hidden space atop those high slabs of sandstone. The stream of words in my head pours steadily through my mind, backing up against their own kind of boulders or then dropping headlong down their own kind of falls. Mostly there’s no predicting where or how the words will go, and mostly it seems they don’t. But even as they pool into a reflective stillness, I remain grateful to Spring that these are the reflections I have opportunity to live.
Right now my mind is laying under the great live oak, squinting its exterior eyes so that the individual leaves become one above me. I try to translate the individual leaves into words, and the canopy I try to translate into a great live sentence. But every time I listen to the words that strangely emerge from my trembling throat, I’m completely confused like a traveler who's crossed a strange border. They are speaking to me, and I am trying to speak back. But making sentences of these tender April leaves seems impossible at times. I try to translate them into humanese. Like trees take air and sun and water and make leaves, I try to take leaves and filtered morning light to make sentences for me to understand. Both pursuits are impossible and both the product of Spring time.
I remain drunk on Creek, petal, shadow, vein, sun, ripple, and flashing feather.
