On a few small acres in the hill country of central Texas, we live by watching, feeling, and waiting. Together, we come to know by loving and love best when we care enough to understand. Our Loves: limestone, leaf-vein, scales, feathers, friends, and all their shifting reflections in the waters of a small Creek.
Redstripe ribbon snake (Thamnophis proximus rrilineatusub) belly is bigger than its mouth. The leopard frog (Rana) got away after a half-hour struggle.
Ah, yes.
Those blue eyes....
Fox scat on the trail down to the Pond.
Palafoxia (Palafoxia callosa) is the most ubiquitous flowering plant
down in the stone-field of the dry creek bed.
Zexmenia (Zexmenia hispida)
Golden-Eye (Viguiera dentata)
.
Golden-Eye (Viguiera dentata) in big-bloom all over this country now.
Velvet-Leaf Mallow (Wissadula holosericea)
Velvet-Leaf Mallow (Wissadula holosericea)
Wood-Sorrel (Oxalis Drummondii)
Common Wild Petunia (Ruellia nudiflora)
Tube-Tongue (Siphonoglossa pilosella)
Texas Lantana (Lantana horrida)
Curlytop Gumweed (Grindelia nuda) with its sticky
leaves (growing mostly in the stonefield). Indians of the
Southwest would treat ant bites with a poultice made
from this flower.
Sometimes its tops are white instead of yellow.
Spittlebug (see 4 April, 2012 entry)
Snow-on-the-mountain
Tropical Sage (?)
Frostweed
So, daughter K. arrived last weekend with the solution to my paradox-of-choice. I wake in these cool mornings with too many projects, large and small. Stone walls to build. Stones to find. Stones to haul. Juniper to cut and burn. Soil to turn. Scrap to haul away. Pens to build. Steps to complete. Paint to paint. And because the list is so long, I am always paralyzed with the many options and then regretful into the first few minutes of the project because I can't forget the other projects I probably should have chosen instead.
That's when K. suggested that we write on slips of paper the individual projects and label them as "7-hour," "3-hour," and "1-hour" projects. We wad them up and stuff them into an empty cashew jar. Then when I have, say, a full day or most of a weekend's worth of time, I reach into the jar and blindly pull out any one of the 7-hour project sheets and get to work. This process eliminates the paradox-of-choice. I have no choice but the one slip's assignment.
A dull photo of a dull subject (except, of course, for the showy bush of lantana to the left).
But an apparently dull subject can be transformed into a beautiful and fascinating object of study or pleasure. This is done, of course, by seeing. It's all about sight. For those who walk by faith and not by sight, I pity the unnecessary displeasure this world must bring to them. Below is a series of quick images taken within the confines of the photograph above. They aren't amazing photographs, but every image is a testament to the amazing world of sight we had best not disparage before we are blinded forever. Within a few minutes, we were able to pick out a gorgeous collection of flowers from an otherwise mundane piece of summer scenery.
See the inconspicuous crab spider on the right prickly poppy flower? Here it is now below again. It is so desperately trying to be inconspicuous and a nothing that it has conveniently lost its front right crab-like claw.
an assumed Leguminosae of some kind
Lindheimer's Senna (Cassia Lindheimeri)
The image to the left is another great example of the sort of drab ugliness we confess to love so much. Here the mullein (Verbascum thapsus) has grown tall and tired this late in the season, but like an old and ugly man, it cannot help but bloom alone and unrecognized.
And to the right, the dimmunitive Texas frog fruit (Phyla incisa) blossoms have attracted scores of moths and butterflies this time of year.
Below is an inconspicuous bit of useless flower. Not a lot of attention. Not a lot of show. Just taking up space among the stones. And one of the white flowers enlarged to the right.
White heliotrope (Heliotropium tenellum)
Wild Poinsettia
(Euphorbia cyathophora)
We doubt that anybody will soon be singing the praises of these two humble flowers. A casual hike through these hills might involve stepping on them, but probably not a convincing stop long enough to take them fully into view. And when tourists and natives drive our local highways now, these are the flowers referred to in the statement "all the bluebonnets are gone and there are no flowers out now."
what?
Scarlet spiderling (Boerhaavia coccinea)
Everything said above applies to these two unnecessary flowers as well. And to illustrate the point even more, observe the dull unnecessariness of the larger plant below from which the piece of dullness above right was taken.
Seriously. Does it really get more uninteresting than Boerhaavia coccinea?
OK. This blog needs some help for just a moment. . . .
Much better. No boring Boerhaavia coccinea putting us to us to sleep here.
For our mystery fish who now have proven themselves quite fertile parents, see a short video clip of their nervous attempts to guard a shifting brown cloud of several thousand eighth-inch long young ones.
Or click on this image for a second video:
One Texas Parks and Wildlife Department source to whom I emailed photos of our fish says he thinks these are Rio Grande Cichlids. This or that site may provide support for his claim.
