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.
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.
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."
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.
Indian paintbrush.
Wild garlic.
Bitterweed.
Not at all sure about this one. Maybe a marred and lonely specimen of unusual morphology?
Almost bloomtime.
Sow thistle.
Texas dandelion (?).
This False Gromwell (or, Soft-hair Marbleseed) always amazes me. Plant some on my grave, please.
Yellow sweet clover.
Mustard.
Texas Yellow Star. (Most prolific about two weeks ago.)
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.
Whorled marshpennywort (Hydrocotyle verticillata) beside the Creek.
River walnut (Juglans microcarpa) with drooping catkins here.
Phlox in the Stonefield
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.
Hop tree, Wafer Ash. (Ptelea trifoliata)
Antelope Horns
Young peaches from the Eric Tree.
Young plums.
Inexplicable.
A cloudy-water Pool.
Unblooming water-willow at the Confluence. With leaning sycamores.
A shaded Creek on an April morning in Central Texas. All journeys for Home end here.
Looking back up across Tatum Pond.
Pond meets Creek. And Spring-green highlights a hillside beyond.
Looks like a Red Admiral butterfly. But I've yet to find a picture that matches this description.
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.
Real artists never apologize for their work. And they certainly don't do so prior to a showing. But since the one who compiles all these images and comments for a streamside makes no personal claims, he feels entitled to apologize for the quickshot nature of the following images snapped in haste and quickly pasted to the cloud. So there.
What we see here is an overgrown garden where last year there was barely enough short grass to wither and die in a drought and heatwave. But this year we've already had more rain than the total for last year, so plants grow to waist-high, climbing over, winding around, and nearly hiding the few intentional plants we set out one year ago. The first picture of the little orchard would look different today: I spent the past two days mowing it down and then installing several hundred feet of black irrigation pipe. Now we merely set the timer up at the well and watch water drip out at a rate of one gallon per hour, slowly moistening the sandy soil around blackberries, peaches, apples, pears, plums, and figs. Had we built the irrigation system last year, perhaps we would not have lost three quarters of the blackberry plants. Those few that did survive the record dry heat are now producing green fruits.
Last year we saw hardly any patches of widow's tears, but this spring they crowd every shady spot there is. The trail leading up Whitman's Rough to Priest's Cave is an overgrown mini-jungle of these sweet blue flowers and their thick-leaved grass-like parts. Occasionally a white flower among them can be found.
The prophet in me wants to warn of great swarms of grasshoppers for this summer. The situation is ripe.
Albino day flower?
White dandelion, or Rock lettuce (Pinaropappus roseus)
Indian blanket (Gaillardia pulchella)
Spittle from the spittlebug (Philaenus spumarius)
Among the stones near the Pond.
Garden insect is jump champion
By Jonathan Amos
BBC News Online
Move over the flea - the best jumper in the animal world is the froghopper.
This unassuming six-millimetre-long bug which leaves "cuckoo spit" on garden foliage can spring 70 centimetres into the air.Although the flea can do something similar, the froghopper is 60 times heavier.
"That makes froghoppers the true champions," said Professor Malcolm Burrows, head of zoology at Cambridge University, UK.
"It's not so much that they jump a little higher than fleas; it's the fact that because they're heavier, their jump performance is more impressive," he told BBC News Online.
Professor Burrows reports his investigation of insect jumping in the journal Nature. Super acceleration
The froghopper ( Philaenus spumarius ) is well distributed across the world. It lives by sucking the juice out of plants. The developing young will hide from predators inside a froth blown out of their back ends earning the insects the nickname spittlebug.
Adults leap from plant to plant. They have long been known to be good jumpers but Professor Burrows has now measured their performance.The froghopper's secret is found in two hind legs that are so specialised to the high jump task that they are simply dragged along the ground when the insect is walking.
When the bug needs to leap, the legs form part of a very powerful catapult system. The limbs are lifted in a cocked position, held by ridges on the legs.
Two huge muscles, one controlling each leg, are contracted, and when they build up sufficient force, the legs break the lock and the insect springs forward.
"The legs snap open and all the force is applied at once," said Professor Burrows. "It accelerates in a millisecond up to a take-off velocity of four metres per second. That's phenomenal."
The scientist calculated the initial acceleration to be 4,000 metres per second per second. Brain input
The G-force generated was more than 400 gravities in the best jumps monitored. In comparison, a human astronaut going into orbit on a rocket may experience no more than about 5 gravities.
We have always been led to believe that fleas are the jump champions of the animal world but Professor Burrows believes the record books should now be rewritten.
"The legitimate comparison is to look at how much force per body weight each animal can generate," he explained."A froghopper can exert more than 400 times its body weight; a flea can do 135 times its body weight; a grasshopper can do about eight times; and we can do about two to three times our body weight."
Professor Burrows studied the insect's athleticism as part of his research into how animals' nervous systems control body movement.
Insects are used in this type of study because their fewer brains cells are often larger than in more complex organisms, making it easier for scientists to see the processes involved.
