September/October 2018

With some wetter weather, mushrooms, mosses, lichens, fungi, ferns and the rest all made their appearance on the hillside.  

Leucocoprinus  

September 2: One found along the trail beside the Pond.
Possumhaw (Ilex decidua)

September 17: scattered about the hillside in stone and shade.
Wild four o’clock (Mirabilis multiflora)

September 22.

Rhus virens: Evergreen Sumac

Also called Tobacco Sumac, Lambrisco, or Lentrisco.  
We read this from the LBJ Wildflower Center's site:

     "Evergreen sumac is a shrub or small tree, from 8-12 ft. in height with spreading branches. Its shiny, evergreen, pinnate foliage is tinged with pink in early spring and maroon after frost. Leaves are alternate, 2-5 1/2 inches long, with 5-9 fleshy leaflets on stiff stems. The 5-petaled, inconspicuous, greenish or white flowers grow in clusters 1-2 inches long at the end of stout branches. When the fruit matures in mid-September it is red, broader than long, and covered with fine hair.
      Evergreen sumac can be used to make a nice, thick hedge or screen, but can grow tree-like with a long, straight trunk. Only female plants produce flowers and berries. It is fast growing, generally insect and disease-free, and drought-tolerant. Not a true evergreen – leaves are green through the winter, then are dropped, to be replaced within a week with a new crop.

USA: AZ , NM , TX
Native Distribution: central Texas west to southern Arizona, south to Oaxaca in southern Mexico
Native Habitat: Rocky hillsides, gullies, & bluffs. In Texas, found on rocky bluffs, slopes, banks, and dry hillsides in the Edwards Plateau and Trans-Pecos. "

    (https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=rhvi3)

No offense to the inestimable servants of the Wildflower Center, but observers on the hillside above The Creek would find the flowered bush anything but "inconspicuous."

Genus Opuntia. The tasty tuna of the upper hillside.

Food for bird, raccoon, jackrabbit, fox, squirrel, hog, and local tax payer.
(September 12: found scattered about the limestone.)

Oxygen reduction firing results in this black pottery of Kate's

Open-pit firing under the big Oak Tree with a few losses and a few keepers.

Bag-o'-field: Just add water. (And did we ever!)
October is grass-planting time for the sheep field.

About once a week, these bats fly circles around the yard and in and out of the lower deck.

Plenty of historic flooding down in Texas this October.

The extent of Creek-flow the beginning of September.

And by way of contrast (October 16).

Added for anyone keeping a Sky collection these days.