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.
A couple hundred yards up the slope from the Creek the three ewes enjoy alfalfa until a fence is completed for them in the front field.
And the greenhouse continues to provide fuel for the body. Unfortunately, ours is not the only body.
First we noticed the small green worm's destruction of the spinach almost within two days' time while we were away. Then they took to the beet leaves. I've tried dusting with diatomaceous earth and picking them off individually, but they are amazingly elusive.
At the greenhouse's front door, flowers emerge.
About five and a half inches of rain near the end of the month.
No scorpions yet. This remains odd, given that this time last year we were seeing them inside the house and all over the place.
Beaver was seen swimming the Pond near the end of the month.
Began work on the winding stone wall down in the Stonefield.
Amazingly large mosquitos emerge en masse right at the end of the month.
Most fireflies we've ever seen. Evenings give us a yard full of their light. In the past we've seen plenty, they've mostly been confined to the area down near the confluence of streams just below the Pond.
Our drought continues, despite three-quarters of an inch of hard, thunder-scented rain today about noontime. The Creek is no longer a continuous flow from the hills of Burnet down to the Colorado River, but the Pond remains spring-fed, even if it doesn't flow out above ground into our part of the Creek. The image directly below shows looking down-stream across dry-bones of a stream, with American water-willow (Justicia americana) blossoming white, with rabbit-foot grass (Polypogon monspeliensis) lush and soft to the eye, and with our own devil's yellow-hair in disguise--Dodder (Cuscuta japonica)--sucking away the liquid nutrients of whatever plant it can strangle (the small bit of gold in the center of the image below and then above the Creek about half a dozen photos farther down this page).
I find the image below interesting if only because of the story it's telling of a hillside turned gray from our really bad drought and heatwave a few years ago; of a greenhouse roof; of a stone-field filling in with grasses; of young sycamores boldly rising up since the flood tore out the others about six years ago; and the much-reduced Creek of today.
Here are some water-willows with a bit of stream passing through:
History book.
After the storm blew through today, I found this pair of painted buntings (Passerina ciris) dead beneath one of our home's south windows against which they presumably found that the reflection of lights and leaves was solid. They were only a foot and a half apart from one another. I've been seeing a pair of buntings flying around our yard for the past week.
The French name for this bird is nonpareil, meaning "without equal."
