With thanks to Karen Shull, who took this picture--this is the kind of odd light we had late on Saturday afternoon last weekend. She took a number of lovely pictures of it.
The scarlet buckeye is a central Texas native which usually grows in canyons, under cover of other trees. We have one in the back yard, but it's grown very, very slowly--this is not the ideal habitat for it. It's stunning in early spring, but within a few weeks the leaves will 'burn' and then drop off, leaving it scraggly to naked for the rest of the year. Still, for these flowers...
I found this on the underside of a dead leaf that I fished out of the pond. I think (but am not sure) that it's a water strider. It was alive, but the day was chilly and it didn't want to move much.
Last year, we dug up (with permission) old white and yellow iris from a lot that was going to be scraped off for construction. White and yellow iris are hardy around here, though not native, and I love them. We planted them in the angles of the snake fence. Two white ones opened on March 15.	Here's a closeup of the other one. To me, iris have the same kind of beauty as orchids, only more so.

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