This is not what you want to see when your package of editorial comments and revision suggestions arrives.	And this is not what you want to find inside, either. On the other hand, once you've spread out the wet pages so they can dry, you're free to do something else. Of course I went out on the land.
I don't know what critter knocked this prickly pear pad and fruit off the plant, but it was lying in the middle of the dry woods trail up to Fox Pavilion. One reason it's included is to show that a pad can grow out of a fruit (as this has clearly done) as well as a fruit growing out of a pad. Prickly pears will reproduce any way they can.
I'd been wondering what ate the elbowbush berries, and this house finch revealed that one berry-picker is house finches. Elbowbush is a very valuable plant for wildlife. Deer browse it; it makes good cover for quail year-round, and winter-visiting birds like sparrows; other birds nest in it and the berries are a late-spring/early summer banquet.
Lantana is the plant that Illusion poisoned himself with. It's toxic to humans and Old World-derived livestock, but monarchs and other butterflies are eager for its nectar. We have two native forms here, one with orange and yellow flowers, and one with rose and cream flowers.	Greenthread is one of our spring and summer wildflowers--it will return after a rain, even in midsummer. It's a delicate, airy little plant, never very big, but the flowers are so intensely yellow that they seem to glow.
As I came through the entrance meadow of the creek woods, and turned onto the trail south, this leaf-footed bug flew past me--they're big and scary when they fly. Up close, they're...well...so ugly they're interesting. Notice that the red-orange tips of the antennae are matched by orange "feet." What's that about? I have no idea.	This airplane out of my past flew by while I was up on the platform at Owl Pavilion...leading to a lot of reminiscence of days and people and aircraft long gone by.
Coming back through the creek woods in the evening, later in the week, I happened to look back and see the low, slanting light through the trees on the "swamp overflow".

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