From here on out, as long as the water lasts, there's no keeping up...not to mention that I won't be home for awhile--I'll be gallivanting off to Australia. So I've stockpiled a lot of pictures with Ruta, who will dole them out at intervals, as she has time.
Seen through a screen of trees, Richard makes a very good Tom Bombadil, going through the woods and caring for them.
Nothing more to lose...this Texas Spiny has lost all it can afford to lose, but was basking anyway.
The holly-shaped spiny leaves of agarita, Berberis trifoliata, do not obscure golden flowers with a lovely perfume. Tiny red berries come later, and make good jelly if you can get them out of the bush without losing too much blood to the spines.
The green anole looks tropical but is at home in Central Texas, where...here it's navigating a prickly pear pad with ease.	And here I took one step too close, trying for a better shot, and the anole eased over the cactus pad out of sight...but carefully, as that raised hind foot shows.
Though at the moment it's just sitting on a twig, this Gray Hairstreak, Strymon melinus, was nectaring on the yellowish-green flowers of an the aromatic sumac only moments before.	Only the male Falcate Orangetip, Anthocharis midea, has the orange tips to its wings. These busy butterflies flutter along fairly low, but almost without ceasing. This one paused briefly on a low yellow flower in the mustard family.
A mild mystery: this lichen looks very much like a Teloschistes lichen (possibly T. chrysophthalmus), a common lichen in this area, except for one thing: in a Teloschistes lichen, the thallus (the main body part) is supposed to be orange. I've photographed orange-gold-yellow ones before. We have some that are, as you see, green with orange apotheca. Hmmmm. Did the alga partner get ahead? I don't know.
The first monarch showed up two days ago--Richard saw it. But on Saturday the 24th, we had monarchs on every patch of flowering wild plum. This is the thicketing plum, and this particular patch is near the north end of the place.

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