Wildflowers Mark the Route

This is an early photo from 2017. I thought I needed a wildflower photo (as I save this old post) and what could be better than some yellow composites.

My drives back and forth to work or on errands have been a feast (or should I say "fiesta"), the table set with the next wave of wild flowers. I have tried not to hurry as all too soon the colors will fade.

Bluebonnets are already gone and fire wheels (gaillardia) cover the wild fields and ditches. Those bright orange, yellow and red blooms (and the already seeded and drying grasses) portend the coming furnace of summer. Thistles are just coming into bloom. The yuccas too have finally caught up with those I saw last month in south Texas - their creamy white blooms a bouquet atop spiny leaved stems.

The cultivated fields are either just up in corn or just harvested with huge cylinders of hay strewn about...like a giant broke her necklace and the beads scattered across the ground.

My former commutes, when the children were small, were all asphalt and subdivisions, pawn shops, and old buildings. I guess this is the trade. When the kids grow up, you are sent fresh reminders of youth - of renewal.

Lonesome whistle blows...

 When I hear that whistle blowin' I hang my head and I cry...

~ Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, Folsome Prison Blues 

Our evening walk started with at least one of us decidedly NOT in the moment. Mowing and trimming and the dying red bud tree initially consumed me, but Padimus literally pulled me out of my thoughts and into the attention I have tried to bring to the walks since our recent unfriendly dog adventures. The dragon's breath wind reminded us that evening walks will end with the increasing heat...today barely temperate enough for two miles.

The park is deserted when we arrive...ah, Wednesday. No games on church night. 

We decide to check the mulberry tree on our way home and find enough berries clinging on (we expected the gales of the day to remove all ripe fruit) for a short picking before it is too dark to spot Jake the snake and other creatures in the grass.

We had picked about a cup of berries when a car pulls up to the curb and a woman exits. I wait (I think I need to get my eyes checked) until I hear her voice and then recognize my friend, Valeria. Returning home from choir practice, Valeria spotted us and stopped to meet Paddy. Always a friendly dog, Paddy went mad over V. I doubt I would still have a walking partner had I no leash today...Paddy continued to patiently sit, move closer and sit again for V to fuss over and pet her.

As the dusk began to threaten we said our goodbyes and headed home. The birds sang their evening songs and children played a few last minutes of catch in the dwindling light. Cats prepared for the prowl. The sun set yellow and pink and orange with the moon and evening star watching.

We are home just before dark as the breeze begins to cool and a train whistle calls in the distance...

Haunting

Late walk with Paddy in the dusk. The moon a sliver with some planet shining above as we skirted North Belton, with its solar lights starting to come on...ghostly sentries amid the white and grey stones.

A Beautiful Day for a Wedding

Lovely day, but sun was in my eyes for half of this walk...another reason to avoid the "lay abed."

Woodpecker staccato set our pace as we headed east into the sunshine. Saturday papers mostly still in the yards while the traffic to early morning sporting events increased.

We walked to the meadow knowing we would only be measuring the advance of the wildflowers and grasses. Last year plants that should have bloomed at a foot or two were mere inches off the ground. This year there are flowers at our ankles, knees, thighs and chest. There is no cutting across unmowed areas... even in the cool damp of the morning, I think snake.

We revel in the new blooms and the old. Some mesquite is still blooming in the park and all the pecans have not only leafed out but are budded for what will be a great harvest if we continue to have rain.

Wispy, or fluttery, or leggy things float in the air before us - varieties of insects including skeeter eaters (crane flies) and the dreaded cottonwood fluff. That cottonwood and I do not mix (it signals terrible allergies, whether to it or something else that blooms at the same time, I do not know), but I think it is so lovely suspended on a breeze or gathering like its namesake along the roads...as if God's cotton trailers spilled a bit on the way to the gin.

We examine the mulberry on the way home (impossible to pick berries with an excitable Lab) and discover that it has had a harvest. Whether people or bird or wind and rain picked, I will have to wait for a few days before I try again. And this is fine as I have a few other things to do today before I watch my son's brother, Charlie, wed his lovely bride.

It is indeed a beautiful day!