Behind the yucca and lantana is the butterfly bush I trimmed back in the winter. Compare it with the picture of it in May after it had been trimmed.
It’s the middle of July and we settled into a summer routine. Our Red River outing has come and gone. Seems to go by so fast. It was a good trip, I think everyone will agree. No one was interested in fishing which gave us more time for other activities, such as hiking. We scouted out a couple of hiking trails we hadn’t hiked before. The first one was to Cabresto Lake. It was more of a road than a hiking trail but we left Jill’s vehicle and ventured on by foot. Some of us petered out before going very far, but Kari, Jill and I wanted to make it to the lake. I think we got pretty close but I finally turned around because I figured others that had gone back to the car would be wanting to go back to town. Along the road I got to see a pair of spotted fawns. I’ve never seen any before. Don’t know where the mother was, close by no doubt. It started to rain on the way back and a couple in a Jeep offered us a ride. We were crammed in with a man and a woman, their baby in a car seat and their two small dogs. They let us out after it stopped raining, and we made our way back to the car without any problems.
I saw the first western king birds of the season a few days ago, May 8. I think. They are right on time. Maybe they will nest on the telephone pole again. I also saw a Mississippi kite last week. That is, I think I saw one. It was about the right size but, unfortunately, it was flying away to the south and was hidden by trees before I could see if it had the gray head those birds have.
In April I took a chance on radically trimming the butterfly bush in the Wildcat Bluff butterfly garden. It had a lot of dead in it even after I had trimmed a lot out, so I decided to just whack it off about knee high and hope that it would come back. They usually do but this was such a major trim, practically down to the nub, so I wasn’t entirely sure it would come back. At the time it had no fresh growth showing but my dear sister assured me that kind of bush waits later in the spring to show new growth. I have a couple of butterfly bushes of my own which I cut back clear to the ground in the winter, and they come back just fine, but they are much smaller than the one at the Bluff. Last week I had seen just a couple of sprouts but this week the stump was nearly obscured by new growth. I do believe the operation will be a success.
There is a little cotton tail rabbit around the WCB nature center. Cute. Females would say, “Awww.” There is also a thumb-sized horny toad in the butterfly garden there. Little devil went skipping among the mallow so that I had a hard time getting a good look at it. I think it is good that it was so risk averse. My big old boot would do it no good.
Kari, Rebecca and I drove to Lubbock Friday morning, to watch Abigail walk across the stage and receive her diploma. Actually, they didn’t walk across the stage, just in front of it, and she had to go somewhere else to get her diploma. They did give her something rolled up in a tube, but I’m not sure what that was. She graduated summa cum laude, in case you are wondering. Afterward, she took us to her workplace to see her office and meet some colleagues. Then we had a late lunch at a nice restaurant. Back at her apartment we gave her the electronic keyboard we got her for a graduation gift. She seemed to like it.
Abigail in her office
We enjoyed exceptionally nice weather on the day we went to Lubbock. I emptied .85 inches out of the gauge the day before. Then on Saturday it rained all day, not heavily, but persistently into the next morning and I collected another .98 of an inch. That was followed by another .48 of an inch during the night Sunday. For the time being, the drought is broken. I have stowed my sprinklers and rolled up the hoses in anticipation of some serious mowing in the next few weeks, even if it doesn’t rain any more, though there are possibilities forecasted. It may sound strange, but I’m looking forward to mowing. First I have a lot of twig raking to do.
We wound up the wettest month in the last fourteen years at 9.85 inches, topping the 9.70 recorded in May of 2015, the wettest year in the last 14. From trees to weeds to grass, everything is responding, and I’ll be spending a lot of time on the mower this summer. Also, I’ll be spraying weeds and swatting mosquitoes. Our day-time temperatures have been mostly in the 70s and 80s, which means we’ve been saving on electricity. Overall, I believe May 2023 was the nicest I’ve ever experienced, a far cry from last year.
After an unpleasant day Friday (windy, cloudy, rainy), Saturday morning dawned bright, sunny and mostly windless. Which was good because were scheduled to spend the day in Palo Duro Canyon celebrating the 20th anniversary of Panhandle Chapter of Texas Master Naturalists. The day also coincided with the City Nature Challenge, which is a world-wide event where people go out and take pictures of wild flora and fauna around their city, except in our case we can include Potter, Randal, Armstrong, Carson and Hutchison counties. We had reserved a pavilion and the members fanned out to make photo observations in the morning. There is a competition to see which city or area can upload the most observations to iNaturalist and the scientists use that information to keep tabs on species around the world. We are at a disadvantage here on the High Plains because, while we do have flora and fauna, we don’t have the quantity and diversity of other parts of the world, or even the state. Nor do we have the population to observe them. We are outnumbered by the large metropolitan areas in Texas and across the country. Still, we do what we can. I might have logged a dozen or so observations but the animals and birds won’t hold still to have their picture taken so I got mainly plants. The ap will usually tell you what you photographed, which is handy.
It seems like a long month, which I guess it is compared to last month. Wylie women were our guests for spring break. The weather wasn’t great for the most part, too cold and windy. No one seemed to mind much. Jill worked a couple days but took time off toward the end of the week. Wednesday was the only day that wasn’t chilly, but it more than made up for that with wind. In spite of that, we trekked down to Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument. I needed to make my quarterly inspection, so I killed two birds, so to speak. Nothing had changed that the state would be interested in for the Great Texas Nature Trail map but we were able to get out of the house for the afternoon.
This month I attended a Playa Field Day provided by Ogalla Commons at the civic center in Amarillo. Over the last 10 years or more, I’ve attended several of these field days but it had been a while since I’d been to one. They are usually held in other cities around the Panhandle, so there is a drive involved but this one was close and several presentations on the program looked interesting, so I put it on my schedule.
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