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Memorial Day morning, after visiting the cemeteries where we found the ancestors resting easy, and having breakfast, we drove out to Riverland to see the wild flowers. I heard someone at the naturalist meeting say that the wildflowers along the Cas Johnson road leading to Alibates National Monument and McBride Canyon were putting on a show. As you can see from the pictures above, they were right. The fragrance of all those flowers was good, too.
Abigail told us there was a goose in the strip along the street out front walking up and down as though looking for a way to get into SA, and so there was. I had water running into the pond and the goose (or gander, as the case may be) seemed interested in getting to it. The gate next to the well was open so I herded it down to and through the gate, then opened the gate to the enclosure and herded it in to the pond. It seemed satisfied. We couldn’t tell that it was injured but it stayed around for several days and only looked for a way out the first couple of days. Joyce gave it some bread now and then which it consumed but otherwise we let if fend for itself. Finally one evening it was gone and we haven’t seen it since. Maybe it was a young one that didn’t quite have that flying thing down. Anyway, we gave it refuge till it got it sorted out.
We saw the first Mississippi kites on May 23, just about a month after first seeing western kingbirds. Black chin hummingbirds have been in residence since sometime in April
A couple of weeks ago out at Wildcat Bluff I was finishing up my Wednesday pro bono work and putting my tools away when I stumbled on a rattlesnake, a small (<two feet) diamond back. It was a feisty, fast-moving fellow and I tried to get the trash can I was toting over it so it could be collected by the snake collectors and relocated away from the nature center area. It managed to get under one of the sheds before I was able to do so. One matching its description was captured a week or so later, though, so maybe it didn’t get clean away after all.
Two or three years ago a tarantula dug a burrow next to the flower bed adjacent to the driveway on the northwest. I didn’t see any evidence of it last year but the other day it was out there excavating another burrow close to where the first had been. In fact there was another fresh burrow close by I’d noticed a couple of weeks ago without seeing the occupant. Same tarantula, offspring or a new settler? Who knows?
The goldfish food I got to feed the lily pool fish said to put some food in the same place about the same time every day. I’ve been doing that for several weeks and a couple of days ago I stood off a ways out of their view to see what happened after I put some food down. The fish always run and hide when someone approaches the pool. After a little bit they thought the coast was clear and began feeding boisterously. I expect in time the will get accustomed to me and come a running when I show up to feed them.
Speaking of the lily pool, one of the lilies has had several blossoms, which is gratifying since we disrupted them by re-potting them earlier in the year. I think the one in question is the yellow one. There is a pink, a white and a yellow, but yellow is mostly on the inside of the blossom while the outside it white, so I may be mistaken. Time will tell as the others put forth blossoms.