summertime….

…and the livin' is easy -- don't know about the fish swmmin' or the height of the cotton they don't grow in Denton County any more, but the Doak Orchards "Bowie Peaches Guy" is back on station in the corner of the bowling alley parking lot across from the mall, and summer is oh-FEE-shully here! Last year the late freeze did in their crop, and it was terrible. They had east Texas peaches at the farmers' market; they were good, but not the same.

Summertime flowers at the Ridge - the bull-nettles and spiderwort are gone and the black-eyed susans are passing. The tall yellow evening primrose is beginning to make a show. And there's a lot of horsemint this year. It will be showy for a long time.

But the speckled, creamy blossoms that the bees love, hiding under the bracts, will be gone I think by early July.


Got critters. Lots of birds, of  course. Mammals - I saw the gray fox a few weeks ago, first time in years. I came downstairs after I heard a metallic rattle in the front yard the other night, to find a 'coon that had failed to get into the birdfeeder, hoovering up the sunflower seeds underneath it. I see a cottontail in the lane often, especially down in the woods near the mailbox. And one night I slowly followed a young 'possum up the lane for a lo-o-ong way, till it finally went off into the grass to one side.

 This lizard was on the outside of the upstairs porch screen last week. Clearly it has never lost a tail to a cat.



The grasshoppers are very numerous, hopping up in front of the car in clouds, even when I seem to be travelling on a bare dirt section of the lane. They have been getting noticeably bigger the last couple of weeks. Today I photographed some that were posing on the windshield.

yep, fifth snow

From around six until perhaps midnight last Saturday, it snowed. There was a moderate northwest wind in the early evening, picking up to a real gale overnight, so the snow was tightly plastered to the north sides of trunks. A few trees, like these, ended up looking like birches.









The fruit trees were all in pretty full bloom, peach and Chickasaw plum, with the Mexican plum getting started. I was quite worried for the crop, as the temperature got down to at least 28°. These Mexican plum flowers, like many, have a hood of snow.











These are the little plum-thicket bush plums (these on the tank dam). The flowers are about half as big as those on the Mexican plum trees. The stamens are fewer, with colorful orange pollen.





At the tank gate, the wet soil had melted most of the snow as it landed. Larger white areas are snow; the little white dots are fallen plum and pear petals. The petals are often referred to poetically as covering the ground like snow, but not usually beside snow.


In the backyard the peaches were pink mists within the snow in the cloudy dawn. But to my pleased surprise, in the early afternoon when the temperature had gotten up to nearly 40° and the snow was about gone, the peach flowers were still just as pink, with no brown edges. Seems like all the pistils made it through just fine. Peach pies and plum jelly after all!


And it's been extremely interesting to experience all these different varieties of snowfall, in one weird winter. But really, enough is enough. These pictures were taken on March 21, "the first day of spring," and we had better not have a sixth snow.

Just sayin'.