Tousled

The wind was whipping these coreopsis hard enough to create a bad case of flower-bed-head.

Lizard-breath

"Lizard-breath" -- the held-breath moment when one sees a small lizard basking, and wants not to disturb its in-between-rains sunbath.

A tossed salad of people

In between the rain, wild gourd

A thick patch of wild gourd, looking wilder from the frequent rain we've been having.

Stream's edge

Photo Friday: Futuristic

A futuristic dead end, waiting for the contrails to ladder down low.

Turbaned, aloof

No matter how I angled around, these three Clematis texensis flowers wouldn't show their pistils.

Diggin' it

When I meet a plant I've been formally introduced to in the past, I'm always a little chagrined when I remember its "face" but can't recall its name.

Both flower and beetle were distracted, so no social gaffe occurred.

***

Later...it's Cirsium texanum!

Big sky stick

Still-life with damselfly, greenbrier, black walnut

Much better bigger -- please do click on the image.

For those who'd like to be formally introduced:
Damselfly = Enallagma sp. (Not sure whether Novaehispaniae or not)
Greenbrier = Smilax bon-nox
Pecan = Carya illinoensis

Well, oops!

My hiking buddy told me "those aren't pecan shells, those are black walnut shells."
So the third formal introduction is:
Black walnut = Juglans nigra

Lil' bit of heaven

Walking across a low-water crossing, I decided the stepping-stones were too far apart for comfort. As I carefully placed a sneaker-covered foot into the creek, I looked over my shoulder -- and determined I needed to wade upstream to see more.

Am glad I did, although the rest of the hike was a bit soggy!

Done hiking, but before errands

Passiflora lutea

Found a place with more diverse species of Central Texas plants than I'd seen in one spot, but my hiking buddy made me swear not to tell where we were.

There was no one -- no one at all -- around, and the only sounds I'd heard were the wind soughing through the grass, the infinitely varied and beautiful music of tiny waterfalls, and scissortails teasing us with a Charles-Ives-esque collage of birdy sound-textures.

Plastered

Looked up, and saw a beaming Bacchus (or a wine-soaked friar?) in slant morning light.

Encounter

Turning another corner...

Hey Steve

Faded rosebud

Glamour

Not quite corruscating, but the back-lit palm still cast a spell on me.

Rosebud, Texas

I mentioned to Chris I'd wander by Zipperlandville, but must have driven right through it. I did find some interesting things in Rosebud, however.

Grocery stores and airports

Why do I sketch in grocery stores and airports?



I'll sketch anyplace I can sit, unnoticed, where others also stay around for a while.

Fascinatin' Rhythm

George and Ira Gershwin set music to it; Piet Mondrian painted it; and I turned a corner somewhere in downtown San Jose and bumped into it.

California shadow and light

The light in California seems almost Mediterranean to my eyes...



...I wonder if my blog-friends near the Mediterranean would agree, or if that's just my Texas imagination playing with me.

Home again

Got home last night, and it's good to be back.

Saw these people in a chain restaurant in San Jose, and it was great to have a moment free (and enough brain cells free) to sketch.

Thanks for your comments, and your creative energy, while I was traveling!

Looking forward to wandering through everyone's sites this weekend.

Time to dig through your archives!

Still not freed from The Press of Commerce, but time enough for a quick call for submissions.

The next issue of qarrtsiluni is all about previously blogged material. Dig through your archives, and send those greatest hits on!

From the submission invite:

"...The blog form is now ten years old. How better to celebrate that anniversary than with a “Greatest Blog Hits” issue? From now through our deadline of June 15, we’re reversing our long-standing prohibition against previously blogged material: we want ONLY previously blogged material, at least one year old. It may take any form - fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art, photography, audio, cartoons - and there’s no restriction on length (though excerpts will also be considered). We simply want your best posts. ..."

What I wonder:
Who will submit blogged work that's more than 10 years old?

It could happen.

It could happen that you are on a business trip, sitting in a chain Chinese restaurant, when a slender, odd old man who looks more than a little bit like a benign Sam Beckett walks by each table quietly handing out business cards that say:

FRED'S WATCH REPAIR.

And that, after finding an item on the menu titled
Dali Chicken.

(There's something surreal afoot, underneath the manicured commerce of it all.)

Food for thought

A small break in the press of business, so I went wandering for a little lagniappe to keep y'all going if the Comments Kitchen runs out of cookies.

Here's what I found:

Mel Chin.
Where I am today, and what someone else has been doing nearby.
How many uses might there be for this?

Also caught a few pretty pixels with my camera, and saw some fast-moving people at a chain restaurant, but no tools here to share those yet.

Crabby Happy Time

I'm traveling for business over the next 10 days, and will be posting unpredictably until the Saturday May 12.

I hope to grab a little time for sketching, and for visiting your blogs and websites...meanwhile, there are cookies back in the Comments Kitchen, and feel free to wander through the archives.

See you soon!

Anesidora

"... Grace catches you out like a hook,
you're pulled out of yourself, a moment,

and that's the ache: peculiar blow,
reminded you aren't who you think you are. ..."

-- Mark Doty, The Pink Poppy

*****

(One other random bit about poppies, from Theocritus:
" ...For the Greeks Demeter was still a poppy goddess
Bearing sheaves and poppies in both hands. ..." — Idyll vii.157)