The Purple Sage is blooming like crazy in Brackettville!

I'm told the blossoms can be picked and steeped to make a tea that will help with chest colds.

Hubby informs me that this isn't a sickly deer, merely an older one. He says they live longer on Fort Clark Springsbecause they are so well fed up there--Fort Clark retirees love buying corn for the deer.

I like this shot of the blooming Purple Sage
a lot, I also don't like it. I could not improve this shot with clever cropping or any of the tricks I usually employ. I wish I'd noticed the clouds when I was shooting so I could have incorporated them better and more artfully. I wish I hadn't cut this picture in half with the horizon, but I was rushing to try and catch that butterfly.

As you may know, shooting with a digital on a bright and shiny day is sort of like shooting blind. You can't see the screen. Makes focusing very interesting.

Unless you live here in Brackettville, you have no idea what a shock it is to see blossoms and grasses like this in the middle of September. Normally the ground behind this Sage would be a field of rocks and caliche. Normally this Sage would have disappeared into the background with no blossoms on it to catch the eye. I had to stop more than once to make sure I was still on the road and/or to see where the road was! I was also starting to fear that I would start a grass fire driving over such high grasses today, a fine thing that would be... wife of a fireman starting a fire on his mother's property. But it's humid and all the grasses are GREEN. I saw more grasses, spiders, and crickets today than I have ever seen before. For this time of year, I was stunned by the green and the blossoms that were everywhere. I couldn't even get to the creek for the grasses and bramble. It was hot and humid as hell, but it was beautiful.