Sunflowers in Uvalde, White Fallow on Tularosa Road.

Saw these sunflowers on Hwy. 55 outside of Uvalde, Texas. Seems it's the thing to plant in Uvalde this season, maybe they've got a buyer already? Sale on sunflower seeds? Doing something for the soil? I don't know, but I've never seen fields of sunflowers driving through Uvalde before and I was delighted!

Click 'em big.







Jean and I went up to Tularosa Road again just to see what there was to see. We had just turned onto the road when we spied these White Fallow Deer yearlings. They didn't seem particularly frightened by us. And they were very cuddly with each other. It wasn't until we drove up parallel with them that they finally got spooked.




This cluster of ? was growing on an as yet unidentified tree.


There's a side road off Tularosa onto a private ranch where the water, according to Jean, is nearly always running over the road. I snapped this as we crossed it.


It started raining last night, yea!!!!!!!!!!!! And it was raning when I woke up this morning. Most excellent! The rain gauges tell us it's rained nearly an inch. YES! Oh how we need this rain. I can't wait for the farm to green up a bit, it's been looking more like desert than grass farm so far this season.

Brackettville in March

Nope, I haven't been around much. Not on your blogs nor mine. I forced myself out today, though, because it's MARCH! And, in Kinney County, Texas, March means that our landscape is turning gold and yellow as the Huisache and Blackbrush all break out in bloom.

The air smells sweet, almost like candy. That's the Blackbrush. I love it. It's gorgeous. I shot the Huisache and Blackbrush blossoms last year too (take a peek at those HERE) but it was different this year. The day I went out last year it was COLD and gray! Today it was 80 degrees with clear skies. I prefer the cold and gray. Our winters are too short for my liking. And this one has been far too dry!

I made the mistake of going out to Tularosa Road (one of my favorite spots) to shoot the blossoms. I knew they'd be blooming out there and assumed they'd be blooming out there as well as they are in other areas of the county. I was mistaken. Should have gone to where I KNEW they were going mad. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow if I feel like it.

It's something to see, I tell you. The Huisache trees are just solid gold along Hwy. 90 between Brackettville and the next town to the west. That's where I should have gone. On Tularosa Road the Huisache wasn't doing much at all.

Above: a first quarter moon(+) above Tularosa Road. That's Blackbrush in the foreground.

Above: Blackbrush is so very beautiful to me. It actually seems out of place in our landscape. It's something I'd expect to see in a park in Japan.

Above: The yellow and green on this Blackbrush was such a pretty contrast.

Above: This one is for Jean. She introduced me to Tularosa Road several years ago, but I never knew about this spot until our last trip out there together. I wish she'd been there today to see the colors--she's a painter and probably would have pointed out even more eye candy to me. She's got a nose for it. The water was almost turquoise right at this bend in the creek. The yellow grass, the blues of the water, the red, brown and green of the trees! Oh my! It's not the photo that I love, it's the contrasts and colors.


Above: The lichen (or whatever it is) growing on this tree was neon yellow. I swear it looked phosphorescent. And this tree was absolutely covered with lichen, plant parasites, and I don't know what all. The following three photos were all taken on this tree.


Above: This would have been my favorite shot of the day but it was just a tiny bit out of focus. If I didn't know better, I'd think it was under water. I don't know if this is a fungus or a parasite (mistletoe is an example of parasites that grow on trees) or what.

On a whim I did a panoramic shot out on Tularosa. I didn't pick the best view, I just needed the practice. So far, my panoramics have been pretty pathetic. This one wasn't too bad--but now I wish I'd taken the time to pick a slightly better view! Tularosa Panoramic. If you decide to click the link, be sure to click the photo to enlarge it.

Above: Huisache blossoms. They look like tiny little gold pom poms growing all over the crown of the tree.

Above: A Huisache tree. Just imagine this COATED with those little gold pom poms. That's what you'd see driving into Brackettville from the west.

Below: Just Because.

These were my two entries into this week's Facebook Amateur Photography Contest. The theme is common nouns that begin with the letter "a." I really wanted to enter something original but after nearly two weeks of looking, I couldn't find any good "a's." So, before I wound up my afternoon of shooting, I stuck the apple I was eating on the fence at the cemetery and spent 20 minutes trying to get the moon in the shot.

Venus, Neptune, Moon, Jupiter, and Mercury over Kinney County

According to Bob, tonight was the night to see Venus (high and bright!), Neptune, The Moon, Jupiter, and Mercury all together in the sky at the same time. I saw them all! I saw Mercury only briefly as the clouds were really in the way but my camera got it!

You can read all about tonight's planetary gathering at EarthSky.Org.

Click images to enlarge.

Above: Sunset as seen from Tularosa Road north of Brackettville. Upper left is Venus, center is the Moon.

I hoped to be able spot Neptune and I wasn't disappointed. Through the binoculars I could see another planet (a bright light in the sky that wasn't twinkling) under Venus so I took several shots in hopes of capturing it. After getting the pix on my puter, I see that the camera picked up several bright spots under La Luna. I don't know if any of them are Neptune but one of them is bound to be since I could see it so easily with the nocs. I'm hoping Bob can tell me for sure.

I was lucky enough to see Neptune because I was far enough out of town not to have my view of the sky disrupted by city light.

Above: This was my attempt at getting Neptune. One of those two light specks under Venus might be Neptune. I think it's the top speck. The lower right bright object in the clouds is the Moon.

I was out on my beloved Tularosa Road (a bit north of Brackettville) to shoot tonight. Once the sun was good and gone, the Milky Way was clear and bright. It's such a great place to watch the night sky.

The whole time I was on the side of the hill I'd picked to shoot from on Tularosa Road, some critter was behind me snuffling around in the cactus and brush. I tried to take its photo but maybe it was just a noisy rat because try as I might, I never could find it. He kept spooking me out there in the dark. It was really annoying! I don't mind rats so much, it was the idea that it might be a skunk that had me worried.

Above: Upper left is Venus. Center leftish is the Moon. Under the moon in descending order are Jupiter and Mercury. Or so I think.

Above: My best shot of Jupiter and Mercury. Click the image to see them better. The brightest bit is the moon of course.

Luna.

In the Shadow of the Moon

My photo entry to Bob Johnson's Daytime Crescent Moon Contest.

Bob Johnson at Blackholes and Astrostuff held a Find and Photograph the Daytime Crescent Moon Contest--click the linky to see the winning photographs.

My entry wasn't particularly remarkable. If Laughlin air force jets hadn't just happened to be zooming around our skies (and into frame) that evening I wouldn't have even submitted my shot.

I don't have a telephoto lens for my camera and can't get the best shots of anything as distant as zooming planes or the moon. Also, it didn't occur to me to do anything artistic with the photo (not sure that I have the skills to have done something interesting with this shot anyway) like the other entrants did but, still, Bob put me in second place with two other winners whose shots were really quite remarkable and I am anxiously awaiting my prize!

What do I get for placing second? A dvd copy of Ron Howard's In the Shadow of the Moon. WOOT! I can hardly wait! THANK YOU BOB!

First place winner in Bob's contest is Living Infinitely. His prize? 50 pair of Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D glasses. Yup, you read me right.

My co-second place winners were Nature Shadows and Dreams and Idaho Photo, both of whom will also be receiving In the Shadow of the Moon.

Speaking of the moon and shadows, late yesterday afternoon my friend Jean and I drove out to Tularosa Road. She showed me the most beautiful spot out there--a place I didn't even know I could go. I was blown away. As long as I've been going out there (because of Jean, or I wouldn't have known about it) I never knew that I could just turn onto this little dirt road and drive right up to the creek where the sycamore trees (Jean showed me what those are yesterday) are abundant. We were losing the light fast so I didn't get a whole lot of photos taken, but it was gorgeous out there! We even got cold. COLD! It was in the high 70's yesterday afternoon and we were both delighted to be chilled as the sun fell.

Moon behind a sycamore

A tributary to the West Nueces Creek? Or perhaps it's the West Nueces itself, I'm not sure.

The two landscape shots are good examples of photos that are great for artists who need a reference to work from but unremarkable for a photographer. An artist can take these ho-hum scenes/photos, combine them with her impressions and perceptions, and turn them into amazing pieces of art.

It's interesting going out to shoot with a painter. I was telling her that I never understood until I started learning about photography why some things simply can't be photographed--they must be painted to be communicated. She pointed out that, as an artist, she had learned that there are some things that just can't be painted, they have to be photographed.

And because I'm all fired up about the moon today after my big win, I ran out to the cemetery to shoot the moonrise. Too many clouds to shoot it while was low enough on the horizon to be magnified, oh well.

Tularosa Road

Above: This might be my favorite photo of the Tularosa bunch. Click it to see it full size, personally, I think it's worth a look.

Not everything on Tularosa Road was scary today (see previous entry). Some of it was quite lovely. I got another shot at the Common Mestra butterfly which made me very happy because I was thoroughly dissatisfied with my shots of it a few weeks ago.





Above : This is where I stopped to rest. It looks like Hagrid's cave collapsed behind that tree or something. Below: I like to burn incense outside. I light it at cemeteries (when visiting my late peeps) or whenever I'm feeling especially witchy. I also like to think it keeps the skeeters off me when I'm having an impromptu picnic.

Above: Cactus is some tenacious stuff, ain't it?

Above and below: The aforementioned Mestra.

Above: I had no idea the Snout was such an ambitious butterfly. Everywhere I looked on Tularosa Road today the Snouts were covering these, um, round whatever-they-ares that grow on some trees here. They're hard like a rock. No idea what kind of trees they grow on or just what exactly the Snouts were attempting to do with these things. But they were fighting for space on them.

Update! My friend Darbee says, "The little round rock like balls growing on trees are called "oak galls." They are home to a little larva insect and they grow in the gall and then turn into a real bug, or something like that. We had them in the Park and people came in all the time asking what kind of nut that was. Not sure what kind of insect that it is growing in them though." So I looked it up and it's apparently gall wasps (aka gallflies) that grow inside them. That's what causes the large tan ball as well as all the little tiny red balls above! I'm so glad I didn't taste one!

Happy Halloween!

I was just antsy (oh, that will be funny later) to get out today and so I headed down Tularosa Road to try and collect the seeds I use to make into beads. Damn the luck, I was too late. The seed pods were empty and the seeds were long gone. Stupid Google was wrong about when Buckeye seed pods expel their seeds in southwest Texas!

Shot a lot of scary stuff while I was out there so it wasn't a complete loss. Happy Halloween!

Above: I thought this bit of vertebrae looked a lot like a face. In fact, it reminds me a little bit of Pikachu. Scary!

Above and below: He looked a lot cuter before I turned on the macro setting. All that crazy hair or cilia or whatever it is wasn't visible without it.







Above: There was a large slab of rock lying on the base of a tree which was covered with lovely green moss. I moved the rock thinking that it would be a great place to sit and rest. WRONG! Underneath that rock was a teeming metropolis of teeny, tiny ants. You can't even see them in this photo unless you enlarge it and squint, but they are there my friend, oh yes, they are there! What the camera could see, quite clearly, was eggs/larvae/whatever this white and tan crap is. Blech! Fascinating! But gross.



Above: Some kind of fungus thing. It looked like dried wood or dried dung on top, but the trunk of it was quite fungal looking. I pulled it up to give it a thorough inspection and it was just plain gross to behold.

Blackbrush and Huisache on Tularosa Road

The orange is the huisache and the yellow is the blackbrush. I love when these two shrubs bloom, they are very fragrant. To me, they smell sweet. It was a nice, overcast day--my favorite kind of day to shoot so out I went to 277 south of town hoping to walk along Pinto or Val Verde creek (or whatever it's called) but, alas, they were fenced off and I couldn't. I've GOT to find out who own properties along creeks here and get permission to shoot out on their ranches! I turned back towards town and went north instead feeling confident that there would at least be something blooming on Tularosa.

A few more are here.