Blooming Cacti and a Lone Lizard

 

I did take photos of some of the stuff I got yesterday. Behold the smiling flower and the fan.

There doesn't seem to be a choir during the summer at Mass in the gym, but somehow the length of the Mass has crept back up to over an hour even without all the fancy music. Afterwards Travalon and I went to the Nature Conservancy land by Spring Green to see the flowering cacti. Usually this is right in the middle of the time they are blooming, but things are early this year, so there were only a few blossoms left. We did see lots of other wildflowers.

Leadplant

Spiderwort

Blue vervain

Cinquefoil

Evening primrose

Spurge

We also saw lots of butterflies and all sorts of odd bugs, but I only got a photo of this one.

And not a very good one, at that. We did see plenty of cacti by the entrance.

Here is the lead plant again, this time from Travalon's camera.

We also saw a lot of smooth sumac.

The landscape is so interesting there.

We saw a six-lined racerunner, a very pretty little lizard.

And here I am.

We walked quite a way along the path and didn't see any more cacti, which kind of alarmed me, since we used to see them all along the path. When we turned around, we met some people who said the cacti were further along the path than we had gone, which didn't fit with my memory. However, as we were walking back, I realize there were lots of cacti hiding among the taller plants.

Right as we were leaving, we saw this beautiful flower, which my phone tells me is called callirhoe.

This evening I went to band practice for the first time in what felt like months, and I really enjoyed it because we are practicing for the Ukrainian picnic we have played for the last two years. The music tends to be minor key and peppy, so more my taste than the boring major-key Nordic waltzes. I will let my readers know when this picnic is once I find out myself.

Famous Hat