Peak Harvest

Warm breezes from the south.  Humid evenings with the fan blowing in the bedroom.  I linger outside at dusk, enjoying the rare perfectness of the temperature, which is neither hot nor cold, while staring at the climbing pea plants in the fading light.  Because of the sunny days, the peas are blooming, the broccoli and cauliflower are ready all at once, and the leafy greens, just days ago content to live quietly on the ground, suddenly shoot upwards into flowering stalks.

I could be describing summer in the mountains, or in the Northwest, or in New England, but, instead, this is late January in central Texas.  Just a month after the winter solstice, and just this side of our coldest (or, at least, most likely to be cold) time of the year, is the Bizarro Summer, when warm-on-the-heels-of-cold temperatures transform the garden.  If that all sounds a bit too sweet, then rest assured that, blissful as the evening air may be, this rapid transition from quiet-hunkered-down-in-the-cold garden to hellbent-on-reproducing garden is nothing if not totally annoying.

The moral of the late-January heat is always the same.  Don't wait.  Spend out.  Harvest early, harvest often, and don't worry about whether there will be anything left later in the season.

Yet, here I am again, with a row of lettuces growing into spiral towers, broccoli plants flowering yellow along the house, and four carefully-spaced, ginormous tat soi plants developing flower buds.  Not to mention the already-flowering arugula and its neighbor, the about-to-flower mustard.  While there are this-year specific reasons why I have ended up here – the greens were slow to gain size last fall because of a caterpillar population explosion, and the lasting cold weather at the start of the year made it seem that I had more time this year – the truth is that every year there are reasons to put off harvesting, and every year I end up in the same place, with the same row of spiral-towered lettuce plants, thinking the same thing.  Which is that next year I'm going to harvest earlier.  So why don't I?

One reason is that I am a saver.  In other words, I save my dessert for last.  Psychiatrists call it delaying gratification, I call it good to my future self.  Either way it's a sign of maturity and makes me a good worker and a good partner and good citizen of the earth.  If only this were 1850.  Here in modern times, it means that I am Most Likely to Miss Out because I am too busy planning and waiting and anticipating, while everybody else is using the right-turn-only lane to get ahead of the line.  But it's the journey, right?  Anyway, back in the garden, I'm good at preparing the soil for the season, which is important for later, and I've gotten better at thinning the seedlings, which also produces healthier plants later, but I suck at harvesting full-size plants at peak harvest time, which will leave nothing for later.  I mean, what about my future self?  And what if this moment now isn't quite yet the exact peak harvest time?

And that is the other reason that I struggle with peak-season harvest.  I want to get it exactly right.  I want to harvest the lettuce plant when it is full size but before it begins to spiral towards the sky.  I want to harvest the head of broccoli when it is as large as it is going to get but before the flower buds begin to swell.  Which is a little bit like playing blackjack with vegetables.  That almost-optimal head of broccoli could grow a bit bigger tomorrow, or it's flowers could swell toward flowering, depending on whether tomorrow morning is cloudy and cool or sunny and warm.  By mid-January, with so many plants in the garden in that almost-optimal state, a week or two of warm temperatures is disastrous, like a run of high cards being dealt into so many already-close-to-21 hands.  Plant after plant after plant crosses the threshold from vegetative into flowering.

So what's a procrastinating, time-limited gardener to do in the Bizarro Summer?

Harvest with abandon.  Those spiral lettuces are still delicious.  In my experience, lettuce doesn't get bitter until it actually flowers, which is coming soon, but isn't here yet, making this the perfect time to harvest bunches of lettuce at once and enjoy huge, sweet garden-lettuce salads.  This is what I will miss in the depths of the real summer.

Let some go.  Unlike the lettuces, the mustards and Asian greens get bitter as soon as they send up their flowering shoots.  A mustard-family plant grows as a rosette, forming its flowering buds on the ground, hidden within the youngest leaves, so that by the time it sends up a flowering stalk, the flowers are ready to go and the plant is fully in flowering mode, already diverting its sugars into the flowering stalk.  It can be tempting to Eat it all!, but I've ruined a few dinners that way.  A few bitter greens are okay, but last week, when I cooked an entire wok full of gone-to-flower bok choy leaves, the result was bitter, chewy, and work to eat – everything that a kid unhappily associates with eating her greens.  That is no way to end the season with greens that have been so delicious.  As much as I hate to loose those plants, once the leaves turn that waxy, greyer shade of green, the plant is lost to the flowers that are about to made.

In the case of my broccoli plants, I don't mind letting the third cuttings, and some of the later second cuttings, flower.  I find it nearly impossible to catch the third cutting stalks before they flower, given that each cutting matures faster than the one before, the third-cutting heads are small, and the bees love the flowers.

Stay ahead instead of fighting for what is already lost.  Or, as business majors say, don't base decisions on sunk costs.  Arugula, bok choy, tat soi, and broccoli are already gone.  Again, it is very tempting to Eat it all!, or to sort through the remaining plants and build creative meals out of the results.  But the spinach in the back garden is at its peak, as is the cilantro in the front.  Both will get in on this flowering trend in February if not harvested now, and I have limited time.  It makes more sense to enjoy spinach salads and cilantro pesto now, and then to move on to beets, chard, and parsley, than to fight with the mustard-family plants now, only to find that I missed out on the peak harvest for the spinach in the meantime.

Plan for next year.  Seriously, next year I'm going to get it right.  Harvest all bok choy by Christmas, all tat soi by New Year's, mustard by mid-January.  Plant more lettuce, and don't save it for later.  Etc.

And remember that this is what I do for fun.  I'd be just as happy to grow flowers for the bees, who are so grateful this time of year.  So why am I so upset when a few of the plants that I intended for food end up flowering instead?  Mustard flowers are actually quite pretty, so I might as well join the bees and enjoy the first sign of spring here in central Texas.

June at the Greenbelt

The water is all but gone now, reduced in a matter of weeks from a flowing creek to a dry creek bed with a few muddy spots and murky pools, the largest and most lasting of which is the pond formed by the springs just downstream of Sculpture Falls.  The only place where a dog can get wet in the hot, dry years.  I was hoping that this wouldn't be one of those years, just as I did not welcome the return of record-breaking temperatures – I would've been happy to skip a year, or ten, in pursuit of the hottest June day ever – but at least we had the spring rains and, because of them, several weeks of (early) summer creek flow on Barton Creek.

Our wildflowers are adapted to this nonsense.  The spring bloomers, like Bluebonnets and wild mustard, are winter annuals that germinate in the fall, grow in the early spring, and bloom in late spring, completing their life cycle within the cool season.  The early summer bloomers, a mix of winter annuals like Indian Blanket and perennials like Winecup, similarly get their business of blooming done before the real heat of summer.  The fall bloomers, like Golden-Eye and Agalinis, grow in the spring, wait out the summer in near stasis, then bloom in the fall, once the heat of summer has passed.  And the few wildflowers remaining, the brave all-summer-long bloomers, take their cues from the weather as well, blooming sporadically from April to October, whenever we happen to get the rain.

So early June at the Greenbelt, with the water still running but not for much longer, was an ideal place to see wildflowers in bloom, a mix of annuals just this side of going to seed, perennial shrubs and vines flowering in the less stressful part of summer, and all-summer-long bloomers taking advantage of the moisture lingering in the ground around the creek.  Knowing that the water was waning, Lee and I headed to the upstream part of the Greenbelt trail to enjoy the end of the season.  Though it is counter-intuitive, Barton Creek dries up in its downstream stretches first, so when the creek bed is dry downstream of the Loop 360 overpass, water may still be flowing upstream of the Mopac overpass.  We started our walk even farther upstream, at the end-of-trail entrance, hiking down the long hill.  At the bottom of the hill, in an open field on the way to the uppermost falls, was a huge display of red and yellow and purple wildflowers.

Field of Indian Blanket, Mexican Hat, Brown-Eyed Susan, and Purple Horsemint

The dominant red and yellow flower in the field was Indian Blanket, a common Sunflower Family wildflower in Texas.  With yellow disc flowers (the center of the sunflower) that turn red as they bloom and red ray flowers (the part of the sunflower that looks like the petals) with yellow tips, the inflorescence of Indian Blanket looks like a red and yellow bulls-eye.  Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella) is an annual that reseeds readily, forming huge colonies in open fields and along our roadways in the late spring.

Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella)

The other red and yellow flower in the field was Mexican Hat, another common Sunflower Family wildflower.  The ray flowers of Mexican Hat are red with yellow and tend to droop downward, while the green to brown disc flowers form a tall column, giving the inflorescence a hat-like shape.  Mexican Hat (Ratibida columnaris) is a bushy, drought-tolerant biennial or perennial that grows on roadsides and in abandoned fields, blooming from April to July.

Mexican Hat (Ratibida columnaris)

The balance of yellow in the field of wildflowers was contributed by Brown-Eyed Susan.  Like Indian Blanket, Brown-Eyed Susan is annual in the Sunflower Family that forms huge, showy colonies in open, grassy areas.  The disc flowers of Brown-Eyed Susan are purple-brown while the ray flowers are yellow with a red-brown spot at the base of each and tend to droop downward.  Brown-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) prefers sandy or limestone soils and blooms from April to July.

Brown-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta)

The purple flowers in the field were those of Purple Horsemint, another common wildflower that is known for its large, picturesque colonies.  The pink to purple flowers are two-lipped and spotted, whorled together into a dense inflorescence of flowers and bracts (the leaves beneath each flower) that are also purple.  Purple Horsemint (Monarda citriodora) blooms from May to June, and its flowers turn more whitish-purple toward the end of the bloom.

Purple Horsemint (Monarda citriodora)

The uppermost falls, usually a quiet spot for hot cyclists, older couples, and happy dogs, was crowded with the young sunbathers that usually gather at Twin Falls, confirming that the creek was indeed drying up downstream.  We crossed the creek above the falls and headed downstream along the trail.  This shady section of the trail, sandwiched between the creek and a slope forest, was still cool and moist, hanging onto the last of spring.

Along the trail, American Beautyberry shrubs were in flower.  American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) is a large shrub that is common throughout the southeastern United States.  At the eastern edge of its range in central Texas, it is mainly found along streams and in moist bottomlands.  While the purple berries of Beautyberry are a stand-out feature of the Greenbelt trail in the fall, the bunches of tiny pink-purple flowers that appear on the shrubs in May and June are easier to miss.

American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)

Thoroughwort, a smaller shrub in the Sunflower family that tends to grow on the rocky hillsides above the trail, was also in bloom.  Thoroughwort (Ageratina havanensis) is a perennial shrub that blooms on and off all summer, its flowers suspended on branches that seem to grow straight from the rocks on the cliff side of the trail.  The leaves of Thoroughwort are deltoid, or arrow-shaped, and the flowers are white, grouped together into inflorescences that look like miniature white pom poms.

Thoroughwort (Ageratina havanensis)

On the creek side of the trail, growing at the water line along a deeper, slower section of the creek, Buttonbush was also in bloom.  Buttonbush is a large, many-branched shrub that grows along streams, lakes, and ponds, blooming in the summer.  The leaves of Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) are large and oval-shaped and the inflorescence is an off-white globe of flowers with long stamens that extend past the petals.  After flowering, the inflorescence dries into a brown ball of seeds ready to float downstream in the next flood.

Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis)

Also growing close to the creek, tangled in shady patch of understory, was the Snapdragon Vine.  The shiny leaves of the Snapdragon Vine look like those of English Ivy, a cross between a triangle and a heart, while the flowers have five, fused petals that are light violet to dark purple with white centers.  Snapdragon Vine (Maurandya antirrhiniflora) grows on rocky, limestone soils of the southern Hill Country and blooms after rains from March to September.

Snapdragon Vine (Maurandya antirrhiniflora)

Farther downstream, after passing the two mini falls, the trail moved away from the creek into a flat, wooded-to-open floodplain where Texas Lantana (Lantana horrida) was blooming in half-shady places.  Texas Lantana is a tough, drought-tolerant shrub that grows all over Austin, blooming in yellow and red-orange flowers all summer long, rain or not.  Lantana has square, rough-to-prickery stems and a strong aroma that I associate with the heat of summer.  I have trouble enjoying Lantana because of its commonness and because it grows wild along the south side of my house, where I can't decide if it is a weed or a wildflower.  But its flowers, grouped into round clusters, are bright and striking, and the plants seem to thrive on blazing heat and baking drought, qualities that are hard not to appreciate.

Texas Lantana (Lantana horrida)

The upstream section of the Greenbelt was surprisingly crowded that day, especially for a weekday, with crowds of swimmers at each falls, however minor, again reminding us that the season was about to be over.  Eventually, Lee and I found a couple of quiet places to get into the water before reaching Sculpture Falls, where we crossed to the main trail on the other side of the creek and headed back upstream.  Before long, a shady, tree-lined section of the creek lured us back to the water, where I found, beneath the warm water, active springs of cold water, and, around the corner, a murky backwater section of the creek that was overgrown in Dodder.  Dodder (Cuscuta sp.) is a parasitic vine in the Morning Glory Family that twines its yellow stems around its host plant.

Dodder (Cuscuta sp.) growing on plants in the creek

While Dodder, with its non-photosynthetic yellow stems, represents the darker side of the twining habit, literally living off its host plants, the Purple Leatherflower, a climbing vine that is a rare treat to find growing in the understory along streams in our area, represents the refined side, a vine that would be just as welcome in a garden as in the woods.  Purple Leatherflower (Clematis pitcheri) has shiny, lobed leaves and thick, bell-shaped, purple flowers that appear in May and June.

Purple Leatherflower (Clematis pitcheri)

The trail on the east side of the creek was wider, higher above the creek, and more exposed to the afternoon sun than the trail on the west side had been.  In those drier conditions, Turk's Cap, a shrub in the Hibiscus Family, was blooming in the shade of cedar trees.  Turk's Cap (Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii) is an herbaceous perennial that regrows from the ground each year, aggressively forming thick colonies in the shade of woods nears streams.  The flowers of Turk's Cap are bright red, with upright petals that remain half-closed and a column of fused stamens that rises above the petals.  The staminate column, also bright red, is decorated, on the sides, with the yellow ends of the stamens (male parts) and, on the top, the red stigmas (female parts) of the flower.  Turk's Cap is one of our all-summer-long bloomers, making flowers from June through October that turn into round, red fruits.

Turk's Cap (Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii)

Velvet-Leaf Mallow, another shrub in the Hibiscus Family, was also in bloom.  Velvet-Leaf Mallow (Allowissadula holoserica) is a woody perennial that grows on dry, rocky soils of the Edwards Plateau.  Velvet-Leaf Mallow has toothed, heart-shaped leaves with wooly margins and flowers with five orange-yellow petals.  Velvet-Leaf Mallow produces flowers all summer, providing food for butterflies.

Velvet-Leaf Mallow (Allowissadula holoserica)

As the trail neared its upstream end, we returned to the territory of heat-loving sunflowers.  Part way up the long hill to Scottish Woods, a colony of blooming Nerve-Ray gave me an excuse to stop for a photo break.  The inflorescence of Nerve-Ray looks something like that of Echinacea, with narrow, yellow ray flowers that are widely spaced around a reddish-brown sphere of disc flowers.  Nerve-Ray (Tetragonotheca texana) gets its genus name (tetragon-) from its four-sided involucre, the green, fused leaf beneath the inflorescence.  Nerve-Ray is a bushy, many-branched shrub that grows on rocky soil in the southern Hill Country, blooming from April to September.

Nerve-Ray (Tetragonotheca texana)

Growing closer to the ground, its stems mixed with grasses midway up the hill, was Zexmenia, another bright yellow sunflower.  Zexmenia (Wedelia texana) is a perennial shrub that is woody at its base with herbaceous stems that hold the yellow, Cosmos-like flowers high above the low-growing plant.  Zexmenia blooms from May to September and is a host to native butterflies.

Zexmenia (Wedelia texana)

At the top of the hill we walked back into the city, happy for the swim but sad that the season was ending.  Though I have been in Austin for fifteen years, I still have to remind myself that "summer," in the up-north sense of summer as the peak growing season for plants, is a broken season in central Texas.  Summer begins in April, is suspended in June, resumes in September, and ends in October.  We are currently suspended, stranded in a three-month hiatus from summer.  Annual plants are done for the year and the perennials are in survival mode, waiting until ground-soaking rains break the hiatus.  Which could happen next week or in October.

I am, as usual, a bit stunned to be here.  Like a gambler who always thinks that this round will be the one, I am perpetually convinced that this summer will be the one that isn't broken, the one that is kept whole, or is at least extended a month or two, by summer thunderstorms.  It has happened before.  But I've been here long enough to expect nothing less than blazing heat.  So, as I arrive here yet again, I have to appreciate the native wildflowers and their ability to make a life between, before, around, or straight through, our broken summers.  One of these years, I'm going to figure out how to follow their lead.  Until then, here's to enjoying the water while it lasts.

April Wildflowers

The longer I live in Texas, the shorter the springs seem to get.  One moment the trees are bare and I'm appreciating the shapes of their branches against the blue skies of early February, noticing with alarm that the elms and ashes are already glowing in yellow-green, getting ready to flower, and, seemingly, the next moment I'm worried about keeping the back door closed between trips to the garden because the air conditioner is running and summer is here.  Already.  Again.

Luckily, for some sense of perspective, I take pictures.  Recently I uploaded a huge batch of photos onto the computer and then watched the "last import" as a slide show on super slow, ten seconds per picture, while listening to Fleetwood Mac's Over My Head on repeat on the headphones, because ever since catching a clip of that song on a late-night infomercial for the Midnight Special DVD collection, I can't get it out of my head.  Not to mention that Over My Head, the sentiments of it, of falling for a guy that's wrong for you but doing it anyway, because it sure feels nice, well, that about summarizes my feelings for the Austin summer after fifteen years of living here.  I know it's going to hurt me yet I am still hopeful that this year will be the one, the rainy summer when June is defined by thunderstorms, the tomatoes produce into July, the creeks run into August, and the Greenbelt is the seven-mile water park that it can be.  You can take me to that paradise anytime.

So, anyway, as I was watching those pictures, one at a time, all 134 of them, I realized that spring, though quick, was actually a process, not the overnight event that it felt like.  Even more amazingly, I was there.  I was hiking at the Greenbelt with Lee in late January when the red buckeyes leafed out even earlier that usual, and I was there again in February to notice the creep of green into the ground-level of the landscape, as the winter annuals and grasses emerged through the leaf layer.  I was there in March when the backyard colony of Spiderworts bloomed in purple and blue, I was out on the trail in the midst of this year's bluebonnet season, and I was back at the Greenbelt to see the green leap upward as the grasses flowered in blue and the vines and shrubs and trees leafed out.

Spiderworts (Tradescantia sp.) in the backyard

Then April arrived and, with it, the transition to summer.  Days got hot, nights got humid, and the end loomed near.  I realized that I ought to get outside into the last days of spring, to record the diversity of this year's wildflowers, before the ovens turned on.  Last April I found the best trail-side wildflower viewing at McKinney Falls State Park, where Lee and I hiked the Homestead Trail and saw many spring wildflowers.  So this April we returned to McKinney Falls, this time to check out the wildflowers along the Onion Creek Trail.

We walked counterclockwise from the parking lot by the Upper Falls.  The first section of the trail followed the floodplain of Onion Creek, where a mix of tall trees, mostly pecan, cedar elm, hackberry, and, adjacent to the creek, bald cypress and sycamore, shaded the trail.  Because of the shade, the understory was patchy, a mix of leafy, open forest floor and shade-tolerant perennials and shrubs.  The most common wildflower along that section of trail was Blue Curls.  In my thinking, Blue Curls is the shady-places wildflower of April in the Austin area, but I may be biased by so many hours spent on the Greenbelt Trail, where Blue Curls is a major player each spring.

Blue Curls (Phacelia congesta)

Blue Curls is easily recognized by its curling inflorescences of many blue, five-petal flowers accented by long, yellow-tipped stamens.  The inflorescence of Blue Curls is known as a "scorpioid cyme" – scorpioid for the curling, scorpion's-tail shape and cyme for the type of inflorescence (group of flowers) where the terminal, or end, flower blooms first.  Blue Curls (Phacelia congesta) is in the Hydrophyllaceae Family, a surprise to me given that the scorpioid cyme is a hallmark of the Boraginaceae, or Borage Family.  But my botanical instincts proved to be correct when I looked up the Hydrophyllaceae and discovered that it is one of those contested plant families that is thought to be either a subfamily of or closely related to the Boraginaceae.  Blue Curls, borage or not, is a striking wildflower that is common throughout the Hill Country, blooming blue from March to May.

A relative of Blue Curls, which also blooms blue in the spring in shady spots in central Texas, is Baby Blue Eyes.  The single flowers of Baby Blue Eyes are light blue to purple with white centers, and each of the five petals is has a rounded notch.  Baby Blue Eyes (Nemophilia phacelioides) is a winter annual that grows in shady woodlands, canyons, and streamsides, blooming March to May.

Baby Blue Eyes (Nemophilia phacelioides)

Soft-Hair Marbleseed, a Borage Family plant that also has a scorpioid cyme, was blooming in a couple of the sunnier places along the first stretch of trail.  Each flower of Soft-Hair Marbleseed (Onosmodium bejariense) is white and tubular, with a spire-like tip.  Soft-Hair Marbleseed grows in open woodlands and on roadsides in the southeastern part of the Hill Country and blooms in March and April.

Soft-Hair Marbleseed (Onosmodium bejariense)

Another of the wildflowers that I noticed along the Onion Creek section of the trail was a rare treat, the Scarlet Leatherflower.  The unique, vase-shaped pink flowers of the Scarlet Leatherflower grow on a vine with asymmetric leaves that, if not for the lobe on one side that makes each leaf asymmetric, would be heart-shaped.  Scarlet Leatherflower (Clematis texensis) is a uncommon vine that grows over cliffs and shrubs in shady areas near streams in our area.   In fact, as a Hill Country endemic, ours is the only area in the world where it grows, blooming in its striking flowers April through June.

Scarlet Leatherflower (Clematis texensis)

One of the understory shrubs, Wafer Ash, was also in bloom, nearing the end of its flowering season.  Wafer Ash (Ptelea trifoliata) grows as a shrub to small tree in shady, woodland areas in central Texas.  It is commonly found growing underneath the mix of pecan, cedar elm, hackberry, and Spanish oak trees that grow along our waterways.  Its Latin species name, trifoliata, refers to its leaves-of-three, which often lead hikers to fear that it is Poison Ivy.  The leaves of Wafer Ash can be distinguished from those of Poison Ivy by the lack of notches in the leaflets.  While Poison Ivy has notched leaflets, the three leaflets that make up a Wafer Ash leaf are smooth, non-notched ovals.  The common name of the shrub refers to the thin, wafer-like fruits (actually samaras, like those of elm trees) that form after the flowers fade in late spring.

Wafer Ash (Ptelea trifoliata)

Filling out the ground layer of the understory were colonies of False Day Flower.  When I mentioned earlier that, in March, I was there to see the green leap upward as the grasses flowered in blue what I really meant is that I was there to see the huge colonies of False Day Flower form flowering shoots and bloom.  If Blue Curls is my shady-places wildflower of April, then False Day Flower is my shady-places wildflower of March, because, though it is botanically inaccurate to say that the grasses flowered in blue, that is what it feels like in March along the streams of the Hill Country.   False Day Flower (Tinantia anomala) is a monocot, which is why it has grass-like leaves, but it is not a grass; instead it is a relative of the spiderworts that grow in my backyard.  Its flowers are blue, with two petals and three tufted upper stamens that look like two eyes and a nose.  False Day Flower is a winter annual that germinates in the fall, grows through the winter, and leaps into flower in the early spring, forming large colonies of what look like blue-flowered grasses along waterways and on moist, shaded slopes.  False Day Flower blooms from March to May.

Colony of False Day Flowers (Tinantia anomala)

False Day Flower (Tinantia anomala)

About a third of the way around the loop, the trail climbed away from Onion Creek onto higher land above the floodplain and the taller, eastern-forest trees of the bottomland gave way to live oak, mesquite, and cedar (Ashe juniper).  Along this dryer section of trail, woodland was interspersed with open fields populated by grasses, wildflowers, and cacti.

The abundant cactus in the grassy breaks was the Texas Prickly Pear, which was blooming in showy yellow flowers, some of which had orange-tinted centers.  Texas Prickly Pear (Optunia engelmannii var. linheimeri) is common in fields and pastures of central and south Texas, where it grows aggressively, forming wide and tall thickets of spiny cactus pads.  To ranchers, it is a pest, but to wildlife, it is a food source.  The flowers are especially important to native bees, but they must also be a great nectar source for a variety of insects because whenever I find a Prickly Pear in bloom and look into the flowers, I find an array of flies, bees, and beetles feverishly chomping away.  Birds and animals eat the red fruit, called tunas, that form in the late summer.  Humans can eat the tunas as well, but be forewarned that the fruit, just like the cactus pads of the Texas Prickly Pear, have tufts of miniature, barbed spines, called glochids, that are hard to see and even harder to remove from your skin once attached.  Texas Prickly Pear blooms in the spring.

Texas Prickly Pear (Optunia engelmannii var. linheimeri)

The open, sunny fields between the woodlands were filled with wildflowers, some that I've written about recently, like Prairie Verbena (Verbena bipinnatifida) and Texas Star (Lindheimera texana), some that I saw last year on the Homestead Trail, like Prairie Larkspur (Delphinium carolinianum) and Engelmann's Daisy (Engelmannia peristenia), and some that I haven't yet had the chance to document, like Standing Winecup.  Of all the wildflowers in bloom, Standing Winecup was the stand out, blooming in bright magenta with tall flowers elevated above the sea of green grasses, cacti, and shrubs.

Prickly Pear, False Day Flower, Winecup, and Indian Blanket

Standing Winecap (Callirhoe digitata) is one of the poppy mallows of our area, a relative of hibiscus and Turk's Cap.  Standing Winecap is a drought-tolerant perennial that grows in fields and open woods, preferring rocky, dry soils, and blooms from April to June.  Like other Mallow Family plants, the stamens and pistil of Standing Winecap are fused into a single column in the center of the flower, the petals of which can be reddish-purple, dark purple, or white.

Standing Winecap (Callirhoe digitata)

The flowers of Indian Blanket, red and yellow in co-centric circles like a floral bull's eye, also stood out in the green landscape.  Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella) is one of the famous and popular wildflowers of central Texas because it grows happily along our highways and in open grassy areas throughout central and western Texas.  Indian Blanket is heat- and drought-tolerant and reseeds easily, established large, dense colonies in areas with limestone soils and good drainage.  The flowers of Indian Blanket, on the plants from April through June, are important to native bees.

Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella)

Brown-Eyed Susan, like Indian Blanket, is a Sunflower Family plant that also establishes large, showy colonies in open fields or woodland breaks with sandy or well-draining soil.  The ray flowers (the part of the sunflower inflorescence that looks like the petals) of Brown-Eyed Susan are yellow with a red-brown spot at the base and tend to droop downward.  The disc flowers at the center of the inflorescence are packed tightly together to form a purple-brown cone.  The flowers of Brown-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) provide nectar for butterflies and bees, and the seeds are food for birds.  Brown-Eyed Susan is an annual to short-lived perennial that blooms April to June.

Brown-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta)

Yarrow, a wildflower that is common throughout North America, is a perennial with ferny, lacy leaves that grows as a rosette in the early spring before producing tall flowering stalks in the spring.  Each flowering stalk holds many white clusters of flowers that bloom from March to June.  Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is common where soils are disturbed, preferring partial shade such as at the edge of a woodland.  Yarrow flowers provide nectar to native bees.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

The blue-purple with white flowers of Mealy Sage were also starting to bloom along the trail.  Mealy Sage (Salvia farinacea) gets its name from the white-hairy sepals that cover the flowers before they bloom, giving the flower stalks a fuzzy (or mealy?) look.  Mealy Sage is a drought-tolerant perennial that prefers sunny locations with limestone soils, making it a good match for central Texas.  Mealy Sage blooms in April and May, or after summer rains, providing nectar for butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds.

Mealy Sage (Salvia farinacea)

A few huge pink-violet blooms of Texas Thistle stood on tall stems above the mass of grasses and spring wildflowers.  Texas Thistle, a drought-tolerant biennial, grows in dry fields and roadsides throughout the state.  Though often viewed as a weed, Texas Thistle (Cirsium texanum) is an important nectar source, providing food for butterflies, bees, and bumblebees, and its seeds are eaten by birds.  Texas Thistle blooms from April to July.

Texas Thistle (Cirsium texanum)

Bull Nettle is another wildflower that stands out in a crowd.  With large, hairy, lobed leaves and spiny stems, Bull Nettle (Cnidoscolus texanus) looks intimidating, as it should, given that the whole plant is covered in stinging hairs that cause a burning rash when touched.  The bright white, star-shaped flowers only make the plant more noticeable in the spring.  Bull Nettle is a common perennial that tolerates the heat and drought of central Texas, blooming into the summer.

Bull Nettle (Cnidoscolus texanus)

The last section of the trail looped back to the Upper Falls.  For Lee and me, the best part of visiting the park is walking between the falls, enjoying the huge Bald Cypress trees along the creek and scrambling across the volcanic rock on either side of the Lower Falls.  In between the falls, growing out of a rocky outcrop, I found another lovely wildflower blooming.  Greenthread, a Sunflower Family annual that is named for its narrow-leaved foliage, blooms in bright yellow from April to June.  Greenthread (Thelesperma filifolium) prefers dry, sandy or gravely soils and provides nectar for butterflies.  I think this was my best picture of the day.

Greenthread (Thelesperma filifolium)

In the canyon along Onion Creek, in between the falls, a population of Rough-Leaf Dogwood trees grows.  Dogwood trees are rare in central Texas, limited to shady bottomlands where water is year-round and taller trees, like the old Bald Cypress along Onion Creek, provide shade.  In other words, the dogwoods in Texas are a relic of a wetter time, southern outliers of trees that, in these times, are found mainly in eastern or western forests, not in the dry middle of the continent.  Yet we have a population of Rough-Leaf Dogwood (Cornus drummondii) right here at McKinney Falls, so I am always happy to see them.  I was especially pleased on this visit because the small trees were blooming.  The leaves of Rough-Leaf Dogwood are oval-shaped and rough to the touch, with wavy edges and parallel veins.  Their white flowers are cross-shaped, with four petals, and are clustered together into large inflorescences.  The Rough-Leaf Dogwoods bloom in April and May.

Rough-Leaf Dogwood (Cornus drummondii)

We ended our hike at the field across from the parking lot, where the April wildflowers had turned the open space into a sea of yellow sunflowers punctuated by the red of Indian Blanket, the blue of Texas Bluebonnet, and a few tall, white flowers.  The white flowers that stood above the rest on prickly, blue-green foliage belonged to White Prickly Poppy (Argemone albiflora), a drought-tolerant wildflower that is common in abandoned fields and roadsides in central Texas.  With its prickly growth habit and seeds that are toxic, White Prickly Poppy is regarded as weed, but its flowers are as beautiful as those of any domestic poppy and provide nectar for bees and beetles.

White Prickly Poppy (Argemone albiflora)

Spring came early this year and, with it, the sense that summer was never far behind.  Yet by mid-April, it felt like we were granted an extension, a few more weeks of the glorious, summer-up-north weather that we call spring.  I know that the real heat is just around the corner, but I also know that, counter to my instincts, this is not the time of year to think ahead.  These are the sunny days to enjoy.  But, still, I am hopeful that this will be the year that the rains continue, the year that the drought is lifted, the year that I get to write about summer wildflowers.  I know that it is foolish to place my hopes on the Texas summer.  But it sure feels nice.

Sink Wife

The only part of my house that is clean right now is the kitchen sink.  Hair-and-lint balls are piling up in the corners and behind doors, bike tire trails from the front door to the kitchen crisscross wet-leaf trails from the back door, and the microscopic life forms of the bathroom are reaching visible colony sizes.  But the stainless steel kitchen sink, the place where all the greens get double washed, is spotless, shiny even, the well-maintained hub of the household.

Which is no surprise given that, lately, I feel like I live at that sink, constantly standing over it as I cut and tear leaves from their stems, bathe greens in a sink full of water, and move greens from the water to the strainer then back to a fresh bath of water then finally to the spinner for drying.  Or I'm washing the bulky dishes, like salad-mixing bowls and food processor parts, that inevitably follow salad making or greens cooking.  Basically, in these cloudy days of early spring, I'm feeling like a sink wife, a woman whose sink-related chores are never-ending and largely unseen, without which the steady gallop of greens consumption, so necessary if we're going to make this leap from fall to spring garden in about a month, would come to a standstill.  Forward progress is at stake here.

It amazes me how tedious forward progress, lived at the daily level, really is.  For instance, I want to grow some of my own produce in my own yard.  Which is a lovely goal, and one that is very clear in its idea phase – I want to grow greens! – and at fruition – This spinach salad is so delicious!  Even most of the obvious in-between steps, like selecting the seeds, planting the seeds, thinning the seedlings, and weeding the garden, are things that I look forward to doing, side effects from the original produce-growing goal that really are part of the reason that I want to be growing greens in the first place, because I like spending time in the garden.  But then the repetitive tasks sneak in, like processing the greens.

Greens – lettuces, spinach, chard, beet greens, Asian greens, mustard, kale, etc – are dirty.  Not dirty in a gross or bad way, but literally dirty: coated in garden soil, which is splashed on their leaves every time it rains, carrying pieces of mulch, and host to caterpillars, beetles, and aphids.  And, while baby greens are edible as whole leaves, mature greens have large leaves that need to be torn or cut into smaller pieces and from which the woody, central veins need to be removed.  This is the work of the sink wife, taking a bucketful of muddy, nearing-shrub-size plants and transforming them into a bowlful of greens that are ready to be cooked or coated in salad dressing.  Cut, toss stem in compost, tear, toss greens in sink.  Repeat about 137 times.  Slosh greens in water to loosen dirt, transfer to strainer, drain and clean the sink, and repeat.  Repeat.  To repeat is the tedious part of the growing-produce goal, and it is in the midst of the repeat, as I stare out the kitchen window and shift my weight from one leg to the other, that the emotions of the sink wife arise.  The feelings of being trapped in a never-ending process, the sense of being unappreciated for all this effort, and the fear that the work that I am doing is not valuable.

Valuable to whom?  This is a problem that I have, a problem common to many women and a few caretaker men, having been raised by mothers who told us that we could do anything that we wanted while showing us how to silently anticipate the needs of everybody around us.  As their mothers did before them.  I want my work, my time, to be valuable to somebody else, and I have trouble spending my time in ways that are simply valuable to me.  Still, I don't think that the fears of the sink wife are just about value.  I think they run deeper.

To the issue that has been all consuming for me lately: time.  How I spend my time.  The sink wife is the part of me that fears that I am wasting my time standing over the sink, stripping cilantro leaves from their stems to make pesto, or tearing apart lettuce and spinach leaves to make a salad mix, or cutting thick veins from huge mustard leaves to cook into a curry.  The sink wife is the part of me that fears that the whole process, the whole growing-greens project that I have chosen to do, is a waste of time.  That I have made the wrong choice.  That I am doing the wrong thing.

The sink wife arises in the midst of the tedious, repetitive work because that is where I am least distracted by doing.  When I'm in the garden, I'm enjoying being outside too much to question it, and by the time that I am cooking, I'm either busy chopping onions or I'm close enough to the finish that I can see, or smell, the upcoming meal.  But in the midst of the slow, repetitive detail work, the fears beneath, that I am not doing it right, that I am making the wrong choices, they come bubbling up through the sink full of leaves to greet the silence.  I have time to think and wonder and question, so here come the questions:  Am I doing the right thing?  Am I doing it right, this life?

A better question to ask might be, How am I doing it?  Am I enjoying this quiet time in front of the sink, surrounded by the abundance of greens that I have grown, separating leaves from stems into a spotless sink while listening to Maná and daydreaming, or am I worrying about whether I am doing the right thing?

The Other Outside

Lee and I went hiking three times in the first week of the new year, twice at the Greenbelt and once at McKinney Falls.  It felt wonderful to be outside, to be in the woods, to soak in the sun of a few perfect-temperature days.  This is my new year's resolution, I thought to myself as we walked, to get outside more, to go for more walks, to enjoy the nice days of Austin's cool season before the brutal days of summer arrive.  And, while I was in the woods, walking down a trail, breathing in the earthy smells of recent leaf fall and post-rain regrowth, and appreciating the fact that each species of tree has a characteristic branching pattern and shape, like a visual fingerprint, that allows me to recognize it, even in winter, especially in winter, even without leaves, my intention was very clear and direct: I enjoy being outside and I want to spent more time here.

Bald Cypress in winter

Back at home, where broccoli and bok choy need to be harvested and cooked yesterday, and post-rain regrowth means that winter annuals (better known as weeds) threaten to overtake every non-mowable corner of the yard, and I find myself dressing for work by pulling jeans, washed and dried two days ago, out of the tangle of underwear and socks that is still sitting in the dryer, my mental resolution list becomes more muddy.  I want to get outside more, I want to go for more walks, I want to keep up with all the vegetables in the front yard and cook more meals from scratch, and, while I'm at it, I want to weatherize the house and replace the dead shrubs in the yard and read more books and write more and do my taxes before April and keep the house clean and spend more time with Lee and on and on and on...  Until, eventually, it is hard for me to distinguish between what I want and what I think I should be able to do with my waking hours.  Between being outside and the Other Outside.

I learned of the Other Outside from Benji, our cat.  At 17, largely retired from the territorial life of neighborhood kitty politics that goes on in our yard and garden, she is content to rule the household from inside, curled up on a couch pillow or stretched out in a sunny window.  But as the household ruler, she reserves the right to go outside when she wants, to smell the wind and find out what's up in the larger world of the backyard, to supervise my garden projects, or to interfere Lee's or my attempt to leave for work.

Benji checks out this year's kale

Though Benji is the most vocal (and loudest) cat that I have ever known, she always asks to go outside in silence, by queuing up at the back door.  I'm not sure how else to describe it, because, though she only a forms a line of one, she knows how to sit in such a way, with her nose pointed so purposefully toward the back door, that there is simply no doubting her intent.  She plans to go outside and she expects that one of her humans will promptly open the back door for her then hold the screen door patiently while she considers whether she really wants to step outside and, if so, whether she might like a moment to rub her cheek on the screen door before exiting.  When she is leaving home in protest, because I am doing something despicable like running the vacuum cleaner, the expression on her face as she lines up at the door is only subtly different, yet unmistakable.  If she had possessions, her bags would be packed, including letters of disapproval addressed to all the proper authorities, citing violations of Kitty Code 3-B: No Vacuum Cleaners Shall Be Run in The House.  Be sure to send us postcards, I tell her as she slips out past the vacuum cleaner.

The problem with the outdoors is that it is not always what a kitty imagined it would be.  For much of the year it is too hot, the back steps being one of the parts of the yard that is heated into submission every afternoon of the summer.  Other times of the year the outdoors is too cold, or too wet, or too windy for a kitty to linger.  And, even on the nicest of days, unless one of us humans steps outside as well, the outdoors is filled with cats, those annoying creatures that Benji wants little to do with since reaching the age of what my parents call "the entity," or the older, opinionated, female cat who no longer wishes to consort with all those lowly felines.  So, inevitably, and very often quickly, within a few minutes of leaving the house, Benji wants to come back inside.  This time, because we can't see her lining up outside the door, she yells and we come running to repeat the process of opening the back door then holding the screen door patiently while she considers whether she really wants to step inside and, if so, whether she might like a moment to rub her cheek on the screen door before entering.

Ideal for kitties: an open door

Most of the time, after trotting back inside with a How could you put me out there in that heat/cold/wet/wind? meow, Benji resumes reign of the household from one of her sleeping spots.  Occasionally, though, shocked by the inhospitable weather in the backyard but still wanting to go outside, Benji decides that she will instead go to the Other Outside so she queues up at the other door, the door leading from the kitchen to the carport.  Seriously? we ask her when she sets her nose in the direction of the Other Outside, Doesn't a kitty know that when it's cold and windy in the backyard, that it is also cold and windy in the front yard?

But I can't really find fault with Benji for insisting that the Other Outside, the outdoors that conforms to her idea of how the outdoors should be, exists, given how much time I spend gazing out of windows and thinking about my own, human version of the Other Outside, or what Cheri Huber describes as the alternate, parallel reality that exists simultaneously with this reality, and in that one, everything is as it should be.  In other words, the land of shoulds.  Where I know what I should know, I do what I should do, I feel what I should feel, and I always make the right decision.  The problem with the Other Outside is that, while it seems helpful, like a map or a guide toward what I want for my life, it is actually a constant reminder of all that I am lacking and all that I am not.  Because, in reality, I can't work full time and get enough sleep and take care of myself and be a good girlfriend to Lee and get everything else on my to-do lists done.  I can only do a few of those things on the list.  And I'm hardly going to feel good about getting those few things done if I am constantly thinking about all of the other things that I could also be getting done, if only I was living as I should be, as I do in the fictional Other Outside.

So, this year, I resolve to spend more time being outside, working in the garden with Benji or walking along our local Boggy Creek or hiking in the woods with Lee, and less time thinking about the Other Outside.

Barton Creek in January

In Pursuit of the Proper Cold Front

September 5 & 15.  The first two cold fronts of the season didn't do shit.  Pardon the attitude and the language, but, after months of blinding hot temperatures, highs in the 90's with no chance of rain felt more like a distant memory of summers past, or a reminder of how we defined hot as balls back before 2011, than of any real reprieve from the ongoing hottest and longest summer on record.  You have to be in Austin, in September, having spent the summer here, to understand how anyone could refer to 95˚ F as a "cold front," and this year I just wasn't buying it.  Cold front, my ass.

Being surrounded by plant death didn't help my state of mind.  My gardens were abandoned, emptied of even the drought-hardy pepper plants, the ones that I had expected to survive through the summer and until the first freeze, shortly after the Stage 2 Water Restrictions notice arrived in the mail.  Only two of the perennial herbs that I planted in the spring, the rosemary and the sage, still grew in the front-yard garden, while the thyme, oregano, and tarragon plants had turned brown and crispy about the same time I gave up on the okra.  In the strip next to the driveway, about a third of the drought-hardy perennials, "water-wise" plants specifically selected for their ability to withstand oven-like summer conditions, had been lost to the heat of July and August, while their remaining neighbors were hanging on for their lives, barely any bigger in size than when I planted them in the spring.  Around my house and my neighbors' houses, long-established shrubs – those anonymous boxy ones that have been there forever, surviving countless Austin summers without care or watering or anyone's second thought – were also turning unhealthy shades of yellow and brown, killed by this summer.  And all around town, trees of all ages were dropping their leaves early, turning unhealthy shades of fall early, or simply dying where they had grown for so many years.

By the last week in September, when the high temperatures had climbed, yet again, back into the 105˚ F range, my mood as a gardener had sunk from, This is my month off, to, I don't know if I can start again.  I was depressed.  I knew that, according to the calender, it was time to plant broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage transplants, but I couldn't imagine planting anything young and green into such a cruel world.  I also knew that, in just a couple of weeks, it would be time to plant seeds, for lettuces, fall greens, and winter herbs.  It was my favorite time of the year, time to prepare my garden beds for fresh new rows of seeds and to get lost in the seed section of the plant store.  But instead of feeling the delicious anticipation of the cooler growing season, I was stuck in the inertia of the never-ending summer.

September 30.  The third cold front of the season knocked the temperatures out of the triple-digit range for good.  I woke early (for me) on the second morning in October and headed out for a walk.  As I walked down the street, I was struck by how quiet the neighborhood was in the late morning.  So quiet that I could hear my own footsteps crunching through the dry grass of the greenbelt.  I looked back at my neighborhood and realized that, for the first time in months, all of our air-conditioning units were silent at once.  I didn't appreciate how loud all those engines were until they were finally silent and, relieved by the absence of that constant humming, my shoulders dropped a few millimeters away from my ears.

The next day I began watering my gardens and compost pile.  To garden again, to trust the universe of central Texas to provide life-sustaining conditions once again, still seemed like a foolish idea.   Yet I was beginning to grasp the fact that, while the heat would eventually break and give way to the cool season, we weren't necessarily going to get the ground-soaking rains that my garden needed to start growing again.  So I began hand-watering the beds that I planned to plant, hoping that some of the moisture would soak through the thick layers of summer mulch and bring the soil back to life.  I was also hoping that the water would loosen the soil enough to be worked.  Later that week, I dug the remaining taproots of okra, eggplant, and fennel plants out of the garden beds and, in doing so, discovered that beautiful, dark, crumbly garden soil was still there, hiding under layers of leaf and alfalfa mulch.

For me, nothing is more motivating than turning, and smelling and feeling, a shovelful of fertile soil.  Within hours I had a garden plan and a list for the nursery and I was ready to begin again.  Rain was predicted for the weekend and, though I wasn't expecting the universe to pull though with an actual rainstorm, I figured that it was time to buy those broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage transplants.  At the garden center, I found trays of leggy baby plants, grown to be ready for planting a few weeks earlier.  I carefully selected fifteen plants – 5 broccoli, 4 cauliflower, 3 cabbages, 2 collards, and 1 Brussels sprout – of fifteen varieties, plus a few herbs to replace those that I had lost, plus a handful of seed packets.  As soon as the next front arrived, I was ready to plant.

October 8 & 9.  The fourth cold front brought ground-soaking rains.  Finally.  I wish I could say that I enjoyed the rainstorm, because I do love a thunderstorm, but I spent most of it indoors, without windows, at work.  And I was grumpy that weekend because I knew that I was scheduled to work ten of the next eleven days, at exactly the time that it was finally time to plant my fall garden.  So, to my coworkers, I apologize, because I simply didn't have the patience to deal with another pallet of unexpected, unordered cereal in the midst of the usual backstore chaos, knowing that on the other side of the back doors, outside, it was finally raining.

After the storm passed, I transplanted the baby broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, and Brussels sprout into the garden along the south wall of the house.  Almost immediately, temperatures rebounded into the high 80's, which felt downright summer-like along that south wall.  My baby plants wilted in the midday sun and the smallest of the cabbages, the one with only two sturdy leaves, threatened to perish in the heat.  I hand watered the transplants every day and told them to hang on for cooler days.

The fourth front might not have brought much cooler temperatures but the fact that it did arrive in the midst of a ground-soaking rain was a huge relief.  Without rain, fall planting feels calender-driven and robotic: I will plant now because it is time.  With rain, it feels like time to plant, which may not seem like much of a difference except that, for me, gardening is most rewarding when I am working with the plants and the seasons: put the right plant in the right place at the right time.  So, after a summer of fighting against heat and drought, a good fall rain was like hitting the reset button for me.  The ground was soft, the rain lilies were blooming, and it was time to plant.  I transplanted the baby collards and herb plants, a thyme, an oregano, and a horehound plant, into the front-yard garden.  Then I dug compost into each bed and carved rows for planting seeds – lettuces, Asian greens, mustard, two varieties of kale, fenugreek, carrots, cilantro, and parsley.

Inside the house, the cold front triggered the fall-cleaning urge in Lee, who spent most of the following week moving everything out of his jam room, cleaning and resealing the floor, and rearranging his furniture.  I am usually the one to disrupt the household with my projects, but this time it was Benji (the cat) and I who tiptoed around musical equipment, giving each other distressed looks (and she did some yelling), before finding a safe place to curl up on the front-room couch.  It was interesting to be on the observing end of a clean-out, feeling that manic energy instead of generating it.  I understand better now why Benji and Lee scurry to the back of the house with anxious looks in their eyes when I decide that it's way past time to scrub the kitchen floor.  By the weekend, the clean-out energy, and various clutter that we didn't need anymore, had reached the sidewalk in time for our area's Bulk Trash pickup.  The clean-out vibe quickly spread down the street, and, within hours, every household on the block seemed to be getting rid of its least-comfortable chair.  After dark, Bulk Trash pickup turned into a your-trash-is-my-treasure swap, so that most of the piles of discarded stuff disappeared before pickup even began.

October 18.  The fifth cold front of the season was windy and dry.  It brought the cooler days needed for my broccoli-family transplants to establish and begin growing in earnest in their protected, south-facing garden.  In a matter of days they seemed to double in size, growing from spindly transplants into wide- and many-leaved plants whose leaves were almost touching.  In the front-yard, windy conditions dried the top of the soil where I had just planted so many rows of seeds and I feared that I would have lower germination rates as a result.  But I kept watering every day and soon thick rows of seedlings began to break through the soil.  The Asian greens and mustards were the first to germinate, of course, followed by the kales, fenugreek, and lettuces.

Later that week, I planted seeds in the shady backyard garden.  This year I only planted seeds of plants that were able to tolerate the shady conditions last year, red-leaved lettuces, chard, beet greens, and spinach.  It was a risk, planting my favorites of all the fall greens, the beet greens, chard, and spinach, in the less-than-ideal, shady conditions of the backyard.  But it may give me a later, spring season of greens to harvest from the backyard long after the fast-growing mustard-family greens have gone to seed in the front yard.

On Saturday Lee and I dusted off our state park pass and headed to McKinney Falls for a hike around the Onion Creek loop trail.  The creek was low, barely flowing over the falls, but actually held far more water than I expected.  And the trail was lined with the new, green leaves and round, pink flowers of Wood-Sorrel, a fall wildflower that had been encouraged out of dormancy by the rains two weekends earlier.  Slowly but surely, the lives that went on hold back in May, hidden inside our houses or waiting in dormancy underground, were starting up again.

Wood-Sorrel (Oxalis drummondii)

October 27.  With the sixth front of the season, the hot season has finally given way to the cool season.  Not that we won't see warm temperatures again soon – the cool season in Austin is defined by change, not by cold weather, which is always temporary here.  But the north wind tonight is actually cold, and standing outside in it made me cold, as in uncomfortably cold, a state that I haven't experienced in months.  The truth is, I don't like being cold.  And that is when I know that the seasons have changed in Austin, that we are officially in the cool season, when I feel cold enough to remember how much I don't like being cold and to just as quickly realize that, given how much I have been complaining about the heat all summer, I'd better get ready to embrace the season of change.