Variations on a Species

I’m struggling with what to write here these days. Summer has breezed by, school has started (third grade for Forest!), and we’re limping along with summer until we can get to fall. I suppose the best way to write here is to actually just sit down and write. I almost put this off for yet another day/week because I haven’t actually edited my camera photos of these and so you’ll have to suffice with mediocre phone photos.

At the end of July, Chris and I spent a weekend at Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve scanning in some documents there for preservation reasons. We took a break late in the afternoon to do some roadside botanizing with Kathleen and Pauline and it was delightful! Pauline took us to a patch of Winkler’s blanket flower, Gaillardia aestivalis var. winkleri, off a backroad near the Big Thicket that she said had a rosy coloring to it. Turns out there was a whole more variation between the plants within 20 feet of each other and that was a delight to see! Many plants were wilting nearby, but not he blanketflower! And with so little blooming, it was a pleasant change to see something in bloom.

It’s hard to believe the weeks have flown by since we were out there. I think the best way to get back on a writing wagon here is to try to dedicate 2-3 days a week and schedule some posts. Because I have such a backlog of photos to share and often don’t really have anything to write about them, expect more photo only posts. I’m tempted to start a gallery of sorts here just to share photos. I think this is what has held me back in recent years, I often don’t have much to write about but I do want to share the photos and then I’ll only end up sharing them on social media because it seems easier to share a pithy sentence or two and get some likes out of it. Ah, that dopamine hit!

More soon!