Freshly golden

If the gold on the rays of the Mexican hat that you saw two posts back was about to fade, the bright yellow of these nearby goldenrod flowers had just emerged, and the buds at the bottom of the photograph were soon to add more. The date was December 22, and the plant was so fresh that I thought it likely there would still be goldenrod flowers on the Mueller Greenway at the beginning of January. (Five days later I found several goldenrods blooming in other locations around Austin, so unless the current forecasts of warm weather for the rest of the week are drastically wrong and a sudden freeze hits us, we will indeed still have some goldenrod flowers to usher in the new year.)

© 2011 Steven Schwartzman