Not ferocious or fearsome

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After the last post, with its photograph of a spider devouring a damselfly, here’s a milder picture. Yes, there’s still a spider, but only a tiny one, no more than an eighth of an inch long, and doing no harm to any other creature. If you’d like a closer look at the miniature spider, you can click the icon below.

Many of you recognize the plant as a Texas thistle, Cirsium texanum, with a flower head that is fading and about to start decomposing. Doesn’t the bundle of purple florets remind you of an old-fashioned shaving brush? The conspicuous pappus snagged on the right side of the flower head had apparently blown over from another Texas thistle in a more advanced stage of decomposition.

I took this picture on June 8 on a stretch of Bluegrass Dr. that has remained in a natural state even though houses line most of the road. This portion of it slopes down steeply enough that the immediately adjacent land there is probably (and thankfully) unsuitable for building. That has made the fringes of land on both sides of the road suitable for me to keep taking nature pictures over the past few years.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman