Four o’clock photographed at eleven o’clock

Click for greater clarity.

A little over a week ago you saw the leaf of a pearl milkweed vine that I photographed on the autumnally clear morning of October 29th when I drove down to San Marcos, a town about 30 miles south of Austin, and explored the Purgatory Creek Natural Area. Another thing I found there was abundant four o’clock flowers. These are in the genus Mirabilis, of which central Texas has several species. The one shown here, which I photographed at almost eleven o’clock, seems to be Mirabilis albida, known as whitestem four o’clock. That’s not only another first for this blog, but a first for me, too. Not at all a first was my posture: I lay on the ground so I could aim upward and isolate these relatively low flowers against the blue sky.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman