The last shall be first

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Among the last wildflowers to appear in central Texas each year are asters, of which there are various species in the genus Symphyotrichum. Because these small flowers keep appearing through the end of the calendar year, I sometimes still find a few of them scattered about in January. That’s what you see in this first photograph of a wildflower from 2013 to appear in these pages. I took the picture yesterday near a tributary of Bull Creek in my northwest Austin neighborhood. The moody feel and subdued tonality are typical of the land here at this time of year.

© 2013 Steven Schwartzman