Silver bluestem seed heads blowing
November 9; Brushy Creek Lake Park in Cedar Park.
Silver bluestem = Bothriochloa laguroides.
Backlighting; shutter speed = 1/640.
And speaking of blowing, here’s a comic comment that wafted its way into my spam folder recently: “Hello my loved one! I want to say that this article is amazing, nice written and include approximately all important infos. I’d like to peer extra posts like this.”
I hope all you loved ones have also enjoyed peering my posts.
But let’s live big. Here’s another comment I recently got: “You capability not remember this, but a end of people are saving a destiny of money by using coupons. You may not notice those coupons, but do you remember how much lettuce you could acquire saved? This article can assistance you appreciate coupons nearby providing some important tips payment making the most of them. Infer from on! Avail oneself of coupons when things are on purchasing to deliver the most pelf possible. This means not using it the next time you look for, but holding on to your coupon to wait on a sale. This may also technique that you on need to make more shopping trips, but the change you scrimp resolution be quality the trouble.”
I’ll keep on doing my best to acquire saved lettuce and to deliver the most pelf possible to you.
© 2020 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
Gotta love those computer generated spam comments. Also gotta love how you used the wind to your advantage.
Steve Gingold
December 9, 2020 at 5:05 AM
And even more often I take advantage of backlighting. Silver bluestem seed heads especially lend themselves to that.
Steve Schwartzman
December 9, 2020 at 7:12 AM
And here they are! I’ve been waiting for your photos of the silver bluestem; it’s one of the loveliest grasses we have. Well, except for little bluestem, and bushy bluestem, and Gulf muhly, and… This is grass season as much as leaf season, and on a nice, sunny day, they really do shine.
shoreacres
December 9, 2020 at 7:28 AM
And here they are indeed! Gulf muhly’s in the pipeline for next week, and I may still show a little more bushy bluestem. I’m with you in the claim that this is “grass season as much as leaf season.”
Steve Schwartzman
December 9, 2020 at 10:42 AM
A really beautiful grass! I was looking at some sites just now, about the ag school at Cornell promoting “Niagara,” a variety of Big Bluestem, for forage. The varieties I’ve seen in the north are pretty, but don’t have this great pearly look of the seeds heads in your photo.
I wonder if “pelf” is still in use in some corners of the former British Empire, the way you sometimes hear people in the U.S. use “bread,” or “moolah,” etc. just for fun. Pelf actually seems kind of useful, in the sense of pilfered money. I guess we’d say “loot” but pelf is a lot shorter than saying “embezzled or misappropriated funds.”
Robert Parker
December 9, 2020 at 7:47 AM
Silver bluestem is one of central Texas’s most appealing grasses, and it has the added benefit of being quite common here. I’ve portrayed individual seed heads, for example
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/dewdrops-on-spiderwebs-on-silver-bluestem-seed-head-remains/
but there’s nothing like a backlit colony of them, as in today’s picture. The common name bluestem has gotten used pretty loosely, settling onto various species that are in different genera, as you may have noticed with big bluestem (Andropogon) and little bluestem (Schizachyrium), neither of which matches the Bothriochloa of silver bluestem.
Your second paragraph suddenly got me to thinking that the zillions of self-help books and programs out there in contemporary culture might be better described as pelf-help for the creators of those books and programs.
Steve Schwartzman
December 9, 2020 at 10:57 AM
“Ponzi’s Pyramid of Practical Pelf Help”
Robert Parker
December 9, 2020 at 11:09 AM
Bingo! Sounds like you’ve got the title for a future post. We’ll be waiting for it.
Steve Schwartzman
December 9, 2020 at 11:27 AM
I did not have the ‘pleasure’ of receiving such garbled comments. I wonder what their purpose is other than to annoy the recipient. I’d rather view grasses swaying in the wind.
Peter Klopp
December 9, 2020 at 7:52 AM
I think the main purpose is to get people to click over to the websites of the people sending the spam, the goal being to sell products and services or to otherwise scam people out of their money.
Steve Schwartzman
December 9, 2020 at 11:01 AM
Your silvery shimmering pelf is certainly due some lettuce 😀
melissabluefineart
December 9, 2020 at 8:44 AM
When I took my silvery-haired self out shopping an hour ago I bought some organic red romaine; I somehow don’t think that’s the kind of lettuce the spammer had in mind.
Steve Schwartzman
December 9, 2020 at 11:05 AM
Haha probably not. But through our silvery hairs we have earned wealths of wisdom and experience. And I’ll take red romaine every time !
melissabluefineart
December 10, 2020 at 8:57 AM
Some of the other kind of lettuce isn’t bad, either.
Steve Schwartzman
December 10, 2020 at 9:35 AM
I spend a lot of bread on good lettuce.
melissabluefineart
December 13, 2020 at 9:03 AM
And probably lettuce on good bread, too.
Steve Schwartzman
December 13, 2020 at 10:15 AM
😀 Spam is pretty funny sometimes. Thank god for spam folders!
Eliza Waters
December 9, 2020 at 4:36 PM
Once in a while a legitimate comment ends up there by mistake, so I check it out occasionally to see if any comment needs rescuing. As you say, the spam can be unintentionally funny. WordPress used to include (but stopped including) the Internet search terms that led people to our post. For four years I had fun with some of those search terms, too:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/a-new-round-of-frolicking-with-search-criteria/
Steve Schwartzman
December 9, 2020 at 5:09 PM
When is the pelf delivery coming??? Hilarious, Steve, I’m glad someone made something amusing from spam.
bluebrightly
December 21, 2020 at 2:32 PM
WordPress used to include (but no longer does) the Internet search terms that led people to our posts. For four years I had fun with some of those search terms, too:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/a-new-round-of-frolicking-with-search-criteria/
Steve Schwartzman
December 21, 2020 at 5:39 PM