Return to Lake Somerville State Park

 

On March 11th we returned to the Birch Creek Unit at Lake Somerville State Park for the first time since we’d visited a year earlier. In contrast to the later dramatic view in yesterday’s post, the clouds had been soft and white. The yellow flowers are Senecio ampullaceus, known as Texas groundsel or Texas ragwort. The others are bluebonnets, Lupinus texensis.

 

 

If clouds be dreams, what pleasant slumbers.

 

© 2023 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Pink evening primroses

 

Pink evening primroses (Oenothera speciosa)
south of Smithville on March 5th.
Backlighting’s benefits betide.

 

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And speaking of betide, did you know that worth used to be an English verb which meant ‘be, become, betide’? Wiktionary gives as an example: “Woe worth the man that crosses me,” meaning “May woe come to the man that crosses me.”

In another example, “Well worth thee, me friend,” a modern reader will likely think this is the unrelated worth that means ‘value’ and may misinterpret the sentence as if the friend had performed some worthy deed. In fact the actual meaning is “May good fortune befall you, my friend.”

This worth that English no longer finds worthy of retaining in its vocabulary (except in some dialects) is a cognate of the very-much-alive German verb werden. It’s also a cognate of the Latin verb vertere, which meant ‘to turn’ and by extension ‘to change,’ and which we find in borrowed words like convert, revert and vertex.

 

© 2023 Steven Schwartzman