And a shotgun

 

After we turned for home along on FM 1117 northward from Nixon on March 13th we kept seeing more gorgeous roadside wildflower displays. By then, though, we’d been out for many an hour, I’d stopped plenty of times for pictures already, and the sky had largely clouded over (as you saw in a picture yesterday). March 15th found us back there a little earlier and with better light, so this time I pulled over at a property that had caught my fancy two days before.

Walking back and forth outside the fence, I took pictures of the wildflowers. Lost in my photographing as I was, I didn’t notice that at some point two women had come out and that one carried a shotgun. Eve saw them and waved to them to show that we were friendly. Eventually one of the women called out to me but I gestured that I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She walked over to me at the fence and confirmed that all I was doing was taking pictures of the wildflowers. She said they’d had trouble with people coming on the property, so they were leery. In any case, I didn’t get blasted, and all’s well that ends well.

The yellow flowers are Texas groundsel (Senecio ampullaceus), the pink are phlox (Phlox drummondii), and the orange are Indian paintbrushes (Castilleja indivisa). Little mounds of sand like the one in the foreground are a common feature in that region.

 

© 2023 Steven Schwartzman