Much closer to home

 

After 8 hours and 250 miles of wildflower hunting west of Austin on April 23rd, I lay low for almost a week. Not till the 29th did I head out with my camera again, initially “only” to a part of the Capital of Texas Highway that borders my Great Hills neighborhood. I put “only” in quotes because the highway median was actually quite a floral extravaganza, as you see here.

The yellow-fringed red flower heads are Indian blankets (Gaillardia pulchella). The prominent purple flowers are silverleaf nighshade (Solanum elaeagnifolium). You see them in the distance in the top picture, and a group of them closer below. A few Mexican hats (brown, Ratibida columnifera) are mixed in.

  

 

  

 

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You have to watch/read the moving speech “What It Means to Choose Life” that Douglas Murray gave when he accepted the Manhattan Institute’s Alexander Hamilton Award on May 6th. You’ll find out some of the things he experienced in Israel beginning right after Hamas’s slaughter of innocents seven months earlier.

 

© 2024 Steven Schwartzman