Maroon and grey hill

How about this two-tiered maroon and gray hill on the western side of Big Bend National Park as it looked with a bright blue sky and wispy clouds on November 22nd?

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman

A picture from farther back

Yesterday’s post focused on an individual bluebonnet, Lupinus texensis, so I thought I should balance that with a view showing the way this wildflower can form large (and fragrant, which I can’t show) colonies. The prominently vertical plants coming up in the bluebonnet colony are poverty weed, Baccharis neglecta. The trees beyond them on the ridge are mostly Ashe junipers, Juniperus ashei. Above the trees, filling half the frame, are the wispy clouds that dictated the photograph’s vertical format (although I did horizontal takes too).

This photograph is from March 31 at Gloster Bend Park in the Texas Hill Country about an hour northwest of my home in Austin.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman