I haven't been out much since I've been here--it's too hard to load me in the car and get me back out again. I'm wobbly as a rag doll from the waist down. But my daughter got me in the car one day and drove us to San Antonio, and I noticed all the dead trees all along I-37. Thick clusters of black jack oaks, dead from drought, their skeletons black and gnarly, with limbs shedding off and falling on the ground like dried up arms.
The years of drought here in Texas are destroying these hardy trees.One landowner, and only one I've noticed so far, has piled up great piles of dead trees and limbs in preparation for when the burn ban is lifted. All I can think of is how much wood is going to waste
.Here in mid-Texas where I am, There is an escarpment near the house, and a ravine where once a creek or river must have run, now it's all dry bed. Boulders and rocks of all kinds are embedded in the escarpment. Zee on one of her excursions to look for arrowheads and rock specimens saw a patch of cacti that are becoming increasingly rare in the wild, a "Horse Crippler Cactus."Â She brought them home and potted them up.
They are barrel shaped (these were small ones). They have fine bristles that imbed themselves in your flesh and are very painful.This cacti form M&M sized red round things on top. I opened one up and there were teeny little black seeds inside, or maybe the impending flower. Deer love these, but how they can eat them with without suffering pain I don't know.Bye for now, love from susil