The rock crossing we put in at Westbrook to bring supplies over for Owl Pavilion forms a sort of gabion. Water flows through it, but it also backs water up into the west woods. Here, after a week of rain, water is flowing over the top, but the water downstream is clear. Even rough rock like this holds back a lot of silt.
In the west gully system, water willow now grows on the bottom of several of the gully pools. This provides perches for damselflies, and butterflies can nectar on the pretty white flowers with their purple markings. In this case a Fiery Skipper was giving me a lovely color contrast but flew just as I tried to take its picture.
Dragonflies often prefer a taller perch. Here a male Red Saddlebags has chosen a dead stalk of Indiangrass from which to patrol one of the gully pools. Note the water color--it was still turbid from runoff when this picture was taken, but in the shot of the water willow, it had cleared up and the bottom was clearly visible.	Male Roseate Skimmers are one of our most gorgeous dragonflies. On Friday I watched a skirmish between one of these and a Red Saddlebags...they both wanted absolute control of the pool.
One evening last week, we were walking back from the southwest meadow and spotted this cottontail which had come out to feed on the tender young vegetation. It wasn't happy to be interrupted, but it let me get quite close before deciding that the big eye of the camera, two two-leggers, and the funny noises a camera makes were too much.
Dogbane is a pretty plant--smooth, green leaves, red stems, and clusters of fresh white flowers. It's also wildly attractive to butterflies (and wasps, but I'm not posting my really great shot of a red wasp...some of you will be glad of that.) Walking into a patch of dogbane will send clouds of butterflies into the air, but most of them quickly settle again. Here a fresh Common Buckeye and an equally fresh Red Admiral are nectaring on the same cluster. I chose this shot because it shows the underside of the Red Admiral's wings as well as the beautiful "eyes" and "stripes" on the Buckeye.
Autumn sage, Salvia greggii, blooms in the spring and sometimes in the summer as well as in the autumn. We've had enough rain that we have quite a display of it right now.	These irises are native east of here, but they've multiplied so much in the water garden that we have to hack them back (and I do mean hack--they are tough and have thick corms.) We have both blue and yellow in the water garden in the back yard. We've hauled some down to the "swamp" in the creek woods, where several clumps are now growing well. They look horrible in the drought times, but they come back...and they've begun to spread. I'm now thinking of putting some out behind the #3 gabion...what a beautiful sight it would be to have that pool edged with flowering iris.
Pink evening primrose blooms in the daytime as well as in the evening--in fact, most of the plants are day-bloomers, producing drifts of lovely pink flowers.
This yellow columbine is a Texas native, but we didn't have any here, because we had no spring. Now we do, though it's artificial...and this plant has been growing in a pot. When I finally (!) get the rock work around Owl Water done, it will have its own rocky niche, just as in nature, where spray from the little waterfall will keep it fresh.

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