Lovies

A year of melancholy and feeling like my feelings aren’t deserved

A year of people telling me how I should feel and being told that total strangers know better than somebody who has lived in a similar region for years

A year of thanking as many people as I meet for helping with relief

A year of avoiding news stories and driving down roads that will never be the same

357 days since my classmates banded together to help a friend and family mourning the loss of a loved one

I sincerely hope nobody has to search through Facebook groups trying to find out any information of if their friends or acquaintances have been recovered ever again, but I know this will continue to happen.

So in the off chance somebody is reading this, hug your family, hug your friends, be happy, and keep the 100+ families who have to face a year without their loved ones in your thoughts.

I’ve started seeing their chrysalis pop up all over in the last week, which is weird because I haven’t seen any caterpillars or butterflies! Just chrysalis!

I love how pretty the chrysalis of this butterfly is. Those little orange spots?? The black stripes??? She ATE. And they can have their fill of cenizo. It’s everywhere and blooming like crazy (👀 good omens?)

Anyway, soon they’ll be dropping like flies from the office doorway. And that means I’ll be saving butterflies from getting stepped on like nobody’s business

Good news I guess, texas pecan is 100% artificially flavored. Otherwise my morning would have been largely out of it and incapable of functioning from antihistamines

We call them the peep peeps because thats the sound they make. Omg little killdeer are so cuuute. I love how they can't run around for very long. They just dash and stop, dash and stop. And when mama (or parent) calls them over and they all go sit under her??? Ugh, they're adorable. I love a good killdeer

This guy was one of two that we saw. He just kinda flew in, stuck around for a moment, then left. I just absolutely LOVE their tails! Such pretty birds!

SNAKES!!

It's the first time I've seen a rattler (as far as I can remember), despite living in prime rattler territory. This guy sat with his back towards us while a group of us observed him for several minutes. He only rattled twice, both for less than a second, and just stayed put under a cactus, What a chill guy!

There was another one that slipped into the rocks before I got to it. Shucks!

Yes, indeed, twelve indicidula grasshoppers. It Is Time

I'm not separating these guys as I'm not a grasshopper aficionado. I dont know most... or any of these guys.

And I'm a liar. there's two katydid

These little guys were absolutely EVERYWHERE! I've only seen one other rabid wolf spider, and not as big as these guys! I cant really recall how large the biggest one I saw was (this was 8 days ago as I'm writing this) but I feel like one of them (Image 1) was larger than a half-dollar coin.

Found these guys while doing a volunteer survey/BioBlitz! They were so jumpy, yet I didn't consider the fact that they were rabid wolf spiders until I got home and put them on iNat.

There were so many more that I didn't capture. But they were so goofy, jumping around everywhere.

Okay so the Sonoran Bumblebees were absolutely EVERYWHERE. Can I confirm every bumblebee was Sonoran? no. Im just assuming. But the first guy was interesting. I'm still not sure what he is, but I thought he was just a mimicking fly at first. It appears to be a California Digger Bee! Its so cool to find different bees than just honeybees! I love biodiveristy!