Temperatures are slowly decreasing, thank the gods. Although it is still very much  summer-like here. Highs in the low nineties and lows in the upper sixties. But it is still much cooler, and allows me to garden until much later in the day before the heat drives me to the air conditioning, or a shady snooze on the back patio. 🙂

The garden is soldiering on beautifully. Much to the delight of an unusually high population of bumblebees this year. I’m not complaining. That’s what the gardens are for.

I had a great crop of carrots this year. I just love the purple ones.Soon it will be time to seed out some more. I am waiting for some rainier weather. It has been painfully dry again and seeds are just not going to make a good showing if the soil is too dry.

Portulaca loving the simmering heat as usual.

I found a Lynx spider in my garage garden. They are fascinating spiders, and there’s a reason for their name – Lynx: They crawl about during the daytime hunting small insects, darting and leaping over low shrubs. They’re described as hunting like a cat, lying in wait or carefully stalking their prey, suddenly pouncing and capturing it.Female lynx spiders are very protective parents. She fastens her egg sac to the top of a plant and then sits on top of it or upside down from the sac. She guards her offspring very tenaciously, aggressively rushing at anything that threatens them, protecting her young till they can fend for themselves.

 Various birds are still using the birdbaths to cool down. If you want birds in your garden, put out a bird bath – especially something with gentle moving water – it’s truly as simple as that. Below we have a Goldfinch sharing a bath with a Cardinal, and in the background the melodious Mockingbird. They’ve just ramped up their singing in the front Youpon Holly which they are vigorously defending from other Mockingbirds. The Holly berries are just beginning to ripen, and birds are starting to fight over them. This noisy scrapping will continue until February when the berries will have a much sweeter taste and will be quickly devoured .It’s migration season. Lots of birds are making their way through Texas to get to the tropical south – to my delight. Right now we are inundated with beautiful Baltimore Orioles. They take advantage of any available water in this dry state. We don’t see them very often here, so this is such a special treat.The male is a beautiful orange, and the female is a more muted yellow. Here is a pair sharing a morning sip.Below are Eastern Bluebirds (they stay here for the year), sharing their usual watering hole with some Orioles. Eastern Bluebirds have just finished raising their brood for the year and we can usually see the young having an evening bath this time of year..

A little bit of scrapping going on between the species….

A lazy Sunday afternoon snooze on the back patio overlooking nature’s blessings.Such a relaxing view.And to finish it off for the evening a lovely blood super moon. We are truly blessed.