Random Thursday

Hi, folks. Welcome to another scintillating edition of RT, where everything is exactly as it seems. We have no hidden agendas. In fact, we laugh at the very idea of agendas.

Today is National Ironic Tax ID Number Day and…OK, I just made that up. But it should be true because this morning I learned that our church’s federal tax ID ends in 666. [Cue Twilight Zone weird music]

And speaking of demons, have you ever thought to yourself, gee, I wish I had a 1000+ hp street-legal car that could do 0-60 in less than two seconds and wasn’t powered by sewing machine motors, and also could host an after-market parachute for more stopping power because a two-ton piece of Detroit (possibly) iron running on E85 flex fuel needs more than four disk brakes? I mean, who hasn’t, right? Well, bubba, check out Dodge’s soon-to-be-available-for-six figures Challenger Demon SRT 170. Did I mention that you can pop wheelies on your way to Bass Pro Shop? [Cue overly dramatic propaganda informational video]

And speaking of drama, I forgot to include the following photo in Monday’s picture-centric post.

I’m ignorant of the meteorological (aside: it took me three tries to spell that word correctly) explanations for why we don’t see a lot of thunderheads in our part of the country. It might be that they’re there, and all the darn trees and hills block the view. Or maybe I’m hiding in the closet whenever we get t-storm warnings. Whatever. We did have a great view of this one last Thursday from our church’s parking lot, when we showed up for ESL class only to find that it was canceled due to spring break but that’s another story altogether.

It was indeed a dramatic view, and we were graced with almost 1/8″ of rain. Talk about overhyped.

And speaking of being overhyped, the wildflowers this year aren’t. It won’t be too long before the historic crop of bluebonnets start their downhill slide, but it looks like there’s an abundance of other wildflowers ready and able to carry the photographic load.

I won’t bore you with more bluebonnet photos…OK…that’s a fib. There are some more.

Early last week I posted several such pictures, including a couple of relatively rare white bluebonnets. Well, Debbie ran across another color of bluebonnet that seems to be even more rare: a pink one.

As I skew a bit toward the colorblind end of the visual spectrum (that’s not really a thing, but you know what I mean), I would have seen this bloom and called it white. But I can kinda see the pink in this photo, and I’ll bet you more normally sighted folks will think it’s quite obvious.

We’re starting to see a proliferation of Texas Indian Paintbrush interspersed with the bluebonnets. The red and blue blooms provide a pleasing contrast. Following are some photos taken from the side of RR 2147 in Horseshoe Bay, inside the city limits.

That white-ish flower amongst the others caught my eye; I don’t think I’d ever noticed one like it before. Here’s a closer look:

It took some hardcore research; I must have looked at…oh, I don’t know…maybe four websites and one actual treeware book (pro research tip: avoid printed books like the plague; they’re so analog), until Debbie suggested feeding the above photo to Google Lens to see what it comes up with.

It gave two options, with Mediterranean lineseed (Bellardia trixago) being pretty much an exact match. This flower is native to parts of northern Africa and various Mediterranean countries (duh). But in the US, it is considered an invasive species, and is found in Texas and California, but rarely anywhere else. And this description from the preceding linked website is fascinating:

This plant is considered to be a hemiparasitic plant because it does get some energy from the sun, but it also taps into the root systems of other plants to absorb the remainder of its nutrients.

It’s like the vampire of the plant world!

In conclusion, here’s an unbiased editorial comment on the quality of this post.