Falcate Orangetip butterfly Archives : Cast Iron Garden

The world’s most cooperative Falcate Orangetip butterfly! Feeding at a dandelion here and we also saw it on henbit and speedwell.

The tree with some green is an elm and the pod tree is a catalpa!

This grass was everywhere. Mom says not coastal Bermuda, but otherwise we’re not sure.

The River Trail was full of old and fallen and standing cottonwood trees. I liked the pattern on this barkless log.

Dad spotted this well-camouflaged Buprestidae beetle! I used my macro Moment lens on the phone camera to admire its nice punctate (the dimples) elytra (the hard wing covers).

There were also quite a few Kentucky Coffee Trees with their distinctive seed pods. Mom hadn’t seen them before so we looked it up and they’re not in Texas much.

Briar dog for scale on a bridge over the small springfed creek with a big, big cottonwood tree in the background.

I liked this tree’s bark!

The Civilian Conservation Core pump house near the spring’s source. Briar hopes it has air conditioning???

We didn’t go in the pump house but continued in the visitor center area (everything here was paved and accessible) to see the very channeled spring creek.

Briar did find the cool flagstones in the shade to be acceptable. the “boiling” sand is in the fenced area. Mom will be blogging it eventually so look at her site for video coming in the next week or so!

On our walk back we saw this beaver-gnawed tree. The park office person told us the beaver had recently moved and she didn’t know where to, so we showed her yesterday’s beaver den and she agreed that was probably it! We have been listening to a great book about beavers lately called “Eager” by Ben Goldfarb. I recommend it so far!