heavenly beauty

I love summer sunsets! I'm particularly thrilled having this photo opportunity appear with such regularity and right outside my door. I just grab my grab my camera and start shooting. This is from the front of the house to the west - a huge watercolor of cloud layers.

It's even gorgeous in the back to the east.

This was on a drive home up in the hills. I kept stopping at the top of each hill to snap a few shots. Took me a while to get home. The sight is overwhelming. The entire horizon is brilliant layers of color on color.

... and this is what it usually looks like just as the sun begins to wink out.

Lately I haven't had this treat. Instead of the slow beautiful end to a hot, sunny day, we've had heavily overcast skies of the last couple of weeks thanks to the rains of the past couple of weeks. The days seems to just blink out without the show, but that's okay, we were desperate for rain.

el destructo

See this creature. Isn't he cute, adorable, beautiful, graceful . . . destructive?

Several days ago I woke up to something rubbing on the outside wall of my house. I cautiously followed the noise to the porch and the almost three foot horns and the tops of his head were passing by my windows. I ran for my camera and by the time I came back he was across the road.

El destructo is a blackbuck, not native to Texas, but to India. Trophy hunters pay big bucks for the privilege of shooting these here and not having to go to India, but not on this ranch. A pretty large herd exists in this development along with a substantial number of axis deer (another Indian species) and a smaller number of whitetails.

I'm losing the year-round battle trying to keep this creature from rubbing his horns on my shrubbery and small trees. I have used 'Deer Off' on my shrubbery and small trees. It stinks so bad a skunk wouldn't get near. Even when I'm careful to stand downwind, I still manage to carry the stink inside and have to take a shower immediately. But when this guy and his buddies have the urge to impress the females with shiny horns, the stink doesn't bother them.

I'm all for shipping them back to India, a most impractical idea. *SIGH* Guess I'll continue the spraying and showering.