- (What) A little rain will do

We went to a Texas honky tonk last night with free tickets from our favorite radio station KNBT. If you're not familiar with the Americana music genre, the station streams live from this link and from their mobile app ... well worth a listen (although I confess that I prefer the rock end of the spectrum over the country end).

Cody Canada and Reckless Kelly opened for Robert Earl Keen. Sadly, The Departed didn't play one of my favorite songs: A Little Rain Will Do (from This is Indian Land, which usually gets slipped into the CD player when we drive through Oklahoma). But we were consoled when REK brought on longtime friend Lyle Lovett to reminisce in song about The Front Porch.

Fortunately, the weather cooperated. We've had a long, hot dry spell with virtually no rain this summer, following May's string of record-setting downpours. For the Texas Hill Country is a land of drought broken by intermittent flood. True to form, we had over five inches of rain in a couple of hours the other day, transforming the winter-like browns of dormant grasses to spring-like greens overnight.

Rain lilies poked their heads up as the water sank deep enough to wake them from their slumber ...

An unusual color variant on the usual white which, it turns out,
is actually a Rio Grande Copper Lily

Checking the detritus at the end of the driveway for oak galls, I realized for the first time how the marks in this particular piece of limestone were surely casts from shells in the long ago sea that once covered the land ...

And as we sat in the (finally!) cool breezeway, we marked the return of blossoms and butterflies (this one is probably a Gulf Fritillary) ...

Latana protected from the predations of our ever-hungry deer

not to mention the resurgence of Prairie Tea ...

I think I feel a dyein' day comin' on ...