I grew up in Northern Virginia, a place where winter was a time to await the snow. Things are different here in Texas: winter is a time to await the butterflies.

The last week has been filled with unusually warm days and the plants are celebrating. Salvia, skeleton leaf goldeneye, and Copper Canyon daisies receive attention from clouds of insects, it seems. The garden sings. It amazes me every year. Just when I think I should be cutting things back and preparing for the winter, the yard springs to life.

Fall is the time for migration, the last hurrah for many of the creatures in my yard. There are three fall-bloomers that, for me, signify the arrival of fall - maximillian sunflower, frostweed, and goldenrod. But not everyone loves them as much as I do. Sometimes they are referred to as weeds, and my heart sinks. They are tall, taller than me, and lanky. They grow in large clumps, and they spread. They don't stand up straight, especially after a storm. They are wild.

It was a summer of amazing places and beautiful sights, close to home and far away. In Texas, my yard, mini-river, and pollinator garden were filled with life: mating monarchs and Gulf fritillaries, a diversity of caterpillars, a fawn, frog eggs, several nests, and damselfly and dragonfly eggs.

In Maine, I joined the Landscape of Change project as a citizen scientist. Several organizations are working with the community to compare changes in plant and animal populations over time on Mount Desert Island. For comparison, they are using old field logs kept by the the Champlain Society, a group of young men and women who spent their summers on MDI. I have noticed a change in the intertidal zone at our family cabin, and so I am curious to examine the results of this project, as well.

The fungi, lichen, and mosses captured my heart this year. It had been a wet spring and the woods seemed to be filled with these organisms at every turn. Using iNaturalist, I was able to learn about many new species.

On Sunday, I stepped outside to discover a joyous curiousity : inchworms hanging from silken threads . . . EVERYWHERE. It was impossible to walk without entangling myself in the web-like strands. Miniature hitchhikers stuck to my fleece jacket at every turn. With the help of a lively breeze, the twig-like caterpillars swung this way and that, like upside down kites. What were these insects up to?

Of course, I wanted to identify the insect ninjas that were zip-lining down from the oak trees. With iphone in hand and my iNaturalist app at the ready, I attempted to get a picture. My first efforts resulted in fuzzy brown dots, blurred by the unrelenting wind. Then I carefully placed the critters on different colored backgrounds - a leaf or the driveway. Sometimes referred to as loopers, their unique method of locomotion - pulling the center of their body upward and then extending their bodies out straight - is remarkably efficient. At times, I ran to my husband yelling, "Quick! Quick! Get a picture of the inchworm on my arm!" (He is used to this kind of strange behavior, thank goodness.) Finally, on day two, a photo opportunity arose when I spotted an inchworm on the inner rim of my red coffee mug, left behind in the garden. Perfect, or so I thought. No luck. I did send off an image to iNaturalist for identification.

The fog has stories to share here in the Hill Country. Like a mysterious character from a novel, the fog enters a scene and transforms my sense of place, alters my perspective ever so slightly. In the winter and early spring, fog is a frequent visitor. When it appears, I set out to capture it with my camera or sit down with pen and paper. The rest of the day can wait.

This morning along Purgatory Road, a place whose name alone captures my imagination, the fog cast a ghostly aura over the landscape. Leafless trees, like skeletons, jumped into focus around every bend. Vultures descended on the roadside to investigate a deer carcass. A fox darted in front of the car, causing my heart to race.