CCMN: collecting wildflowers at the San Pedro House

 I looked forward to this event all week.

I started walking the dogs at 5:45am.  First Gretchen, then Fritz, then Gretel.  Each dog got a mile around the hood.  It was warm and calm this morning.

I slipped on some gravel while walking Fritz.  I landed on the road but Fritz stayed by my side.  He did not try to pull me.  Luckily no bones were broken, but I scuffed my right knee and elbow and right hip.  Fritz didn't cause this accident.  I think my loose shoes were the culprit this time.

I fed all the dogs, refilled their water, and saw Willie in our front yard!  I'm always happy to see him.  He was a feral kitten I fostered from the Bisbee shelter.  Our dogs scared him and he managed to run out the front door and made his new home across the street next to Lesley's yard.  I left him some food, too.

I left home shortly after 8am.  I wanted to stop by McDs for iced coffee and a sausage McMuffin before heading on to the San Pedro House.  The drive-thru lanes were busy this morning, but I managed to get to the meet-up location with five minutes to spare. We were a group of 15 with two guides.  It was 89F when we started our walk to the river.

There are several people in the class who are disabled and can't walk neither far nor fast. We stopped a lot to talk about the various plants: salt bush, hackberry, San Pedro matchweed, etc. I really enjoyed cutting samples of the plants and then pasting them on flashcards when we got back to the SP House.

The group, however, turned around as it took an hour to walk one mile.  There was very little water in the river, but I continued my walk around the (dry) pond before returning to the group, meeting a startled red fox along the trail.  Too bad my camera was too slow to capture the moment.

I got back to the SP House before most of the group got back and started pasting my plant samples on flashcards, Trevor mentioned that I was doing a good job and wanted to know if I had done this before.  Not since my biology class in 10th grade, when we took a field trip to  Warren Dunes State park in SW Michigan, I said.  I had always enjoyed botany.

I only had eight samples, but it took me until noon to finish pasting them on cards.  I was one of the last to leave, when I noticed a white exoskeleton of a grasshopper on a grass blade.  The grasshopper was next to it, still blinded by its own new exoskeleton