Fall Pictures!

On Friday, I left work a little early and headed out to the meadows to see if there was anything worth taking pictures of. Paul and I did this back in the spring, but I hadn't been out there just to explore since then (in the summer I hibernate in the AC as much as possible). I discovered that there was a lot of fun pictures! That put the "creative" bug in me. Since I had Saturday off this weekend, I decided that instead of sleeping in, I would get up and get some more pictures out in the meadows, while no one else was around to bother or interrupt. So at 6:30am, I got out my Carhart overalls and my work boots (I knew there was a reason I kept all that gear from my landfill sampling days), and I set out with our "trusty" digital camera to see what I could find. Below are a few of my favorites from Friday evening, and Saturday morning:

I loved the smell of the hay as I got up close to take the picture. I definitely love being out in the country!

Check this guy out - there were several tiny spiders making webs between blades of grass. They would make a white thick circle in the center, and then hang underneath that white circle (so you could only see the spider from underneath). The rest of the web was transparent, just waiting for an unlucky bug to find it.

I almost didn't see this tiny little hopper. His whole body is probably smaller than the nail of my pinky finger - and I have a small pinky finger nail!!
Peas anyone?

I took this picture in the early morning on Saturday - the sun was starting to come up, but my flash accidentally went off because it thought there wasn't enough light. It made a cool picture though.

This is the same picture when I turned the flash off. I tried to get the shot as the spider was in the center of his web because it was pretty cool, but I made him nervous, and he climbed to the top to try to hide from me.
Someone's leftover target practice items. Guess they missed. The pepsi can in the background is really shot up, but they didn't have much luck hitting the poker chip.

Morning dew on a blade of grass.
This was my favorite shot of the morning. This little guy stayed completely still for over 3 minutes while I tried to get a good picture of him. He's clinging to a big JCB bucket (used on the excavator for digging up stuff). The bucket doesn't appear to have been used yet - the tag is still on it, and it's still clean. Guess it made a good place to hang out and catch bugs. I'm just super excited that he didn't hop away and I was able to get the shot. I didn't have much luck with the frogs near the puddles/ponds. They all jumped in the water as soon as they heard me coming!

I felt kinda bad for this guy - I think he's a cicada??? Anyway, he looked like he was having trouble moulting - he kept kinda twitching - I think his wing got stuck in the mud after he came out of his shell.

No explanation needed. I love trees!

This is just a great Texas picture to me. Everyone uses barbed wire fencing around here, and this was a fun shot to take. It can symbolize a lot - old and new working together, different people working together...whatever you can think of.

Another great Texas shot - an old wagon/trailer left in the tall weeds. Will it ever be used again?

Well, that's all for now. I took a TON of pictures, but I won't post all of them for you here. I was out there for over 2 hours on both days.