I walked in the bosque and visited the river tonight — the first time since they closed it in June. The thunderheads were building up nicely over the Sandias; I came across a grasshopper with marking like a python, although it’s probably called a leopard grasshopper. The water was black from the runoff in the burned areas up north, a boll weevil worked on a thistle, and a yellow weed showed it self more prominently than the other wild flowers blooming in the bosque this evening.

A great horned owl landed on the top of the telephone pole that’s on the edge of the garden this evening. I could see its outline from the deck, and it allowed me to shine a flashlight on it from a distance, but when I got close enough to photograph it by the light of the flashlight, that was too much for it and it took off before I could snap a photo.