Sometimes it's the little things

Little things can bring a lot of joy to life, but also little things can cause a person to get really down. Like today, I got to CMO to discover a rodent had eaten the roots off my best pomegranate bush. I have worked so hard to start them from cuttings last year. It dejected me out of proportion. Like, what's the use of fighting drought, cold, heat, critters, and everything else?

It was laying down but still not wilted. I piled dirt and mulch around the base and watered it good. Maybe it'll survive if the varmints will leave it alone. It's where they ate up my lantana last year. If the weather would cool off and get rainy, I'd feel better about it surviving. It did cool off 5° today. Only got up to 95° I've seen it 120° down along the river in September before, so will have to wait and see if the triple-digit days are done with.

I recovered quickly from my devastation. Didn't hurt that I got a surprise lifer dragonfly today. It's a Three-striped Dasher, which mostly occurs in the Rio Grande Valley, and isn't even common there.

I included the second shot of it because when I first saw it I knew it was something I'd never seen before, and thinking "setwing." Even though I hadn't been at the oasis for more than a few minutes and had planned to spend hours watering, I couldn't stand it, so rushed to the house to ID the ode. Quickly saw it wasn't a setwing, so started turning pages. Coming to dashers I studied the Thornbush to see if it could be that, which is a common dasher to me, but it didn't quite fit. The discussion on the Three-striped described it exactly. "...found perching low on vegetation tips... They regularly depress their wings below the thorax, giving the impression of a setwing." 

After my two lifers yesterday, I still lacked seeing 14 of the species that have been documented in Brewster Co. I figured once I get them the odes at the oasis will all be less exciting. But I still need 14 since the dasher I saw today hadn't been documented here before. At this rate, it may take a long time and a lot of lifers to get that 14. That's great, of course!

I can always branch out to interesting insects (besides odes). I wonder what this one is. It was fascinating to watch it scale that horsetail reed. He climbed it just like a monkey.