Big Bend National Park in southwestern Texas: Hike along the path to the Rio Grande with afternoon temperatures in the high 70s. Yesterday’s hard wind has calmed down, and the sky is perfect robin’s-egg blue. Several deciduous trees leafing out around the campground. Creosote bush sported dark berries and bright yellow flowers. Large patches of bluebonnets, lupinus texensis, seen along a spur path. Other flowers were common, among them purple wood sorrel, oxalis drummondii, one clump of Heller’s Plantain, plantago helleri,  wild grape vines with small leaves and small buds, saw Carrizo (a tall, bamboo grass – arundo  donax),  tree tobacco with golden trumpet flowers, several clumps of what appeared to be desert marigolds, ocotillo bare but red flower bud heads just starting to form – about an inch long, buds red, and one small group of what appears to be globemallow with small, orange cup/poppy-like blooms.