We are living in stressful times and getting out of the house, if only to your back yard, is always a good idea. Native flora and fauna can cure the blues. I, of course, wanted to ramble on about a few other plants we saw during the excursion described, but luckily for you I ran out of time. The Berberis wilcoxii under the lichen covered rock outcropping used to be 4 to 5 feet tall in thickets, so it was fun to find the small thicket starting up under some Emory oaks (Quercus emoryi). And we are certainly going to go back and visit those Salix irrorata in that old filled lake…. those and a dozen other plants….next time. 
The photos are mine and taken on the day described. Those are male (staminate) flowers on the willow stem. And I love the little barberry thicket up against the oak trunk.
Petey will never be a learned fellow, but he’s a pretty nice fella. Tufted evening primrose (Oenothera caespitosa) is beautiful wildflower of the uplands. ...
Though I didn’t talk about it in this episode, some of the great things about gathering acorns out in habitat are the encounters with...
Since producing this episode of Growing Native we have encountered Jatropha macrorhiza a couple more times. A recent sighting was over near the New...