Wildflowers: Final Edition + Wild Things

Okay, colored leaves aren't wildflowers, but they take my breath away the same way wildflowers do.

The reds are maples, the yellows aspens, the greens scrub oaks that will turn later.

Finally, a couple of recent finds: 

In the foreground a scrap of velvet rubbed off hardened antlers by a mule deer. Blue gets the credit for finding this and for chewing on it a bit. The velvet is like an inverted placenta, providing blood and nourishment for the growing antlers. Rilke would have liked this inside-out process, which he invokes with other examples in his Duino Elegies.

Just above the velvet, a feather from a flicker, those swooping, noisy woodpeckers that flash striped-orange when they fly.