Reading on the Deck All Day

It was 66 degrees and so beautiful this morning that I took my wheel out onto the front porch and spun using the "real" happy light, accompanied by a full birdsong chorus.
I walked the dogs later for the first time in weeks and took along my camera for pictures of wildflowers. I realize that most of them came and went during the rainy weeks. However, these are still here - note the clumps of white.
Each clump is actually a cluster of flowers. I have no idea what they are - they're not in our wildflower book.
Here in an Indian Paint-
brush, negotiating for living space with the sagebrush. The banks are dotted with these little scrappy survivors. May is the season, except for this year. I don't know what the season was.
I've never seen so many galls on sagebrush before and in looking online for a source, I learned that they are from a parasite. We live on land the Paiutes formerly roamed during hunting season and have found arrowheads in our creek bed. I thought you'd enjoy Judy Trejo, a Paiute storyteller tell about sagebrush. It's quicker to read the transcript but I loved hearing it in her American Indian voice and her songs. It's true. It does burn and is great kindling.
We have a Brown's peony that just keeps getting bigger every year. I kept meaning to get a picture of it while it was in bloom, but while it was in bloom, it was in mud.
I'm too late -the blooms are exhausted - but isn't it interesting that they hold their heads down, not up. I've never seen another plant like it. Mim says her sheep won't eat it, so what's its point?
I'm telling on Charlie - he's reacting to the eggs I boiled and was chilling with ice cubes. As the ice melted, the cubes began to shrink and rotate in the pan. He won't back down from the dogs but was freaked out by this. Hehe.
I know I told myself I was going to spend the day reading, but all the time I was spinning this morning, I was thinking about making a different soap - a lemon soap. I had shredded the peel which was dried on a cookie sheet. I decided to use the juice - don't know if it will contribute anything but why not find out?! I'd have to throw these away otherwise.
There it is. I think I'm going to call it Lemon Bar. The miserable thing is that I'm not going to know what kind of a soap it is for another three weeks, which is how long it takes to cure. I'll been been gone and back from vacation by then! Click for big - it looks positively edible.