It’s time for sagebrush buttercup.

Look at her bloom, even though she started in November and got blasted by the deep cold of February.

Sagebrush Buttercup with a precious ball of deer dung.

Still, she is the sun now, for flies…

… and bees in their fur jackets.

She’s rather like a bee herself, twining around this rock, with flowers or without, in the way the bee above dances around her stamens.

What’s more, if you look carefully, you may notice the shape of the larger rock below the silt that has drifted in over it: a kind of nest of heat and water that gathers around this rock. As a bee to this rock’s flower, she is also its sting, a way of throwing it on arrows dipped in her juice, to bring down birds, as heavy as stones at her touch, birds that perched on the rock and dunged it in turn, and which she twines around like a rattlesnake.