Last Saturday morning as we came down from the old bridge we found the median at the base of the onramp bursting with the tall green stalks and creamy white flowers of a plant I had seen many times before but never really paid much attention to, maybe because I had never seen them in such numbers. They came at the end of a week of nightly showers that opened October and made it feel authentically autumnal in a way Texas rarely feels, and they were everywhere. Or more accurately, everywhere one normally sees no signs of life other than the invasive ornamental grasses the municipal road crews plant after the bulldozers are done—in medians, traffic islands, and empty lots.