I thought that I'd finished that job yesterday, but after making the final adjustment of the GPS vectors and conventional measurements to the various line markers that I'd set along about 3 miles of boundary of a tract, I realized that one was off line by 0.10 ft., which is outside of tolerance. There isn't any mystery how it happened. I set reference spikes near the line, located them by GPS and taped the offsets from them to locate the 5/8-inch rebars that I set in drill holes in the rocky ground. That problem marker was the last one set at the hot end of the afternoon and I wasn't adequately careful to square the offset up, so it came up short of line, as I found when I processed the vector to the mark as set.
Anyway, all it took to fix it was to drive 40 miles to the ranch, climb over a fence and hike a quarter of mile with rock drill and other gear to drill a new hole 0.10 ft. away from the erroneously set maker, drive a rod into it, and wrestle the incorrect rod out of the ground.
Had I not done it, I would have missed a couple of great agaves in flower by the side of the road near the top of a hill. They were almost worth the trip in themselves.
Beautiful. Do they bloom every year?
Looks like part of a good composition for a painting. A little cad yellow and ultramarine blue...lotsa vibrant greens to work with.
Is this where the Tequila drink comes from?
I'm pretty sure it comes from the other end of the plant. 😉
It's the base of the agave that they cook and ferment into the "nectar of the gods."
> It's the base of the agave that they cook and ferment into the "nectar of the gods."
Yes, by the time they send up the flowering spike like the one shown in the photo, it's too late for making pulque or tequila from the starchy agave heart which converts to fermentable sugars when roasted.
I've seen the bottom part but never the tall tree part?
> Beautiful. Do they bloom every year?
No, it takes about ten or twelve years for that species of agave to mature sufficiently to produce a flower. Then that plant dies and the "pups", the smaller offshoots that have sprung up at the base of the mother plant, carry on the agave business. If you have one agave, after a couple years, you can have ten or more of different sizes if you transplant the pups.
> I've seen the bottom part but never the tall tree part?
Yes, los tequileros are careful to harvest the agaves before they flower.
BTW here's a photo taken of some other agaves elsewhere that gives an idea of the scale of the flowering spikes. This photo was taken in Sanderson, Texas, the Cactus Capital of the World about 350 miles West of Austin. The species is probably different, but the height of the spikes is similar. I'd estimate the ones in the photos I posted above are about 25 ft. (about 7.5m) tall.
I hope those "trees" don't cause multipath problems for you +o( B-)