This is Reina, my neighbor’s son’s dog. She’d been enjoying a roll in the grass and emerged with this crumbly, fragile, messy stuff that falls from the trees at this time of year all over her.

Apparently these stringy brown things are called catkins or tassels. They are the male pollen structures produced by oak trees. They hang in the trees like tassels on the end of bike handlebars, releasing their pollen into the wind to fertilize the female flowers. After all the pollen is gone, they float to the ground, creating great mats of the stuff.

Taken with a Sony A6000 and 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 OSS.