• Nature in the City

    Nature in the City: Maxwell Creek Linear Park

    Getting a little nature while in the city is important. Sometimes it is hard to get farther out, into the woods and surrounded by quiet. So, after work you head out to the closest green space possible. Right near where Chris’ mom and step-dad live is a bike path and Maxwell Creek Linear Park. If you go off trail and down to the creek you can find some beautiful little things. Oh, watch for the gigantic poison ivy! The signs of Fall are slowly showing up. If the light was better I would have tried to get a reverse macro on this Osage orange, Maclura pomifera. Textures in the running…

  • Creative,  Crochet

    Whipping things up

    One thing on the trail that I really wish I could do was to crochet. Along the way I switched from listening to books on my mp3 to actually carrying books because it was so much nicer to have the pages in hand. I read a fiction book about a yarn store owner, actually this was part of a series, and it had me itching to have a hook and yarn in my hand. When we were in Salem I spotted a yarn store and had to go in and touch some yarn. I skipped buying yarn but ended up buying an Interweave Crochet from last fall because of the…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010

    Trail Tales 1: Georgia

    I’ve decided to go back through and show photos that I never got around to posting, recap some of the sections and discuss in more detail various sections of the trail. Plus, I like reminiscing and I’m a little sad that we’re pushing on two weeks off the trail. So, I will start with the beginning, Georgia. Reference posts from that time: Neels Gap Hiawassee On Top of Springer Dinner at Stover Creek Skip the Approach Trail Lycopodium Vistas Blood Mountain Neels Gap (yes another one) Cowrock Sunset Blue Mountain Shelter GA/NC in the Forest And off we went. I look back now and realize just how overweight we were.…

  • Creative,  Outdoors,  Thoughts

    Reverse Macro Love

    On Monday we went to the Dallas Arboretum with Chris’ dad. I had never been so it was a nice experience. After being so used to Fairchild Gardens in Miami, it’s hard to get used to non-tropical plants. There are some nice tropicals such as this Pride of Barbados, but a lot of them are temperates. They also have a great test garden where they do try some of those tropicals like mandavilla and tropical hibiscus. It was blazing hot and though we didn’t walk fast or far, we were sticking to our clothes pretty quickly. It was 107* for a high here on Monday. Yesterday it was about 12*…

  • Texas,  Travel & Places

    Texas Road Trip: Planning

    When we were on the trail we had tossed around the idea of going back to Florida to photograph ghost orchids and see friends or do a big Texas trip. We initially tried to get our friend Eliana to come with us on a road trip from Florida to Texas if we went to Florida, but due to some personal commitments it just wasn’t going to work out. Plus, we decided that a road trip to Texas would be a great portfolio building opportunity. We have plenty of Florida nature photos but we need some Texas stuff. Texas is a gigantic state and we really hadn’t explored all that much…

  • Thoughts

    5 Things Sunday

    Today is list day. 5 Things I Love Swimming in a pool. Breakfast with three of my favorite friends and one cool little kid. Finding nice clothes for really cheap at Goodwill. It’s becoming my favorite store. My new brown hair. Really loving it! The blonde will come back, but it’s nice to have a change. My talkative little niece. She’s a ham! 5 Annoyances 103*. Blech. Texas in the summer bites. At least the humidity isn’t nearly as bad as it was in New England a month and a half ago. Eliana pawning Millie off to someone else. Yeah, I am peeved at that. She’s Baloo’s buddy now, keep…

  • Family,  Food

    Blue Cake for Woe (Zoe)

    Since we missed Zoe’s birthday by a week and her birthday party, too, Chris and I wanted to do something for her. Yesterday I made the cake. I ended up using a simple white cake recipe and made cream cheese frosting (8oz cream cheese, 1/2 stick butter, 4c powdered sugar for one batch, double for more) and made a two layer cake. This is my first time making a cake from scratch. I’m no cake decorator, but I had a lot of fun making it! It turned out very moist, too! I went a little crazy with the dye! The face on the left is what you get when you…

  • Creative,  Photography

    Trout Lilies in Macro

    Some of the other photos I never processed last March were trout lilies that we took at the Heard Museum. On our hike we saw quite a bit of trout lilies in the south. I can’t remember where they stopped growing, maybe Pennsylvania? Anyway, enjoy the photos. I was happy with how some of them turned out, especially the reverse lens macro ones! Yesterday I went for a run with my brother, the first workout post-hike. I kept up and my lungs felt good, but my knees did not enjoy it when I stopped. I was also disappointed to know we only went 2.1 miles. It went fast, but it…

  • Family

    Zoe back in February/March

    While waiting for our connecting flight in Baltimore yesterday I opened my laptop to find unprocessed photos from before we left for the AT. I found all sorts of Zoe photos and so I decided to process some of them and here they are! She is so much bigger now and you can see little parts of her now, but she’s more kid than baby now! This one was kinda out of focus so I ‘rescued’ it by turning it b&w. It was too cute to let it fade away. Mmm, bubbles! This smile is still there. Oh, you should have seen her this morning when she got to see…