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Podunk, Texas
Hi, yes this is me at work. Ah, don’t I look so in fashion with my PPE’s? (That would be OSHA lingo for personal protective equipment.) Wearing a helmet in the woods blows, but when you are walking around near big swamp buggies equipped with drill rigs, you might get hit by a tree or who knows what else. I learned today while walking through nasty, nasty thorns, pine tree saplings so thick they slapped you in the face, and beautyberry taller than me, that wearing an orange safety vest was important so that I didn’t get run over by four gigantic wheels or knocked in the head with falling…
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Nature in the City: Tandy Hills Natural Area
Ah, Tandy Hills, a wooded oasis in the middle of the Meadowbrook neighborhood and the not-so-nice area of the east Ft. Worth Lancaster area. I am still in wonder of how I never knew this place existed until last March and I grew up driving right by the place just about every other Sunday when we went to visit my grandmother for Sunday lunch. If you haven’t been here I highly recommend it. There are lots of trails to walk about, the area is very hilly and there is even a playground for kids. We did see what appeared to be a homeless persons camp so you might want to…
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Hello!
Hi there! I’ve been super busy and now that I’ve started a temporary job I will be working 10+ hour days for the next whenever. Yep, whenever. We were told 10 on, 4 off, but apparently that isn’t quite the way it works. Some people have been working three weeks on, a week off, some are on 47 days straight. I dunno, but I’ll do this for awhile but I am hoping to hear from something with a better schedule! Until then I am spending evenings working on photos and who knows what else while holed up in this motel. Here are some photos I took of Zoe last week.…
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Grapevine Botanic Gardens
Driving around Grapevine the other day we saw a sign for the Grapevine Botanic Gardens and for as long as I’ve been in Texas (minus the 8 years in Florida) I had no idea they existed. We thought they might charge to get in, but nope, they are free! Honestly, I loved it more than some larger botanic gardens I’ve been to around here. I think an oak hairstreak, Satyrium favonius on mist flower. Oakleaf hydrangea I was very happy to smell this butterfly ginger. I missed having it this year in my yard. One of my favorite plants in the garden for scent; strong and heady. They had quite…
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Love That Shot Contest
I normally don’t do contests and almost didn’t enter this one, but I decided that even though I don’t really like Photoshop Actions, I could handle winning some of the black and white actions that are available since I love me some black and white as seen in my submission below. Taken a few weeks ago in September in east Texas, and seen on my blog a few posts ago, this is my friend Kylen! Yes, 2 year olds can be friends! All I did to this shot was desaturate it, bump up the contrast and blacks and adjust a little bit of ISO. I’m pretty simple with what I…
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Nature in the City: Katie’s Woods
Katie’s Woods Park After visiting the Trophy Club Park we drove around Lake Grapevine and saw a sign for Katie’s Woods. We decided to take a peek. Snakes??? Sweet! Too bad we didn’t see any. I spotted this flower to take a shot when I noticed the little friend underneath the petal there on the right. I moved the flower ’round and ’round to get some shots of what I believe to be Misumenops celer. I loved this little purple flower, thinking it was a violet, but the rest of the plant is distinctively non-violet. Any ideas? We took the trails alongside the lake. Several fishermen were hoping to catch…
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Nature in the City: Trophy Club Park
Trophy Club Park at Lake Grapevine Sunday morning we went for a hike and picture adventure at Trophy Club Park. There is a fee and all of that information is in the link above. We had a nice hike, though we had to share the trails with off road vehicles. We chose to start off in the far parking lot, C, and walk along the lake. We stopped to take a look at some bugs. I narrowed this one down to the leaf footed bug family, Family Coreidae. Some bug eyes…. Another one munching on a flower. The light was gorgeous coming from the east through the grasses that are…
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Monday Musings: Tomatoes, Jobs and Photos
This cool weather has me missing tomato season in Florida. This time of year we would have already started our seeds and they would be growing and starting to bloom. Our biggest harvests would be from December to February. Chiot’s Run was showing some seed saving recently and it had me dreaming about tomatoes. I miss the Ball jars lining our sink and kitchen window, fermenting and cleaning off the left over tomato bits. Oh, they stunk to high heaven when you took the plastic off, but the beautiful little seed pearls were what we wanted for growing next year. All of my seeds are tucked away in our storage…
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Trail Tales 7: Southern Virginia (Damascus to Pearisburg)
Relevant posts: 500 Miles Ponies Magic Bus Section Hikers A Beary Special Post Beautiful Woodshole Hostel Well, I did find a few photos from Damascus, this one being The Place, the hostel we stayed at. When we arrived in town we ran into Pirate and his friend at the outfitter and they told us where to find the hostel, next to the burning pile of rubble. Sure enough there was a pile of rubble as the house next door had burned down! The trail goes straight through Damascus so it is easy to stop in and resupply. Apparently after talking to a few other hikers we learned that the AT…
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Trail Tales 6: Erwin to Damascus
Pertinent Posts: V is for Virginia 400 Amy and Me TN/Virginia Border Laurel Creek Falls Leaving Erwin was difficult as usual when leaving a town. Spring was coming out in Erwin and the town was one of the bigger towns we’d been to thus far, complete with a Sonic and Walgreens. We left out and the weather was just beuatiful. The trail out of town was gentle and beautiful, walking along creeks for quite a way. Early on there were still quite a bit of blown downs on the trail, some creating unique climbing situations, others with trails down or up and around the trees. After climbing up Beauty Spot,…