• Creative,  Crochet

    Finished Works—Crochet

    I started these socks back in September with hopes of finishing them up for fall. That didn’t happen. Well, actually they were done before Christmas but I didn’t sew the toes up. It took another 1,000 miles of hiking for me to get around to that. So, here they are, finished and complete, but gigantic. They are more like booties for wearing around the house rather than socks. I don’t know if my gauge was off or I should’ve made a smaller size, but nonetheless they are finished and I don’t think I’ll be making socks any time soon. I had leftover yarn and thought I’d made a scarf but…

  • Gardening

    Plot Happenings

    Not our onion, someone else’s but it was too pretty to pass up. Several seedlings are getting their second leaves: The carrots… the dill… and the cilantro! Thinning out the okra… and the unlucky ones plucked out. A few of the plants that will give us the beautiful fruit that we’ll make into gumbo or be fried up…mmmm!

  • Family,  Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Cross Timbers Trail at Lake Texoma

    This past weekend my brother, my dad, Chris and I went to the Cross Timbers Trail at Lake Texoma to do a short backpacking weekend. My brother and dad have gone here many times with the Boy Scouts and my first trip here was in October 2008. I’ve wanted to go back ever since and funnily enough my brother had been wanting to go as well and mentioned it when we returned from the Florida Trail. We had to do some convincing for my dad since he wasn’t feel as in shape as he should be but my brother managed to twist his arm enough. We set off on Friday…

  • Family,  Food,  Gardening

    Gayle’s Garden

    After a year without a garden Chris and I now have two. Kinda. Our parents are kindly letting us help them with their garden, but I think they are rather enjoying the free labor. Ok, I suppose it is our due since we are enjoying room and board at each of their homes, but at least it is a pleasurable form of labor. Of course all of it is just making me wish I had an acre or two to plant a gigantic kitchen garden, build a greenhouse to grow all of the tropicals we used to, and to grow all sorts of interesting natives and bulbs. Until then we…

  • Hiking,  Nature in the City,  Outdoors

    Nature in the City: Spring Creek Forest Preserve

    I’ve been digging around to find natural areas in the DFW Metroplex in order to explore some of these areas a bit more. Several months ago I’d bookmarked Spring Creek Forest Preserve in north Garland as an option to see. Finally on Tuesday we made our way out there. Turns out it is very close to my in-laws house and close to a Freebirds, so it was perfect! There are two entrances on each side of Holford Rd, a two lane country road that you would have seen in this area even 5 years ago, but now most of them are spreading out to four lane and being colonized with…

  • Thoughts

    Consumption and Conservation

    Chris’ mom and step-dad have Netflix via their Wii and we’ve been watching a few movies from that lately. My brother also only has Netflix for his tv now, something Chris and I will probably be doing when we settle down again. We never paid for cable other than the very basic stations in conjunction with our internet. However, I enjoy watching movies and there are some tv shows on cable stations I enjoy so it will be nice to have Netflix in this aspect. We’ve been watching a few documentaries, two of which were AT related, Southbounders, though more docu-movie since it has actors, and the Nat Geo Wildspaces…

  • Hiking,  Nature in the City,  Outdoors

    Nature in the City: Bob Jones Nature Center

    I found out about the Bob Jones Nature Center in Southlake, TX from my friend Amanda. It’s among the many nature areas that line Grapevine Lake. On Monday evening I felt the need to take some photos and get out in nature some so Chris and I drove up to the preserve. It was deserted except for what appeared to be a staff or volunteer car next to the education building. We set off down the trails to the east and behind the education building not sure where we would end up. I initially didn’t take too many photos when I remembered that I could do a Nature in the…

  • Florida,  Ghost Orchids,  Outdoors,  Travel & Places,  Wildscape Photo

    Orchid Recovery Program Video

    Chris was contacted by the Illinois Orchid Society in conjunction with the Orchid Recovery Program to utilize the video he put together of the sphinx moth pollinating the ghost orchid. You can see their video below with Chris’ video spliced in at around 3:43. We’re hoping that maybe this summer we can get to Florida in order to get some better photos of the sphinx moth pollinating the ghost orchids. Chris has something he’s trying to rig up. Of course that all depends on our job situation! But, don’t worry, you haven’t seen the last of ghost orchids from us!

  • Florida Trail

    Florida Trail Tales 3: SR 60 to US 192

    As we left River Ranch I noticed the sky had clouded over a bit. We had a road walk to connect to another road walk, this time we were headed for S.R. 60, listed in the book as being incredibly full of traffic and quite dangerous to walk on because of a narrow shoulder and sloped grass sides. Our go to find-somewhere-at-20-miles-and-stealth wasn’t going to work here. So, we’d looked on the map and decided that we’d go to where it said “information” on the map at one of the lock’s at the Kissimmee River and S.R. 60 and hope it was good enough to pitch our tent. On our…