Outdoors,  Thoughts

A Short Stint in the Swamp

What? A post from me on the weekend???

grasshopper

hibiscus
Swamp mallow leaves….

watersnake

watersnake1
Two banded water snakes, well, this is the same snake, but there were two hanging out where we were in the swamp the last day I was out.

spider

+I ended up in the swamp for two days for work at the end of the week. Thought it was going to seep into the weekend but it thankfully didn’t. I was back in the Big Thicket where I was working last spring/early summer. It felt like coming home—which is funny because it is a swamp and very wet.

+It got a little boring for awhile though because we had to wait and wait and wait for the guys we were out monitoring to get their equipment up and working. And it was slow going and in the swamp there is rarely anywhere to sit. The second place we ended up yesterday I managed to find a set of cypress knees up against a cypress that allowed me to cautiously sit on them, pokey as they were. When we arrived out there the water was down and mostly muddy with some areas of water. This section is tidally influenced despite being a freshwater marsh, but also influenced by a salt water barrier (read: dam…ugh) up the way and our boat driver, who lives on the Neches, thinks they closed the dam off which further increased the amount of tide water that came up by the time we left the swamp. It was pretty deep some in some channels when we left, up to nearly our waist.

+I think I am weird. I love the smell of rotting sargassum and I love the smell of swamp mud and all it sulphur glory. I also prefer sulphur to sulfur.

+Being out of the office was definitely nice! But, I missed my garden and my cats too. I miss my old job in this sense…I was able to get out in the field or swap it with the office whenever I wanted, but then was able to go home at the end of the day. At this job if I am in the field I am definitely away from home, as most projects are not in the immediate vicinity of my house. There are always tradeoffs with any job.

+Chris is coming home from Pennsylvania today! Very happy to see him again! I think we are going to try to get a hike in tomorrow as long as these mid-western storms don’t come to SE Texas earlier than their anticipated Monday arrival.

+The garden managed to stay alive despite two days without water. Well, mostly. Two eggplant seedlings bit the dust. They were weak looking anyway. We’ll find some starts elsewhere I suppose.

+Bought myself a cheap journal to turn into an art journal after being inspired by The Art Journaler a new website started in part by Mandy Steward. I have a feeling it will be art journal/easy scrapbook. I kind of like the idea!

+Was bummed to miss the Migration Celebration dinner that was last night due to my work commitments. The opening of the photo contest and the winners were to be announced so I have no idea if one of my five photos submitted won anything. Next weekend is the main celebration events and I’m hoping to drive down to Lake Jackson and check it out.

+As we are launching pretty much straight into summer already, I love seeing the blogs of those further north, the ones that are just now awakening to spring.

+Hope to get some more posts up this week from things I’ve done over the last several weeks….”Just keep swimming”as Dory always said.

What are you up to?

One Comment

Leave a Reply to Joan (Hemlock) Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.