• Gardening

    The Exploding Melon Bed

    I should have taken a photo of this bed a couple of days ago before I trimmed up the vine on the left hand side, closest to the beans. It’s already impossible to walk between the bed and the eggplants on the right, but I really didn’t want to have both sides overtaken. The melon in this bed is the Bidwell Casaba melon—and apparently tastes like orange sherbet. Two weeks ago we had several afternoons of thunderstorms which provided a much needed drenching for the beds. In turn the beds responded by exploding in new growth. This one has just kept on going. The vines of the melon aren’t the…

  • Gardening

    Fig Love

    Chris came in last night for the closing of our house today. We made dinner then went to find a nonexistent ice cream shop (thanks Google Maps) before heading to the garden. The heat has been brutal this week, 100* many of the days; the beans can’t handle it and neither can a few other plants. Sometimes between moving we’ll have to find some time to do maintenance on our beds. I was busy watering the garden and Chris had been putting hoses on various beds and then piddling around. I went back up to the front of the garden and found him deep into picking figs off the Celeste…

  • Outdoors,  Texas

    Rambling at Kleb Woods

    It had been far too long since I’d spent any considerable amount of time outside, so last Sunday I decided to brave the 100* heat and go for a walk at Kleb Woods. I almost left to go at 1pm but waited an hour, thinking I would postpone until later in the evening, but I needed out and so at 2pm I left for the woods. Chris and I had been here back in the Fall on a weekend. It was busier then and the hummingbirds were around, sipping nectar from the feeders and the flowers in the hummingbird garden. This time the heat of the day brought stillness over…

  • Texas,  Wildflowers

    The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center | Part I

    So way back in March when we went to Austin we went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Sunday morning before driving home. And yes, here it is late June and I am just now posting photos from them! I can’t believe I have been so unattentive to my photo processing and writing about our adventures. Nonetheless here is round 1 of our trip: Lady Bird herself on the rain barrel. Not to be confused with this Ladybird. Lace cactus, Echinocereus caespitosus Horse rush Horse crippler cactus Echinocactus texensis Gregg dalea, Dalea greggii Foxglove, Penstemon cobaea Columbine Trumpet creeper Blackfoot Daisy, Melampodium leucanthum Antelopehorn (butterfly weed) Asclepias asperula And…

  • Memes,  Summer In Photos

    Summer in Photos: Week 2 & 3 | June

    June 12: Checking email and reading blogs June 14: Our anniversary, watering the flower beds of our landlords while they are out of town. June 16: A hornworm we picked off the tomatoes June 19: Zoe showing off a couple of strawberries she and PawPaw picked. June 20: Planning new things to plant! June 21: Butternut squash seeds ready to go in the ground! June 22: Charentais melon, ripe and ready June 23: Spotted two red headed woodpecker right out my back door.

  • Thoughts

    Life Lately | Late June

    +I was glad I had an entirely free weekend to spend hours in the kitchen putting away food from the garden. +I made five jars of spaghetti sauce, three jars of marinated peppers (and more will be made using this recipe further down in the UC Davis guide), and put away seven vacuum sealed bags of beans to the freezer. I’m completely out of freezer space, attempting to be creative and tuck things in places, but I’m plumb out of room. Good news is that our small dorm freezer is coming in our POD sometime next week after we move into our new house! +Speaking of houses, we’re closing at…

  • Pets

    Red

    I thought of you off and on all day today, wondering if you knew that today you were finally going somewhere where your body would get the nourishment from the food you ate. A week ago last Thursday, when the phone rang, I thought mom was going to tell me about you, not about Grandad. When I left the weekend before I thought I wouldn’t see you again and instead I was given another chance to say goodbye and it was Grandad I wouldn’t see again. Little kitty, one of two kittens that mom and dad found in the old garage of Granny and Jack’s house, the year both of…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors

    Eagle Rock Loop 3 | Ouachita National Forest

    Did you miss Day 1 & Day 2? After leaving the campsite by the river the next morning we had about 9 miles left to return to the trailhead we started at two days before. It was overcast and looked like potential rain but at least it kept the heat down. There were going to be a couple of river fords that day as bounced back and forth across the river. The river in this section was already narrowing but was still flowing faster than the creeks we’d passed the days prior. At this crossing we meandered up and down looking for a possible rock-hop to avoid taking our boots…

  • Photography

    Summer in Photos: Week 1 | June

    June 1: Black swallowtail caterpillar munching on some parsley June 4: Leo hanging out with me while I write some blogs. June 5: A cropped photo of what I’m 97% sure to be Venus exiting the sun during its transit last week. I took a bunch of photos but thought I didn’t get anything at all until I opened them a week later. I used a red filter to force the camera to be able to shoot into the sun, turned my F-stop to 32 and ISO to 100 and hoped for the best. No, I didn’t look at the sun when I did this—you should see all the outtakes…