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Gold Dust Sunset | FT 2 Years Ago
At work yesterday Fleetwood Mac came on the radio, Gold Dust Woman, and I was immediately transported back to Ocala National Forest and our short stop at the 88 Store, where we picked up our maildrop, showered, and ate ice cream and drank sodas. Gold Dust Woman didn’t come on the radio but Gypsy did, but I think any time Steve Nicks’ voice comes on the radio I will think about Florida and backpacking. Oddly enough when I went to pull up the photo on Flickr it said it was taken on January 31, 2011. How’s that for intuition? I also like this rendition by Gov’t Mule feat. Grace Potter.
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Pineapple Lily
Back in Florida I grew a pineapple lily, I think I got in a trade, in a pot for several years until we sold all of our plants when we moved away. I’ve been drooling over some that I’ve been seeing lately at a few local nurseries and finally last weekend I broke down and bought one at Arbor Gate when we went to their fruit tree sale (got an apricot….and a magnolia, I know, not a fruit tree but we need to replace a tree we cut down). I have no idea which species or hybrid of Eucomis this is as the pot wasn’t labeled. I’m not sure as…
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Signs of Spring
Between one of our neighbors and our property is a raised flower bed lined in brick. Part of it is falling down and it straddles the property line. Eventually we’ll remove the bed—another project for another month—but several clumps of bulbs came up a month or so ago and now they are finally blooming. Turns out they appear to be paperwhites. We’ll likely relocate the ones that are on our side to another part of the yard. Aside from some other random plants in the bed there’s also a dogwood which is unfortunately not on our side. I bet it’ll be pretty come spring! So happy for warm weather and…
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Compost Bin—Complete!
We finished the compost bin last weekend which is a nice weight off our shoulders. Slowly, slowly, the gardening side of the yard is coming together. Our next big projects will be amending our future flower bed and then building our raised vegetable beds out front. Those will take up the next several weeks at which point we’ll return inside to renovate our laundry room and finish putting our baseboards in the downstairs living and dining areas. And then we’re going camping in March and April ’cause I’m tired of being cooped up.
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2/3 Done | Icelandic Turtleneck
I haven’t been working on it straight, but if I can put in a couple of hours a night for a few nights in a row I get a lot done. It also helps when I get to a point that says ‘Repeat round 9 for 8(9,9,10,10) more times’. The parenthesis correspond to the appropriate pattern size one is making. If round 9 was easy then it makes the next 9 rounds easy too. Unfortunately I have 19 more rounds to do and my brief skimming ahead at them makes it appear that they won’t be mindless, I’ll have to count stitches and pay attention, likely because I’ll be adding…
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Texas Wildflowers | Clematis texensis
First we were into passiflora (still are), but now we’ve found clematis! This is another game of once you see one plant you start seeing them everywhere! These were shot at Lost Maples State Natural Area in November. +Information via the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. They say blooming time is March through July….well, November is quite outside of that window so I don’t know it if was a freak of nature or what for them to be blooming at that time of year. +There are some cultivars of this species apparently, Duchess of Albany, Princess Diana, Gravetye Beauty were a couple I saw online.
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Snail Mail
A couple of months ago the mailbox that our house came with was halfway knocked off its post. One of our neighbor’s was knocked off as well. At first I thought a: Drunk Driver or b: Teenagers With Too Much Time On Their Hands. But then Chris saw the deep scrape marks in the asphalt and decided it might have been the city lawnmower guy when he was mowing the ROW area. No matter, we wanted a new mailbox anyway and it took us forever to decide on one. I don’t like generic mailboxes. I don’t mind the ones bricked in but our house isn’t brick so it would look…
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On the Hook | Icelandic Turtleneck
Last week my first Interweave Crochet magazine in awhile came and it ignited my need for crocheting immediately. Chris might tell you I went a little loopy. It really was that my creative energies were instantly channeled and I didn’t want to do anything else but do everything and anything creative right-this-minute. It was lunch time and I had to go back to work. So, I waited until Friday evening and decided I was going to start the Icelandic Turtleneck from the Crochet Me book. I actually started this once before three years ago when I was in Florida. Original attempt. I frogged this and started over. I’d missed counted…
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Texas Wildflowers | Maurandella antirrhiniflora
How ’bout those pearly whites, there? Chris had heard about snapdragon vines before and I *think* maybe we have seen them at a nursery or something, but we were walking the trails at Lost Maples State Natural Area a couple of months ago when Chris bent down to check out a plant that he thought could be the snapdragon vine. Well, all it took was verifying that it was indeed the plant for us to realize that it was *everywhere*. Funny how plants blend right in and pop out at the right moment only to be seen everywhere you look. A pretty interesting native, don’t you think? +Information from the…
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Morning Along Can Creek | Lost Maples State Natural Area
We got up early from our campsite in order to take our time driving back home, a good five hour drive without stops. On our way into Vanderpool we had seen several plant nurseries and other random places we wanted to stop, so in order to do that we arose early while the fog was still lingering and the crowds were snug in their sleeping bags. It would be an easy hike out along mostly flat trail once we descended the bluff. Our exit route was via Can Creek and the West Trail, merging with the East Trail and dumping back out at the main entrance road. We arrived at…