• Hiking,  Outdoors,  Travel & Places,  Washington State

    Leprechaun Lake | Enchantment Lakes

    On our hike through the Enchantment Lakes we hiked as far as Leprechaun Lake before deciding we didn’t want to descend further down into the Snow Lakes zone. We figured that going down meant having to come back up and well, we liked up already. Looking back I think we should have sucked it up and gone down into those zones, but at the same time what we ended up doing worked out too, leaving us time to explore other areas of Washington instead of staying only in the Enchantments. There was some rock hopping and precarious log walking involved to get across the streams leading to the lake. I…

  • Gardening

    The Veggie Garden Is In! (Almost)

    It was crunch time this last weekend and we made it a sprint by getting our vegetable garden in, well at least most of it. We brought in some dirt to even out the surface of where we chose to put the garden. The front yard is much larger than our back yard, and the only flat surface in the backyard would have been over our septic drainfield which is a total no-go for planting. So, up front the garden went. This is also a great sunny space with a bit of dappled shade for the hot summer afternoons. I became ‘one’ with the posthole digger over the course of…

  • Family,  Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas

    Early Spring At Tandy Hills

    A couple of weekends ago I was in Fort Worth visiting my folks and I really wanted to go for a short hike, get out and stretch my legs. I managed to convince my dad and mom to come along to Tandy Hills for an hour long jaunt to see what was blooming, if anything. I noticed paintbrush coming up but not yet ready to bloom. We found a different pocket of trout lilies than we normally visit, but I couldn’t even find an old flowering spike. They would have bloomed in early to mid February. I wonder if the drier winter prohibited their blooming this year. Lots of yucca…

  • Gardening

    The Hungry Caterpillars

    Last weekend I noticed a black swallowtail caterpillar on my dill. I had planted some dill in the space that is to be Phase II of our flower garden, but for now that space was serving as a makeshift vegetable garden. The dill had sprouted up from one of the large pots we had grown garlic in last year so I transplanted it to the ground instead. With the longer day lengths and increased heat it has already jumped into flowering. When I finally got around to taking photos I noticed smaller instars of the caterpillars! They are soooo cute, right? There’s a small mound of parsley right next to…

  • Thoughts

    Dusk Is Falling…

    Right now it is raining, a light drizzle, enough for the water to pour off the roof and for me to hear the *ting* of drops on our metal roof. The sky brightened for a minute, perhaps a thinning of clouds for the late evening sun to glow through just a bit, but now the sky is darkening once again. The light there for a moment was a yellow-green, the colors of the newly opened leaves of the trees and overgrown grass reflecting back up into the atmosphere. Last night it rained heavily after dark, lightning dancing across the sky and the cymbals of thunder booming after. The forecasters had…

  • Gardening

    Daffodils

    I had begun to wonder if the daffodils would bloom. We planted some in late Fall but it was early Winter by the time we managed to get a few other bags of bulbs in the ground. I kept the label that came with the bags but it seems these are only the ‘Trumpet Mix’ and nothing more specific than that. Let’s hope that they rebloom next year.