• Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Upland Island Wilderness Explorations

    Last weekend Chris and I met up in Lufkin, Texas to attend at Zoo Brew fundraiser at the Ellen Trout Zoo. Chris has been working in Beaumont again and one of our field coworkers lives in Lufkin and his wife was part of the Zoo Brew committee. It sounded like a great event and diversion for our weekend so Chris and I went and enjoyed ourselves. We didn’t get to see a lot of the zoo animals as most were put away to avoid being stressed too much. However, we saw and heard the zoo’s many peacocks. I’m pretty sure they need to invest in some peacock birth control; peacocks…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Travel & Places,  Washington State

    More Goats! | Enchantment Lakes NF

    (yep, still working on these posts from August….) When Chris and I left Leprechaun Lake we decided to go to the north end of Perfection Lake at the trail junction to Prusick Pass. I wanted to go up there and see what was that way but after lunch Chris wasn’t feeling it, however we did wander down that trail just a bit and found, what do you know…more goats! So adorable!! Our lunch view! We sat just a bit further up, literally at the sign junction. This wouldn’t be our last encounter with goats, we had some hang out with us at our final campsite on Aasgard Pass. To Be…

  • Bees,  Gardening

    Getting Broody

    What? You thought I was getting broody? No, not yet, but the queen of our hive sure is! See there in the middle, the white capped cells? That’s brood, eggs that were laid by the queen waiting to develop into full grown bees! Last weekend Chris and I took out each comb in an attempt to try to find the queen. We didn’t end up finding her, silly girl was hiding in the mass of workers and drones. Our colony has been busy building up their comb and adding more in the last week. Now when I open the window I can actually see the combs—usually. With this freakish cold…

  • Gardening

    Oakleaf Hydrangea In Bloom

    You might remember back when I wrote about getting this hydrangea on Sprout Dispatch. If not click and you can see it in its original place before the garden was put in. Well, the deer visited it shortly after it was planted and then winter came on and no new growth was put on in the meantime. After putting the garden in and with the lengthening days the hydrangea took off and put on a ton of new growth. A flower spike came out in the last week or so and the flower began opening within the last few days. A few nights ago I decided I needed to get…

  • Food,  Thoughts

    Thoughts on Two Years of Being Vegetarian

    Two years ago I embarked on this experiment of going full on vegetarian. Initially I thought I’d just try it for a few months but then I chose a weird time to do it, jumping in when Chris and I went and did field work for three months. Not exactly an ideal time I came to find out once I started eating at restaurants. My delusional idea was that it would be easier to try this without cooking….boy was I wrong! Restaurants are the most difficult place to be vegetarian. Well, here it is two years later and I’m pretty much a committed vegetarian. I’ve dabbled in the not-so-healthy vegetarianism…