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100 Happy Days: Days 1-7
I started seeing the tag #100HappyDays pop up around the internet a month or two ago and thought it was interesting. The gist is to snap a shot of something that makes you happy for 100 Days. I was watching the photos my cousin Elizabeth posting and remarked that it sounded like a project I might do but wasn’t sure if I felt up to taking a photo a day for 100 days. My track record with any kind of photo challenge hasn’t been all that great. I attempted the 365 portrait challenges that were popular on Flickr 5 years ago and even tried a Summer in Photos two summers…
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Zoe & Grayson
I got to see my niece and nephew, Zoe & Grayson, two weekends in a row after not having seen them since the very end of January. It was quite a crazy two weekends, the second weekend especially since they came down to see me. Zoe’s moving on from kindergarten to first grade! I can’t believe it! And Grayson, well, he’s a little daredevil. I’m afraid for my future in dealing with having a boy of my own…I think my hair is going to turn gray fast! (Still haven’t really found a gray hair yet. There’s one or two that I can’t tell if they are white or just really…
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Toad Song
It’s been a rainy 2.5 days here in my neck of Texas. Between 11am Monday morning and about 5pm yesterday afternoon we had 4.7″ of rain. We’ve had even more since then and my backyard is more flooded this morning than it was last night. There’s even more of a swimming pool in my front yard than you see in this video. The chorus you hear singing is from the eastern narrow mouthed toad! At one point last night I asked Chris if he was playing this video and he said, “No, that’s the toads outside!” So, that’s how loud they were! Usually we get a lot of green tree…
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‘Lauren’s Grape’ Poppy Season
Another one of my favorite garden plants is the ‘Lauren’s Grape’ Poppy. Last year I wrote about them over on Sprout Dispatch and they bloomed at about the same time last year as this year, maybe a little bit earlier last year, though, since we got them in later this year. I swore I saved seeds last year but couldn’t find them and we ended up buying a new packet of seeds from our local nursery instead. We had a mix of some coming up on their own from last year and then Chris sprinkled the seeds about in various places in the garden. I’m hoping a few of the…
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Garden Surprises
We planted several bulbs (tubers?) of Spigelia marilandica, or Indian pinks, last spring. They came up last year but were chomped on by the deer and then went dormant. They returned this year and most of them have been chomped on by the deer but somehow this one escaped long enough to bloom. Of course the following day when I went back to check on the bloom and top part of the plant was gone. The deer waited long enough for me to get a photo before greedily feeding on the plant. Maybe we’ll have more next year?? This photo is a little blurry as it was nearly dusk and…
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Influenster
Back in December my cousin Elizabeth received a VoxBox from Influenster. I’d never heard of it before but after seeing her video posted I was defintiely curious. She sent me an invitation to sign up and join, which I did. Basically Influenster is a product review service and if you are selected to receive one of their boxes, you review what you receive and keep the goodies for free. The idea is to share it on some form or multiple forms of social media as well. I was a little bit iffy on doing it at first, for one because I’m not really into doing product reviews on my blog…
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25 Weeks—15 To Go
It’s hard to believe that I’m on the downhill side of this pregnancy. I mean, at least in terms of time. The little dude still gets to grow another 7lbs or so (I’m mentally limiting his size to about 8lbs…let’s not go higher than that, ok kid?) and my belly is going to stretch even more over the summer. I’m definitely beginning to get more uncomfortable and the indigestion just keeps getting worse. Blargh. Tums is my friend these days. We’ve only got three weeks left in our Bradley Birth class. I’ve really appreciated the class and am glad we attended the class. I think we’ll be as prepared as…
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Celebrating the Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle
Back in the summer of 2000 I did a Kemp’s ridley sea turtle tagging internship with my university, Texas A&M at Galveston. We spent the summer catching sea turtles adjacent to jetties in Sabine Pass, Texas and two other passes in Louisiana. It was there that I fell in love with sea turtles, namely the Kemp’s ridley which is the smallest and most endangered of the sea turtles in the world. I loved them so much ‘Ridley’ became my trail name while on the Appalachian Trail and is still my trail name today. Two weekends ago Chris and I, along with some coworkers, volunteered for the Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle…
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Late Spring Wildflowers
Here in Texas most of the major wildflowers that are seen earlier in the spring, bluebonnnets and paintbrushes, have faded for the most part. In their place a plethora of other wildflower have taken over, such as these prickly poppies. Their white tops dot the landscape of many fields around the area and the flower is quickly becoming one of my favorite wildflowers. Over the weekend Chris and I went to Lake Somerville State Park in the Nails Creek Unit for a camping trip. You may remember that we went hiking on the Somerville Trailway there last November with our AT friend Red Hat. Chris and I didn’t hike 9…
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Leo Turns 10
It’s hard to believe this little kitten is now 10 years old! Leo came into our life July 1, 2004 when we lived in an apartment in far west Miami. We’d heard a squeaking noise all night, sounding like a bird. At one point I got out of bed and walked around to the back side of the apartment, we were on the ground floor, to see if I could figure out the noise. I saw nothing, but the next morning Chris found Samson sitting by the sliding glass door staring out at this kitten that wanted inside. Chris and I managed to corral him to stay on the porch…