• Gardening

    Right-Of-Way Blooms

    It’s been a very long time since I’ve dedicated a lot of time to writing about gardening here. For some reason I’ve felt like because the garden has been so messy and umkempt over the last year or so, that showing it to you in its messy state wasn’t the best idea. In retrospect I should have shared all of that messiness anyway. One part of blogging for me is the ability to go back and see how things were growing or what animals (birds) might have been coming through at any particular time period. The last year has been a lot lighter on that information. I recently tried to…

  • Forest Friday,  Memes

    Forest Friday | Yard Wandering Edition

    If you’ve been around a toddler for any length of time you know that they are hilarious and silly but also extremely exhausting! Forest is no different and pair that with his insatiable appetite for being outside (I wonder where he got that from??) chasing him around the yard will get anyone 10,000 Fitbit steps! His favorite things outside include looking up at birds and airplanes flying overhead, dinging the wind chimes, and pulling flowers! I recently identified a weed that is prolific here, Japanese hawkweed, and it is blooming right now. Forest wants to have a handful of its flowers if he sees any blooming. I’ve been pulling the…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors

    Exploring the Roy E. Larsen Sandyland Sanctuary

    If there’s one place in Texas that might have tinges of Florida in it, it would be the Roy E. Larsen Sandyland Sanctuary. For starters, this is a very well managed tract of land protected by The Nature Conservancy. When we arrived at the park we saw that there had recently been a burn throughout many areas of the pinelands. It was hard not to imagine thickets of saw palmetto in the understory but of course this is where habitats diverge and reality hits that this is Texas, not Florida. Chris had been to the sanctuary several years ago but it was my first time. He knew where a few…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors

    Camping at Village Creek State Park

    So, I went back through my blog trying to find a post about Village Creek State Park. I only found this one but that post isn’t even specifically about the park itself. The first time Chris and I visited the park was sometime in the fall/winter of 2010. We drove down from San Augustine, Texas on a few days off from field work in Sabine National Forest. I think we visited in conjunction with a visit to the Big Thicket units down near VCSP, but either I didn’t take photos or I didn’t bother to blog about it. Kind of weird for me not to have written about that trip,…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family,  Hiking,  Outdoors

    Car Camping with a Toddler

    I started this post as a draft in May of last year and it has been sitting in my drafts folder since then. At that time I thought I’d impart what little wisdom I had with car camping with a baby, two whole camping trips, but never got around to writing my thoughts down. Since life is different now and I have a toddler I’ve opted to tailor this towards our current experiences with car camping, that with a toddler. Needless to say they are vastly different and yet still share similar qualities. My first tidbit of advice is going to be find yourself a lot of Patience. You’re going…

  • Friday Five,  Memes

    Friday Five | 4

    Mercy Street on PBS. This is coming on after Downton Abbey for the next few weeks. I’m liking it but wishing it was longer than 6 episodes. I’m glad Josh Radnor (How I Met Your Mother) is stretching his acting chops but disappointed they are dragging out the morphine addiction thing. Yeah, we know, Civil War + morphine = addiction. Good times! This Outlander Season 2 Trailer! Two podcasts: Native Plant Podcast and In Defense of Plants Podcast. Both are excellent! Overtone color conditioner! Y’all might remember my pink hair on the Appalachian Trail. I’ve wanted to redo it ever since but haven’t wanted to deal with some of the…

  • Gardening

    Potato Planting!

    We’ve never had good success with potatoes but that’s not going to stop us from trying yet again. We’ve gone with Red LaSoda potatoes in the past. This year we opted to go with Yukon Gold as an alternative. They were cut and cured in our kitchen for a few weeks and we finally got a chance to get them in the ground this afternoon. Forest, as you see, is getting more and more interested in being outside and exploring. He’s not quite able to be left to just play by himself in close proximity to us as he’s very fond of pulling plants he shouldn’t, and is also quite…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Bottomland Explorations at SFA State Park

    Wetlands. They are highly undervalued but very awesome ecosystems. It was in college that I pinpointed the fact that I really loved wetlands and decided to focus on them as part of my marine biology degree. Looking more deeply, it was salt marshes that I had an affinity for, something I grew up loving as part of family vacations to the Texas and Florida coasts. Of course from there I learned about freshwater wetlands, and with our living in Florida for 8 years we became wetland maniacs. Wetlands are happening places! With our camping trip a few weekends ago, we took to the trails the morning we were to pack…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors

    (Mostly) Raptors at Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge

    Two weekends ago when we went to Stephen F. Austin State Park just west of Houston, I got on Google Maps to see what other parks would be around the area. Close by was the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, a place I had always wanted to visit but we’d never made it down that direction. Many of the trails were closed at the state park due to mud so when we packed up Sunday morning we headed over to the refuge to have lunch and see what we would see. There were several trails and a five mile scenic drive we could take. The refuge office was closed…