• Thoughts

    Birthday Musings

    Hello, 36. My birthday was on Monday. I turned 36. I’m officially heading straight for 40 and that seems really strange. I took the day off because I learned years ago that working on your birthday just isn’t all that fun. If I’ve got the days available, why not take the day off? Last year’s birthday was a bit of a dud. We were driving back from vacation in Port Aransas so most of the day was spent in the car. Forest had been sick that week as had several of us adults, and while the vacation itself was great and we celebrated my birthday the day prior with my…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    Toddler Life | Summer 2016

    These days, the toddler is much more of a toddler than he has ever been. There’s glimpses of little kid coming through, too. I realized this more the other day when I was looking at photos from February’s trip to Village Creek State Park. He’s a baby in those photos! I know that in six months I will look back on photos from this summer and think he was so little now and that yes, this will be never ending. Forest’s verbal skills are improving immensely but he hasn’t hit the sentence stage yet. Words that he’s never even tried to say will just come out all of a sudden.…

  • Gardening

    Munching Monarchs

    Back in May I mentioned finding monarch babies on our milkweed. For weeks after that I couldn’t find any more caterpillars or any sign of chrysalides so I thought maybe birds or wasps had predated them. Recently I began noticing that the swamp milkweed was being chomped on so I checked out those plants and found two caterpillars. Then another evening I trudged through the jungle of weeds in another bed to see about the tropical milkweed and found two more caterpillars! Happily they seemed to be gorging themselves quite satisfactorily and it was nice to sit and watch them for a few minutes. The bottom monarch decided it was…

  • Gardening,  Memes,  Outdoors,  Wordless Wednesday

    Carolina Satyr (Maybe) | (Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday

    Over the weekend I was scoping out the figs, seeing if there were any to harvest. As I was doing so I was taking photos of the garden. I noticed several butterflies landing on the fruits and sipping the juices from the broken fruits pecked at by the birds. I managed to get a few photos but it was a butterfly I was not familiar with and would take some book identification and Googling to figure out. At first I thought it was one of the ‘Blues’, Family Lycaenidae, Subfamily Polyommatinae, but quickly realized it was a Family Nymphalidae, Subfamily Satyrinae (Satyrs and Wood-Nymphs). From there it became difficult because…

  • Gardening

    The Formosa Lilies Take Center Stage

    The Formosa lilies grew tall this year, taller than me. They started swelling with buds a few weeks ago and I knew they would be blooming soon. I was worried when we left for the July 4th weekend that the first ones would open without us. But they waited. I love being out in the vegetable garden in the evenings but I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with the flower garden soon. It needs the attention and some doting oohs and ahhs from me as I discover what plants are blooming, what has survived the neglect and weeds. A glance at the abutilon/flowering maple told me that it…