• Thoughts

    Life Lately | November 2017

    +In My Head I’m a little messed up with the timing of Thanksgiving this year. I’m used to the month ending pretty quickly after and this month we got almost an entire extra week so in my head I’m feeling like I’m behind on getting things done for Christmas. I noticed a lot more people decorating before Thanksgiving this year to prevent this sort of frenzied feeling and I think I may incorporate some of that next year, such as getting the lights on the stair-well hung and a few other small decorations. I also feel out of sorts because the house has been a disaster for so long with…

  • Gardening,  Outdoors

    Cloudless Sulphur Butterflies

    Can you find the butterfly? Remember all of my cloudless sulphur caterpillars? Well, they all pupated—or I think they all pupated. I could only find two so far! First I found a chrysalis attached to a wire up against the house about a week ago. I was very thrilled to see it and I had to do a double take at first because the chrysalis looked like a leaf. That’s a pretty fantastic cover if you ask me—and just like a changing autumn leaf to boot! Since then I have been on a mission to find more but they have proved elusive. I’ve even looked further away from their host…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Autumn at Huntsville State Park

    Symphyotrichum drummondii maybe—definitely a Symphyotrichum We’ve had a busier fall than normal, I think, or maybe it is just that we’ve been spending time at home a little more frequently. We had a camping reservation for October but that was cancelled by Texas Parks and Wildlife because the state park flooded during Harvey and they don’t know when it will open again. Chris has been working on several different projects around the house, namely building an aquarium, but he also had to replace our water heater a few weekends ago and that took some work as well. Needless to say, getting out for hiking or camping hasn’t happened nearly as…

  • Creative,  Crochet

    Things I’ve Crocheted Recently

    I’ve been doing some crocheting over the last few months as it is my go-to dark season activity. Plus, right now it seems to be the easiest way to express some creativity instead of spending hours over in my studio. I guess I’ll take what I can get! My most recent completed piece is this wall hanging! It only became a wall hanging in my head about two days ago but before that it was going to be a cowl and then before that, a scarf. I was making it too wide to be a scarf so I switched to a cowl but then thought that I really didn’t need…

  • Gardening

    Around the Garden | Early November

    Three more Seminole pumpkins have ripened out on the vines. I pulled these and processed them for more pumpkin butter. There are several more still out there and I will process those and just freeze the pulp to use for baking later throughout the year. My great pantry chia seed experiment has finally come through! Back in the spring I threw out some seeds to see how they would do in a different location. A couple of years ago I tossed a couple of seeds out on the side gardens but it was too shady and the plants just got leggy and never bloomed. Well, this year I threw some…

  • Gardening

    Cute Crawlies in the Garden

    The monarchs may have moved on for the most part but the garden is still active with other critters. About a week and a half ago, before the cold front, I was out in the edible garden during lunch. Some days I move with purpose out there and other days I mostly tinker with plants and check different things. This day I was in the latter mood, moseying around to look at what had germinated over the last few days, when I looked up and noticed something amiss with the tomatoes. It looked like something had chowed down a couple of the top branches of one of the vines and…

  • Thoughts

    Friday Read | Disconnecting & Social Media

    Why is the US So Susceptible to Social Media Distortion? via the New Yorker. Sarah from the Pantsuit Politics podcast mentioned this article in their episode today–and it is a good episode to listen to because they talk about this issue as well as a variety of other pertinent topics from this week. As I read this article it reminded me of the pre-social media email forwarding/chain emails that used to be so prevalent—this was how memes and ‘fake news’ was shared back in the day. It just morphed into a larger platform with social media. I have thought time and time again how glad I was to have been…

  • Memes,  Thoughts

    Life Lately | October 2017

    +In My Head I was folding laundry last night and had queued up my Jefferson Airplane station on Pandora and Buffalo Springfield came on with For What It’s Worth and as I was listening to the lyrics I thought, man, you could easily just transport that to the last couple of years and it would easily apply to current times. I guess Beyoncé is our protest music these days? +Watching I may have binged season 2 of Stranger Things last weekend. And it was still just as good as season 1 and incredibly high on the 80s nostalgia. I recommend a good binge—it’s only 9 episodes so it doesn’t feel…