• Thoughts

    Snapshots from the Last Few Months

    Instead of my usual ‘Life Lately’ posts I thought I’d go through and share photos I’ve taken, mostly from my phone, the last few months. I may not have been writing much here but there’s been quite a bit going on. If you can’t view, click here If you can’t view, click here Back in May I started working on removing several inches of dirt, mulch, debris, and weeds from the garden path in preparation for soil solarization. I had been out there working one afternoon on my lunch break and as I was about to leave I remembered I wanted to snap a photo of my work. After I…

  • Gardening

    Celebrating Pollinators for National Pollinator Week 2019

    I thought I’d dig through some photo archives to showcase some fabulous lepidopteran pollinators this week for National Pollinator Week. I originally had a couple of non-moth and butterfly pollinator friends but then realized that I’ve not had a great track record of taking photos of them over the years so there aren’t nearly as many. So, we’ll make it all about Order Lepidoptera today! Someone with more time on their hands would spend time giving a little information about them all but I’m doing good just getting this out! Here’s a small assortment of beautiful moths and butterflies! Eastern Tent Caterpillar Moth, Malacosoma americana – my yard here in…

  • Gardening

    Spring Monarch Season

    Spring monarch butterfly season is now several months in the past but I thought I’d take some time to write about how it went overall. This season I opted not to use the tent mostly because I didn’t have a lot of tropical milkweed left from winter and by the time the monarchs started flitting through here we didn’t have a lot of new growth due to a late freeze in March. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop two females from egg bombing what milkweed I did have and I had somewhere between 40-50 eggs when I counted. I started the season attempting to be hands off. Most of the milkweed I…

  • Gardening

    Zoe & Grayson Tree Updates

    Right after we moved into our house we planted trees for our niece and nephew, Zoe & Grayson. I’ve taken photos with them over the years though we hadn’t done one in a while so when everyone was here for Memorial Day weekend I had them go out and take photos. They are growing up so fast—the trees and the kids! Zoe’s tree, a loblolly pine, planted March 9, 2013. She was 4.5 here! May 24, 2014, 5.5 May 26, 2019 at 10.5! You can also see our new house paint on the back of the man-cave in this photo. I know, I need to update on that soon. Grayson’s…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Post April Showers at Burroughs Park

    *blows dust off of WordPress* Hello there! There comes a point when I take these long breaks from writing here (which I haven’t taken one this long in many years) that at some point I start having a contest with myself to see how long I can go without writing. A week? Can I make it two? Two? Why not go a month? Paired with the sporadic posting from the previous two months before, well, the blog hasn’t really been a priority. Honestly, it still isn’t but I figured I shouldn’t let it lay here floundering in the internet wasteland. So, let’s go back to early April when we made…