• Alaska,  Travel & Places

    Quick update

    Just a quick update because I’m not going to be able to write like I had intended—the app isn’t working right. We did get to our destination and then onward. I’ll update again when we return to Summer—for now we are going to continue enjoying early autumn! More in a week or so.

  • Travel & Places,  Washington State

    Finding Our Way to Vancouver Part II

    Sunday morning  We arrived at the Motel 6 at around 3:30 am after landing and sitting on the runway for about 20 minutes because of a backup in Seattle.  While waiting for our luggage I’d begun feeling poorly again. I’d felt bad since the day before when our flight issues had occurred but I’d chalked it up to nerves. It had settled later that day and I had felt better when we left Houston. But as we settled in for what meager sleep we could get that night I knew I wasn’t doing well at all.  Morning came and we slept in as long as possible but our bodies were…

  • Travel & Places

    Finding Our Way to Vancouver Part I

    Saturday –posts are being drafted in real time and posted a few days later. Or I’m trying at least. On the way to the airport. Chris and I have a poor track record with passports. Back in 2008 we showed up to MIA with tickets to La Paz, Bolivia with our friends Marc and Eliana only to find out my passport was fine because I’d renewed it recently, but Chris’ wasn’t because it had less than three months left on it. Queue us rescheduling our flight for the following Monday so we could get a new passport last minute for him and us flying later into Bolivia and meeting our…

  • Thoughts

    Life Lately | August 2019

    Me and my niece Zoe a few weeks ago. Thinking: About our upcoming vacation! It’s a good one with a lot of moving parts involved so I’m hoping it all goes smoothly! And generally having an existential crisis on the creeping fascism growing in the world and the rapid state of climate change. Gardening: I spent most of the summer heavily working in the edible garden on the soil solarization of the paths. So much was involved in this process: -from first removing the weeds in the path -then scraping up several inches of years of decomposed mulch that had turned into dirt and transporting it to the backyard in…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    An Evening at Kickerillo-Mischer Preserve

    In late June we took an evening out in the middle of the week, dinner at a new to us Tex-Mex restaurant and then a walk/hike over at Kickerillo-Mischer Preserve. The park is down near The Vintage in the Willowbrook area of NW Houston off of SH 249—so it is rather urban/suburban but once you get into the park it doesn’t feel like it unless you pay attention to the background noise of the roads in the distance! The park itself was very busy with joggers, strollers (not the baby kind–well, probably a few of those, too!), and fisherfolks. If we lived closer than a 25 minute-ish drive I know…

  • Gardening

    July Garden Tidbits

    I think this late blooming foxglove covered in mold sums up what the garden overall looked like in July. I was finally able to spend some time on the flower garden over this last weekend, weeding two of the beds and tidying up a bit. I started working on the garden path again after having gone through it back in May. The grass issue in the path is aggravating and honestly I think we need to get one of those flame torches for weeding to keep this path in shape. Frostweed, Verbesina virginica. I threw out some seeds from the frostweed that grows in the ROW around here because it…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Lower Fisherman’s Trail | Inks Lake State Park

    Cenizo, Leucophyllum frutescens — I think. It looks rather ragged and I can’t figure out anything else that this could be. Fairy-Swords, Myriopteris lindheimeri Small Ballmoss, Tillandsia recurvata Tiny Bluet, Houstonia pusilla Sand Phacelia, Phacelia patuliflora Now that it has been many months and moons since we visited Inks Lake State Park (February 2019), I’m now yearning once again for those spring ephemerals. Though, autumn blooms are coming our way (SOLIDAGO, I SEE YOU!)—to revisit this site now would be an interesting study in contrasts! We hopped onto the Lower Fisherman’s Trail on our way out of the state park after our long weekend camping. You can easily complete a…