• Gardening

    Hibiscus Sawfly, Atomacera decepta | Wildlife Wednesday

    A couple weeks ago I noticed something chowing down on our Turk’s cap hibiscus and took a few photos thinking they were caterpillars. I wasn’t having any luck with iNaturalist so I grabbed the caterpillar book and started flipping through. A few Families gave me some ideas but then I continued to hit a dead end. That’s when I took to Googling caterpillars and Turk’s cap hibiscus and started sifting through the images. There was a photo of a sawfly larvae and then I recalled another iNaturalist entry sometime in the last year where someone had thought it to be a caterpillar but it turned out to be a saw…

  • Outdoors,  Wildflowers

    The Green Milkweed Patch

    A cute little jumping spider… Large milkweed bugs, Oncopeltus fasciatus The green milkweed patch around the corner from our house has been the highlight of these weeks in isolation. Someone mowed the empty lot this year which was good. I had been contemplating doing it myself because grass and shrubs were encroaching on the milkweed and I wanted to increase the milkweed habitat. This year the milkweed is thriving! Lovebug with a bumble bee in the background. This lot is where I’ve primarily gone to get milkweed for the monarch caterpillars the last few years. I’m raising 16 caterpillars this season, eggs harvested from our tropical milkweed. Our tropical milkweed…

  • Alaska,  Travel & Places

    Northbound to Denali

    Proud of his Spider Man birthday shoes! Let’s pretend they aren’t threadbare now! Skipping over more glacier photos to jump to Denali for a bit… The morning of Forest’s fifth birthday we woke up very early at our hotel in Eagle River, north of Anchorage. Coincidentally our friend Eliana had been staying at a friend’s house in Eagle River as well so that made our ability to pick her up and take her with us to Denali a lot easier. The night before we’d met up in Anchorage to have dinner and as we told her our plans for the rest of the week she abandoned her plans to do…

  • Gardening,  Memes,  Wildflower Wednesday

    Gulf Coast Penstemon, Penstemon tenuis | Wildflower Wednesday

    A year or two ago I purchased this gulf coast penstemon from a nursery. Or maybe I started it from seed. I honestly can’t recall at this time. But I’ve been watching the basal rosettes of this particular plant and several others and biding my time for blooms. Every so often the deer come by and chomp the leaves and set the plants back and I figured I would never get to see the blooms. It really is trial and error here with the deer. You can’t take anything labeled “deer resistant” at face value. I have begun to notice which plant families are actually more deer resistant and have…

  • Hiking,  Nature in the City,  Outdoors

    Nature in the City | Burroughs Park

    Dusting off another one of those draft posts and OMG will you look at this kid??? Almost 3 years old—this hike was done in early August 2017, weeks before Hurricane Harvey. Forest turned three a month later. Those chubby little legs and oversized backpack—*insert crying emoji here*. Burroughs Park is a Harris county park located just south of Spring Creek, the dividing line for Montgomery and Harris counties. It is a large park with areas for soccer and baseball games, several playgrounds, a dog park, and a large pond with walking paths. In the back portion of the park is an undeveloped tract of land with trails that you can…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors

    Lepidopterans of Brazos Bend State Park

    If you are a blogger like me you may have a stash of drafts sitting in your writing platform waiting to be published. Many of mine will never see the light of day but I thought I should dig this one out and blow the dust off of it and share some photos from a few years ago that I intended to post but never did! One or two might have made it into a wrap-up post about a camping trip but I believe the majority haven’t been shared. It’s mostly an eye-candy post, to feast your eyes on the beauty of the lepidopterans! Looks like state parks are potentially…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Escaping to the Lone Star Trail

    On Good Friday we made our escape—we hit the Lone Star Trail in Sam Houston National Forest. I was going stir crazy and as much as I love being at home and can make things work, I wanted to see “outside”—outside itself but outside as in an area greater than our neighborhood. Plus, I was missing wildflower season and I wanted to attempt to see more flowers before the heat of summer settled in. Very local and in-town locations I knew would be busier and we wanted to avoid those places. After seeing some other folks in other areas of the state and country go hiking and often at empty…

  • Gardening

    Iris Season by the Pond

    It’s been a good spring for the irises down by the pond. The species plants of Iris virginica have really thrived and grown into large clumps over the last few years. Chris has also been adding various cultivars of Louisiana iris as well and those have really added some color to the pond fringe! Don’t ask about specific names because those are long gone but we can still admire the form and colors of these flowers. The front ROW ditch where we’d also planted various Louisiana irises over the years has not resulted in any blooms this year, though the plants themselves have spread well. A good cleaning up around…

  • Creative,  Crochet

    Forest’s Rainbow Afghan

    Saturday evening I finally finished Forest’s rainbow afghan that he requested last fall. His original request was for a rainbow blanket with red and blue on the ends. My original thought was to use the yarn I already had but then thinking about having to switch yarn every couple of rows didn’t sound appealing. Forest and I ended up finding and agreeing on the self striping Lion Brand Mandala Yarn in Gnome, Cupid, and Spirit colorways. And I LOVE IT! Honestly, I want it for myself which means I’m going to borrow it as much as possible! Hah! I started on it sometime last November but royally screwed up the…