• Hiking,  Outdoors

    Halloween Pennants | Celithemis eponina

    Halloween pennant dragonflies were a mainstay to my experience living in south Florida. They are very common and easy to spot, quickly becoming a favorite of mine. Kind of like red-winged blackbirds as they were similarly abundant in the Everglades. And then we moved and while both of those species are here in Texas, I don’t happen to live near their preferred habitat. While I do live near a pond and have plenty of dragonflies around here my most common species here are common whitetail and green darner dragonflies among some others. No Halloween pennants to grace my yard! This lovely male (see here for comparisons on sexes) was found…

  • Thoughts

    Saturday Things

    +This little 16 year old isn’t doing too well at the moment. He spent a few hours at the vet yesterday getting blood work and x-rays done on his abdomen. He’s dropping a little weight and hasn’t been wanting to eat and his behavior is very different over this last week. I’m waiting for some more blood results and the x-ray results but it may be a bowel obstruction of some sort. Which at 16—might be the C word. We aren’t ready for this yet! Our spry little kitten was going to live forever! Samson will be gone six years in August and it still seems like last year. So,…

  • Gardening

    A Bee & A Butterfly | Wildlife Wednesday

    June has proven to be incredibly busy for work so any of the intermittent downtime I had in April and May has gone *poof*! Which is one reason my writing here has tapered off once again. I did want to share two little nature bits from the yard yesterday evening that I took with my phone. I still feel a little bit traitorous when taking “good” photos with my phone. Like, I should really go get the point and shoot at least, right? And yet there’s that convenience factor of shooting on my phone so I can easily upload and share and that wins out. The photos from my phone…

  • Uncategorized

    Watson Native Plant Preserve | Part II

    Catching up on the last bits of our trip to east Texas last month as I am going to have more photos again soon because we trekked back over there today to see snowy orchids in bloom and to walk around a tupelo swamp. I still have photos from a trip to San Bernard NWR a few weekends ago to process as well, so more is coming! New Jersey Tea, Ceanothus americanus – This is a plant I’ve heard a lot about from gardeners in the northeast but I had never come across it before. Lovely little plant—I wonder if deer like it? Swamp Titi, Cyrilla racemiflora – The flowers…

  • Thoughts

    Life Lately | Mid-June 2020

    Thinking: I’m cranky. People are idiots. It starts at the leadership, for one. Let’s open everything up! No, you don’t need a mask! Who needs masks? We won’t force our citizens to care for their fellow citizens. Nope, no way! And what happens? Increasing COVID-19 cases across many states, including Texas. Recording breaking numbers this month, multiple days in a row. Spikes here, spikes there, everywhere a spike! Spike for you, and you, and you! I went to the grocery store again this month for our big trip and it was nearly the opposite of how it was three weeks prior. Three weeks prior 70% were wearing masks. This time,…

  • Alaska,  Travel & Places

    Seward to Anchorage by Alaska Rail

    There were multiple ways we could disembark the cruise ship when we reached Seward, Alaska. We could disembark on our own and figure out our own way to Anchorage or wherever we wanted to go, we could take a bus to the airport or to another drop off destination in downtown Anchorage, or we could ride the Alaska Rail into Anchorage to the airport. Chris did the research and said that the latter sounded like a really cool trip and that it would be worth doing, despite about a four hour ride on the train to Anchorage. Plus, it meant disembarking first! We woke very early so that we could…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    The Sundew Trail | Big Thicket National Preserve

    Rhynchosia sp. The Sundew Trail was our last stop during our East Texas adventures back over Memorial Day weekend. It seems like it was last weekend and also about three months ago. I don’t recall having hiked the entire Sundew Trail in previous visits but I will say that I think I enjoyed it more than the Pitcher Plant Trail! Swamp Darner, Epiaeschna hero Dragonflies and damselflies are two insects that I am slowly (very) trying to learn a bit better. They aren’t nearly as showy as butterflies but they are just as curious and interesting to watch. Forest started going along the boardwalk section of the trails and calling…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Watson Native Plant Preserve | Part I

    Posts from 2011: Part I, Part II, and Part III—I’ve noticed a few mis-identifications on those old posts and need to go back and fix them. Small-Flower Pawpaw, Asimina parviflora We arrived to Watson Preserve mid-morning before the heat started setting in. And honestly, as I’m writing this two weeks later, it is much hotter and more humid now than it was then. Someone pulled in not long after we arrived, an older couple, who asked if we’d visited before. They didn’t stay long and I don’t even know that they saw the back part of the preserve with the bog! We started off on the boardwalk that eventually winds…

  • Gardening

    Lauren’s Grape Poppy | Flower Friday

    Several years ago now we had a great bloom of Lauren’s Grape Poppy in the flower garden. I’ve always wanted to recreate that year but have never been successful. This year a single poppy came up, I think from seeds I dispersed last year, and proceeded to put on blooms! It was so beautiful and reminded me of why I love this particular variety so much. I believe it comes true from saved seed so I will be saving what seed we get this year and sowing them again next year! Maybe I’ll get the large flush of blooms I was hoping for again.