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Gus Engeling WMA in August
Another old draft here, this one from August 2023 and a trip to Gus Engeling WMA. It was one of our trips up towards Dallas when we were picking up or dropping Forest of with grandparents before school started. I can feel the heat from this post just reading through and looking at the photos. We didn’t get a really good trip into GEWMA this last summer due to the spring floods, which damaged access to the sandhill section on the north end of the WMA. We didn’t know it was closed when we were going to drop by and visit and so we ended up exploring the southern section…
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Bogging in Angelina National Forest
These photos are from October 2022, though they feel like they are from much more recently — no, now they feel ancient. I started drafting this a year or so ago and never published it, so I’m making an effort to launch some of my older drafts on here. So much has changed since 2022! This is from a bog near Boykin Springs in Angelina National Forest, a really cool area that I’d like to get back out to this spring, between Big Thicket hiking trips. Ribbed Mock Bishopweed (Ptilimnium costatum) with a green lynx spider and her egg case. Black swallowtail caterpillar on the ribbed mock bishopweed Pitcher plant…
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Hoya multiflora blooms
A couple of months ago I adjusted the lighting on my grow lights in my office at work to be on for 12 hrs instead of 8 hrs. The plants have all responded rather happily and my Hoya multiflora suddenly put on bloom spikes! I bought this plant off Etsy back in the summer and it came with flowers so I wasn’t expecting it to bloom again so soon, but here we are. Because the plants were doing so well, I ordered a second grow light for the other side of the shelf these are on and so I could also adjust one of the lights to filter light down…
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Best Books & Music of 2024
Reading This year I lowered my reading expectations, intending to tackle a pile of magazines and longer books I needed to read this year. I typically read between 40-60 books a year and thought 30 would be a good number to aim for instead of going above and beyond. Well, I hit 40 books a few days ago, picking up some steam in the last couple of months when I thought had burned out. I also read some of the magazines but definitely didn’t tackle the longer books I wanted to read. Looking at you 2025. I still listened to quite a few audiobooks but am trying to shift away…
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Scenes from the Field – July/August 2024
Long-tailed skipper caterpillar (Urbanus proteus) Viceroy caterpillar (Limenitis archippus) Banded sphinx (Eumorpha fasciatus) – 3rd instar Banded sphinx (Eumorpha fasciatus) – 5th instar Red-headed Willow Leaf Beetle (Chrysomela texana) larvae Red-headed Willow Leaf Beetle (Chrysomela texana) larvae Invasive apple snail eggs (Pomacea maculata) – becoming more prevalent around here. Little yellows puddling on the soil (Pyrisitia lisa) Trying to keep the sun off me! I came back from Ecuador this summer with Covid. I pretty much took a test a few minutes after arriving home from the airport, having felt poorly for the several days prior. We’d had field work lined up for the following week after our return for…
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Sunday Reads (on Tuesday) | 1
Instead of sharing links elsewhere on the interwebs I thought I’d revive something I used to do on here and that is to share weekly (or monthly) various things I found interesting and read on the internet. And of course this was supposed to be a Sunday thing, for when people were having morning coffee and could take time to read, but this is the second weekend in a row that I’ve not been able to get the thing published so it’s going out on a Tuesday instead! Please feel free to share links you’ve enjoyed, too! Tulsi Gabbard Holds the Knife by Timothy Snyder – on one of the…
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Green-flowered Yeatesia (Yeatesia viridiflora) | Wildflower Wednesday
In mid-November we hiked all of the trails at the Roy E. Larsen Sandyland Sanctuary, something we hadn’t done in several years. It’s on the list of hikes for my book and we’d been at the Watson Preserve the day before for a volunteer work day so we paired the trip with a visit to the REL preserve, too. I love this preserve because it resembles the Florida sandhills quite a bit in the uplands and it is such a unique habitat here in SE Texas. But there’s also a really great bottomland trail adjacent to Village Creek and I also love rambling through that trail. The preserve deserves a…
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Comet C/2023 A3 aka Tsuchinshan-ATLAS
In mid-October we did what many folks around the world were doing, looking up into the night sky to search for Comet C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. I saw a few people in the Houston area say they were able to find it and so we trekked out to a more open area of the county one mid-week evening to search for it but never found it. I looked around for more information on how to spot it in the sky and approximately what time around sunset, and so we trekked out another evening to try once more. It was visible much later after sunset than what some people…
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Thanksgiving at Guadalupe River State Park
Gladicosa pulchra It’s been a hot minute since we went to the Hill Country. Well, it’s been a hot minute since Forest and I have been to the Hill Country. Chris goes almost quarterly either to Austin, or more recently, to San Antonio, for work projects. But it has been since late winter or maybe spring of 2023 since I’ve ventured to the Hill Country for recreational purposes. We made plans for Thanksgiving camping at Guadalupe River State Park, which the last time we’d been there was four years ago in 2020 for Thanksgiving. We also paired that trip with South Llano River State Park. I don’t think I ever…
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Hickory Horned Devil | Wildlife Wednesday
Back in late October we went camping at Huntsville State Park. It had been several years since we’d been and I needed to tackle some trails there for the hiking guidebook I’m writing. Which, now that I look at my archives, I can’t find that I wrote about that here….??? Oh, wait, I found it, hiding in a life update post from June. Yes, still plugging away on hikes for that and I probably should post an update soon of how that is going! It was rather warm for October at the state park but we carried on and sweated it out. On Saturday of that trip, we had one…
