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Return of the Orange Dogs
Over the last year or two we’ve planted out several new understory trees on the side yard, including several Hercules’ club, Zanthoxylum clava-herculis. Hercules’ club are one of the native host plants for giant swallowtail butterflies and I’d wanted get some established for years before we finally buckled down and bought some trees. Previously, and really still, they can be found on our citrus plants (same Family – Rutaceae), but now we have an alternative to move the caterpillars to if we see too many leave are being noshed by these little friends of ours. I dug out my macro lens for these photos and after editing the photos I…
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Good Things on Sunday Morning | 2
I was in a nature funk the last three or four weeks but it seems to be lifting. *phew* Most definitely a good thing! Some good things from this week: Notes from Prince Harry’s Ghostwriter: I read Spare (listened) a few months ago and really enjoyed it, though I didn’t particularly like the short chapter lengths. This was an interesting inside into life as a celebrity memoir ghostwriter. I know only a little about ghostwriting from a cousin who has ghostwritten romance novels in the last decade so it was interesting to see this perspective from a high profile ghostwriter. I can get the perspective of someone ghostwriting something such…
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The Irises of Spring
Iris season came and went pretty quickly in our yard. I say quickly, but in reality it was just that I was barely down near the pond during their blooming period so I wasn’t exactly noticing their blooms. I spent a lot more of my time up in the edible garden working on those beds there and trying to stay on top of it all–which of course I have not stayed on top of it all. I’m far behind on so much and will likely never catch up this season. I was thinking a bit the other day about how much time I used to spend outside before I had…
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Good Things on Sunday Morning | 1
I had intended to write this out this morning but alas, I slept in and the rest of the day was a mix of busy and lazy. I used to do Silent Sunday’s around here but have stopped in recent years. I feel like doing something weekly so let’s make it Good Things on Sunday Morning (or evening!). A few things from this week: Charade is my Favorite Movie via Summer Brennan. This is probably the best thing I’ve read in a long time on the internet! It was utterly delightful and any Audrey Hepburn fan will love it! I can’t recall when I first watched Charade but I think…
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2000s Nostalgia
I had already been thinking about writing about some music that I’ve been listening to lately that has transported me to the 2000s but today’s news that Heather Armstrong, aka Dooce, passed away yesterday by suicide has me (and the entire 2000s blogosphere) reeling and falling even further into the 2000s reminiscing. Let’s rewind to me reading somewhere on the internet recently that Feist had a new album out. I went to Spotify to listen to the new album but suddenly got a craving for 2000s Feist—the Feist of Mushaboom, 1,2,3,4, I Feel it All, and My Moon My Man. Why? Because they and other musicians and songs encapsulate that…
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Weekend at Ivy’s
A few months ago I was on the Texas Land Conservancy website looking into a property I wanted to get onto near Angelina National Forest. Unfortunately that property was closed to the public and so I went digging into their website a little more to find out just what public lands they had available that I could get onto. That’s how I ended up coming across the Spring Weekend at Ivy’s. I emailed the TLC first to ask if their $50 pricing included the entire weekend for the whole family and it did! I sent the link to Chris and after a brief conversation I officially paid the money and…
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Narrowleaf Goldshower, Galphimia angustifolia | Wildflower Wednesday
Let’s rewind to July 2021 and a hike at Pedernales Falls State Park for today’s Wildflower Wednesday. We were there to celebrate my birthday weekend and if I recall the hike was rather cloudy, which was probably good considering the heat. When I found this flower back along the Wheatley Trail near the property fenceline, I thought it looked very similar to a tropical gardening plant I knew in Florida, thryallis. Which makes sense because they are both in the genus Galphimia! There’s not a lot of information online about the species but you can find it throughout the Texas Hill Country from Austin to San Antonio and scattered west…
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The Peace of a Tent
Over the weekend we drove up to Elkhart to camp at a new-to-us location, the Ivy Payne Preserve. It’s a Texas Land Conservancy property, donated to the TLC by Ivy Payne in the late 1980s. I stumbled into the whole ordeal in early March when looking into a different TLC property to see if I could access it (I couldn’t) and decided to click around to see what other properties they might have available that were open to the public. Enter the Ivy Payne Preserve and the Weekend at Ivy’s campout! It turned out to be a wonderful weekend, full of meeting new people, hiking a rarely visited property, and…
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Life Lately | April 2023
Thinking: How is it nearly the end of April? April isn’t usually a month that flies by and yet, here we are! I’m thinking about a lot…let’s do a run down! Heart Rate Variability (HRV): This came onto my radar a couple of months ago but I didn’t really do much with it or pay attention to it until Fitbit changed a bunch of things with their app back in March (goodbye friend challenges *sobs*) and put HRV on their list of things they keep tabs of. Paired with a couple of online acquaintances beginning to talk about it I’m realizing my HRV could be a lot better. I haven’t…
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Agalinis fasciulatus, Beach False Foxglove | Wildflower Wednesday
The Agalinis species can be a little confusing to tell apart, well, at least I tend to think they are. I’m trying to get better at identifying them so if I’m completely goofed, let me know! These were seen in Angelina National Forest last October, along the Sawmill Trail. We were in the area again two weekends ago but the bustling area of various blooms from October didn’t exist quite yet. I was a bit disappointed not to see at least something blooming there–I was mostly on a lepidopteran and insect hunt and was thus disappointed. A couple of guides for figuring out this species: pfau_tarleton’s iNat journal entry and…
