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Down By The Pond
We’ve had a group of Great Egret’s starting to roost around the pond and sometimes they come to hang out in our trees down by the water. Of course now this makes it difficult for me to photograph without scaring them off, which is what happened last night. I managed to get a few half-decent shots of them flying around. I spotted this Argiope spider hanging out in the overgrown vegetation along the pond and rethought my plans of cleaning out the vegetation along the shoreline. I was planning on trying to remove some alligator weed and few other overgrown plants to clear up the edge a little so that…
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Quiet
These last few weeks I’ve really been in my head and when I get in my head, as all introverts know, it can be hard to get out. And that usually translates into me not writing here. In my head, busy with life…I’m just quiet these days. Then, a week and a half ago my mom called and told me my grandmother had contracted, once again, a bacterial infection she’d had a few years ago. This time around they weren’t sure if she would be able to beat it, especially in her weakened health. I wasn’t able to get up to the nursing home to see her until last Saturday…
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Late July Harvest
The garden is in an in between stage right now. The melon bed is recovering from too much water with the rain a few weeks ago; I’ve been babying it a bit and hoping for the best. There was one melon forming for awhile but it ended up rotting and so far the most successful vine has been a moon and star watermelon. I harvested the yellow corn a few weeks ago but most of the ears were rotting or undeveloped and not good to eat. We also had a patch of strawberry popcorn and the same thing has happened, though there were two ears Chris found ripe enough to…
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Garden Macros
I tend to get locked up in using one lens for a long time and pair that with Chris having the macro for awhile when he was in the field, I didn’t have the opportunity/haven’t taken the opportunity to use the 100mm macro lens lately. I remedied that last night and went out and shot a few things in the garden. I’m going to have to dig this lens out more often! A close up of a zinnia. Next year I think we need to find a few more places for the white firewheel in the garden. In fact, I’m kind of in love with all Gaillardia species and varieties.…
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Lunchtime Garden Ramble
I haven’t felt the urge to do a lot of writing here lately and that will likely continue for awhile. However, I was enticed by my garden when I got home at lunch today to take a few photos and share them here. Also, please stop by Sprout Dispatch today and check out the latest garden tour, my friend Matt’s garden. If you have even more time, check out the rest of the summer garden tour too! It’ll be wrapping up next week. White fire wheel, Gaillardia aestivalis var. winkleri Ascelpias tuberosa, the yellow version. The wild section of the garden, most of this is from wildflower seed packages. Cleome…
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Cedar Falls Trail | Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas
Last weekend we were in Arkansas for a short vacation with my family. Saturday was the day they had to vacate the rental house on the lake and everyone else headed home for DFW while Chris and I were staying until Sunday. We weren’t quite sure where to go, wanting to take pictures, do a short hike, and sight-see. My brother mentioned he’d initially wanted to stay up near Petit Jean State Park and visit other areas nearby, but had changed the plans in order to simplify the issue of having to change locations every few days. So, Chris and I decided to check out the park and then see…
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Overly Excited About The Wrong Plant
We were driving down a two lane, very rural road in central Arkansas having just left Petit Jean State Park and Chris was intent on finding either Lilium superbum/Turks cap lily or Lilium mixhauxii/Carolina lily. I had a vague idea of what they looked like, lily-like you know, but having not recently seen a photo I had no idea for sure. So, here we are driving along and looking at farm after farm with very tiny towns interspersed in between looking in roadside ditches as we got 60mph down the road. We slowed a couple of times for trumpet creeper and orange daylilies to get a better look only to…
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Relaxing
Last week Chris and I drove up to Hot Springs, Arkansas to spend a few days at a house on Lake Hamilton with my parents, brother, sister-in-law, and their kids. It was a relaxing trip, not filled with going hither and tither but for the most part spent lounging inside in the ‘cabiny’ living room or in the slightly more formal and spacious adjacent living area that had near floor-to-ceiling windows, or on the deck outside. More of those photos later. I sat a lot in the reclining chair looking out at the porch as you see here, flipping through magazines, watching whatever was on tv (Food Network or kid…
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4th of July at Lake Livingston
On the 4th of July I met up with Keely and her boyfriend over at Lake Livingston State Park. Chris was still out of town working so I decided to spend time with some friends instead of wading through chores at home—which I could have easily done mind you. Luckily I got there before the crowds got really thick and parking became impossible, but it was already filling up when I arrived at 11am. Keely was meeting a geocaching friend there for a cookout so for the first while we sat around a picnic area talking, eating and watching folks circle around and around looking for parking. The drive out…
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The Height of Summer In The Garden
The placement of our vegetable garden was such because it had the widest area of open space but also because it let the most sunlight in below the canopy of the trees. This area just so happened to be at the very front of our yard near the street, not exactly the most ideal spot but it works out. While it has a lot of sun it also gets some shade which I think has benefited the garden during the heat of the summer. Full sun for plants during the height of Texas heat isn’t very good, so a dose of shade through some of the rougher parts of the…