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Return Traverse Of Upper Enchantments
Since it is coming up on almost a year since our trip to Washington I thought it wise to start finishing up these photos. This is our walk back towards Aasgard Pass through the Upper Enchantments, showing some of the area that I didn’t cover on our trip into the lakes. The pink on the snow is snow algae, also called watermelon snow. Going back through these photos makes me wish I was out adventuring somewhere. Maybe sometime later this summer or the fall.
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Almost to Moosilauke | AT Video of the Week
Short fir trees, rocks…must be a mountain in the north woods. New Hampshire to be precise and getting into the White Mountains. I wish Chris had left the video on as we came out of the trees and into the open mountain top so you can see the full effect of getting to the top of a mountain. I loved how it flattened out, there are the end, time to speed up after several miles of a steady ‘up’.
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Lunchtime Garden Ramble
I’m thankful I only live about 7 minutes from my office so I get to spend the lunch hour at home if I want. It’s nice to see what the garden is doing in the middle of the day, too. The bees are busy, building out comb and storing honey for the winter. From talking with others growing tomatoes it seems this year is weird for tomatoes. Perhaps the cool spring and then hot summer immediately after is not going to let us have an abundant harvest. These are the first ripening tomatoes, labeled at Arkansas Traveler but I’m almost 100% sure this isn’t an Arkansas Traveler. I’m guessing we…
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Afternoon at Lost Maples | Late Spring
Over Memorial Day weekend we headed off towards the Texas Hill Country west of San Antonio to do a little exploring. Our original intentions were to hit up Government Canyon State Natural Area since we always seemed to drive past it for other parks further west. Well, the weather decided not to play nice that weekend. Only days before we had been planning on kayaking along the Guadalupe River but a call to an outfitter and checking the river levels online revealed the river was a bit dry for running the river where we were planning. Then storms came through two days in a row causing flooding. Then there was…
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Plants I Wish I Still Had
Last week Chris and I were in his truck and I had the strange thought…I really wished I had a gac vine. I know, strange thought there, but the peachy/yellowed colored blooms just came into my head and I began reminiscing about all of our plants in Florida then and there. So, I thought I’d do a short post on some plants I wish I still had but sold over three years ago before we moved. Some I probably won’t get back due to our less tropical growing zone, others I could probably swing once again. Gac! Gac intermingled with passiflora and thumbergia there on the fence. A little wild…
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Summer
New Jersey, Appalachian Trail Some songs that are reminding me of summer, particularly of walking along the mid-Atlantic and New England states three summers ago. This feels like it will be a very enjoyable, full summer. I feel like I didn’t get a summer last year with the move to the house—the unpacking, the flooding, the constant barrage of things to do. Now I’m just trying to keep up with the garden and yard every evening, sweating through my shirt before I work fifteen minutes. The frogs on the pond get so loud sometimes I can hear them inside the house. It’s almost like camping.
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North of Lehigh Gap | AT Video of the Week
Once again I’m digging out some videos from the AT that I never uploaded. This one is of the area at Lehigh Gap in Palmerton where the superfund site is located from the decades of zinc smelting that polluted the mountain top. As you can see it is quite a different landscape that one would expect from hiking in the Green Tunnel. You can read more about our antics in Pennsylvania here. The storm clouds show you what kind of climb and day it was—-wet. And hot. This guy gives a good perspective on the climb out of the gap.
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Beaver On The Pond
I went to a community meeting for our little town a couple of weekends ago and the council mentioned that they’d had problems with beavers in the past and that we should mention if we saw any on the pond. My hand shot up so I could mention that we’d scared something off the banks of our property on our pond the night before. Chris has long thought we had nutria or maybe otters on the pond but we’d never really had a good look. Then a couple of nights ago Chris saw one up close and called it a nutria and then he went off to Lowe’s to get…
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Multiplying Onions
When I was at my parent’s house over Mother’s Day weekend I dug up a couple bulbs of multiplying onions that my mom had in her small raised bed. I believe she received them from my brother. There was a conversation a couple of years ago about the desire to find multiplying onions as someone in my family had grown them, probably my grandmother, once upon a time. They were difficult to find, but you can find them through that link above. I have a desire to add more perennial vegetables to my garden and multiplying onions sound like a perfect addition. Right now the plants I dug up are…
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The Bird Feeders at Lost Maples State Natural Area
As our second time visiting Lost Maples State Natural Area, this time around was much quieter, though holiday weekend crowds were starting to pick up by the time we left the park over Memorial Day weekend. We arrived at mid-day and decided to hike on the west loop trail and park at the upper parking area. We had lunch next to a really cool bird blind and were able to sit and scope out feeding hummingbirds and this western scrub jay. We weren’t quite positive as to which hummingbird species this was while we were watching them zoom around the feeders, but it felt like they were something different, or…