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The Veggie Garden Is In! (Almost)
It was crunch time this last weekend and we made it a sprint by getting our vegetable garden in, well at least most of it. We brought in some dirt to even out the surface of where we chose to put the garden. The front yard is much larger than our back yard, and the only flat surface in the backyard would have been over our septic drainfield which is a total no-go for planting. So, up front the garden went. This is also a great sunny space with a bit of dappled shade for the hot summer afternoons. I became ‘one’ with the posthole digger over the course of…
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Early Spring At Tandy Hills
A couple of weekends ago I was in Fort Worth visiting my folks and I really wanted to go for a short hike, get out and stretch my legs. I managed to convince my dad and mom to come along to Tandy Hills for an hour long jaunt to see what was blooming, if anything. I noticed paintbrush coming up but not yet ready to bloom. We found a different pocket of trout lilies than we normally visit, but I couldn’t even find an old flowering spike. They would have bloomed in early to mid February. I wonder if the drier winter prohibited their blooming this year. Lots of yucca…
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The Hungry Caterpillars
Last weekend I noticed a black swallowtail caterpillar on my dill. I had planted some dill in the space that is to be Phase II of our flower garden, but for now that space was serving as a makeshift vegetable garden. The dill had sprouted up from one of the large pots we had grown garlic in last year so I transplanted it to the ground instead. With the longer day lengths and increased heat it has already jumped into flowering. When I finally got around to taking photos I noticed smaller instars of the caterpillars! They are soooo cute, right? There’s a small mound of parsley right next to…
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Dusk Is Falling…
Right now it is raining, a light drizzle, enough for the water to pour off the roof and for me to hear the *ting* of drops on our metal roof. The sky brightened for a minute, perhaps a thinning of clouds for the late evening sun to glow through just a bit, but now the sky is darkening once again. The light there for a moment was a yellow-green, the colors of the newly opened leaves of the trees and overgrown grass reflecting back up into the atmosphere. Last night it rained heavily after dark, lightning dancing across the sky and the cymbals of thunder booming after. The forecasters had…
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Alpine Wildflowers In Macro | Enchantment Lakes
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Daffodils
I had begun to wonder if the daffodils would bloom. We planted some in late Fall but it was early Winter by the time we managed to get a few other bags of bulbs in the ground. I kept the label that came with the bags but it seems these are only the ‘Trumpet Mix’ and nothing more specific than that. Let’s hope that they rebloom next year.
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Spring in My Brother’s Garden
I hadn’t been up to DFW to see my family since Christmas, (keeping your head down and working in the garden every weekend for three months straight will do that to you), so a couple of weekends ago I drove up to see my grandmother whose mental condition (and physical) had deteriorated more recently. I also hadn’t been to my brother’s house recently to see the changes in his garden so I decided to stop by and check it out. The weather was beautiful, sunshine and late springtime temperatures instead of late winter temperatures. Of course my nephew Grayson came along for the garden tour. My brother lives in a…
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Sunny Sunday….errr Make that Wednesday
+I bleached our luffa sponges a few weeks ago. They turned out really lovely and I’m going to have to get Chris to cut them for me. Maybe one day when we have beeswax I’ll make soap and the luffa will pair nicely with the soap as gifts! +I’ve been listening to a lot of food/sustainability podcasts lately and one of them discussed organic bananas and the banana industry. It was a bit of a revelation because I don’t usually pay that much attention to buying organic bananas. Bananas are generally very cheap to begin with and the podcast was discussing that even organic bananas are relatively cheap in comparison…
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Jack-in-the-pulpit
Chris ordered several interesting native plants for our garden and jack-in-the-pulpits were some of the ones that we received. They came to us as tiny corms and sprouted faster than I expected. It would be really cool to have them naturalize in our more shady and moist areas of the yard. This is a pretty interesting write up as is
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Evening Along The Shore
Ah, Galveston. I love this island. For those who haven’t been reading long, my history with the island is that I spent four years there while in college. The island is equal parts old money, spring break, summer vacation, and ratty hole-in-the-wall. It’s still a little bit of a place called home for me, though. Chris and I spent a little bit of time down at the beach that we got engaged at. We think.. You see, when we got engaged there were more dunes and vegetation and a sign for riding horses on the beach. That was back in 2001. Since then Hurricane Ike came through and well, the…