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Macadamia Seeds
Chris’ dad and step-mom went to Hawaii a few months ago and brought back a package with two macadamia tree seeds. Despite that we’re in zone 9A, barely, we definitely get some chill hours here that only 30 minutes down the road into the urban heart of Houston does not get. We’re at the north end of a zone that allows us to grow avocados (apparently Fantastic is the cultivar that does best here) so I thought we’d give it a try and grow the macadamias out and see what happens. We soaked them overnight as per the package directions….well, actually it was a few days because I forgot to…
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Mile 0 + 8.5 Bonus Miles
“To walk; to see and to see what you see. ” –Benton MacKaye, on the ultimate purpose for hiking on the Appalachian Trail, 1971 Sometimes it seems like yesterday, and some days it seems like it never happened at all.
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Beauty Beneath The Dirt
Beauty Beneath the Dirt – Official Trailer from Jason Furrer on Vimeo. Let me introduce to you three people that Chris and I met in 2010 on the Appalachian Trail during our thru-hike. Ringleader (Kate), Monkey (Brandon), and Lightning (Emily). While for the most part we only hiked around this group not with them or necessarily hanging out with them, I knew we would still want to see this documentary they made while hiking in 2010. There was a bit of controversy surrounding them, particularly in the beginning of the trail, in regards to their filming and that is touched on a bit in the movie (I think in the…
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Creating with the Family
Part of my family was in town over the weekend and on Saturday we went to the Calendar Garden for a class in which we would create our own garden markers out of clay. This was the real deal—real pottery clay, real glaze, and it would be fired in a kiln by the artist who hosted the class. Sweet! I haven’t used real clay since high school and as I worked with the clay it all came back to me easily. Made me wish I had my own potting wheel and kiln! My niece and nephew came along with me, my mom, and sister-in-law and they were good for the…
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Birding at Sportsman Road | Galveston
Last Saturday Chris and I drove down Sportsman Road on the west end of Galveston Island to scope out the birds before we went home from a couple of days on the island for a conference. We are familiar with Sportsman Road as it was a place Chris fished regularly while in college (we went to TAMUG) and a place I went to for a few field labs. It is a popular place to not only fish but to launch kayaks too. There were quite a few birds out in the marsh that morning and a few of them let me take their photos. These were all shot via our…
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The Appalachian Highway | AT Video of the Week
Once the AT reaches Shenandoah National park it really becomes the ‘Appalachian Highway’. The trail smooths out and the climbs aren’t nearly as difficult. It’s pretty nice until you reach the north end of Pennsylvania and other than the rocks it is really not all that mountainous until Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts. So you set your cruise control and head on through the green tunnel, listening to the sound of the birds along the way. It really is that noisy at times with the birds. It wasn’t until we met Merf that we began figuring out what some of them were. She’d learned some of them from another hiker. “Here…
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Sprite Lake | Enchantment Lakes & Wenatchee National Forest
After we found ourselves at Perfection and Inspiration Lakes we wound our way around the north end of Perfection back down towards the much smaller Sprite Lake. We took a few minutes here for a snack and photo break. There were several wildflowers along the path that I won’t even try to identify, though I did briefly look online. If you are familiar with alpine flora in Washington state please help me out! I do think these are some kind of phlox though. These little flowers are reminiscent of blueberries so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in that family. Sprite Lake was a pleasant resting point before we…
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Loggerhead Shrike & Roseate Spoonbills
I’m not usually a big bird photographer but there’s a lot of bird activity these days and they can be fun to photograph. I don’t have the right lens for any decent shots of the little-brown-jobbers but I thought it would be fun to shoot some birds when we were in Galveston last week for a conference. We had a field trip during one of the days to Galveston Island State Park, a state park that Chris and I are both familiar with since we went to college in Galveston. We were driving along the main road on the back side of the park when we saw the loggerhead shrike…
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Shhh! We’re sleeping!
I know, I know, I just did a post about cats but here are some more cat photos I took this weekend! Ruby and Isis chilling after eating their afternoon meal. Apparently Isis thinks the baobab pot is a fine place to slumber and Ruby can sleep standing up!
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A Bunch of Lazy Bums
Fred is the resident cat who does not wander very far from the house. Every now and then I find him far down the driveway but usually he’s cuddled up in a spot on the south side of the man cave. Or on my truck. Isis has been enjoying some freedom by jumping fences lately. Ruby inches above Mr. Stripey in the competition for noisiest cat. She’s easy to figure out when you can’t see her but only hear her. The sunshine is a great place to take a bath. Or scratch your head. Momma comes and joins the party. And parties a little more hearty by hanging out on…