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Texas Wildflowers | Clematis texensis
First we were into passiflora (still are), but now we’ve found clematis! This is another game of once you see one plant you start seeing them everywhere! These were shot at Lost Maples State Natural Area in November. +Information via the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. They say blooming time is March through July….well, November is quite outside of that window so I don’t know it if was a freak of nature or what for them to be blooming at that time of year. +There are some cultivars of this species apparently, Duchess of Albany, Princess Diana, Gravetye Beauty were a couple I saw online.
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Snail Mail
A couple of months ago the mailbox that our house came with was halfway knocked off its post. One of our neighbor’s was knocked off as well. At first I thought a: Drunk Driver or b: Teenagers With Too Much Time On Their Hands. But then Chris saw the deep scrape marks in the asphalt and decided it might have been the city lawnmower guy when he was mowing the ROW area. No matter, we wanted a new mailbox anyway and it took us forever to decide on one. I don’t like generic mailboxes. I don’t mind the ones bricked in but our house isn’t brick so it would look…
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On the Hook | Icelandic Turtleneck
Last week my first Interweave Crochet magazine in awhile came and it ignited my need for crocheting immediately. Chris might tell you I went a little loopy. It really was that my creative energies were instantly channeled and I didn’t want to do anything else but do everything and anything creative right-this-minute. It was lunch time and I had to go back to work. So, I waited until Friday evening and decided I was going to start the Icelandic Turtleneck from the Crochet Me book. I actually started this once before three years ago when I was in Florida. Original attempt. I frogged this and started over. I’d missed counted…
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Texas Wildflowers | Maurandella antirrhiniflora
How ’bout those pearly whites, there? Chris had heard about snapdragon vines before and I *think* maybe we have seen them at a nursery or something, but we were walking the trails at Lost Maples State Natural Area a couple of months ago when Chris bent down to check out a plant that he thought could be the snapdragon vine. Well, all it took was verifying that it was indeed the plant for us to realize that it was *everywhere*. Funny how plants blend right in and pop out at the right moment only to be seen everywhere you look. A pretty interesting native, don’t you think? +Information from the…
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Morning Along Can Creek | Lost Maples State Natural Area
We got up early from our campsite in order to take our time driving back home, a good five hour drive without stops. On our way into Vanderpool we had seen several plant nurseries and other random places we wanted to stop, so in order to do that we arose early while the fog was still lingering and the crowds were snug in their sleeping bags. It would be an easy hike out along mostly flat trail once we descended the bluff. Our exit route was via Can Creek and the West Trail, merging with the East Trail and dumping back out at the main entrance road. We arrived at…
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Poking Around Campsite H | Lost Maples State Natural Area
Since our hiking mileage wasn’t large, maybe six miles or something, we took several breaks during the hike to campsite H. We got behind a slow group of hikers on a very narrow trail, stopped to check out a clematis, and refilled our water at the last place before climbing up the bluff. It was the furthest campsite out at the park and I thought maybe we’d be alone….which of course was dumb of me to think. The campsite is up a bluff and we took the long way around to see what the rest of the trail in that area looked like. Unfortunately we were mostly socked in with…
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Along the West Trail & Dry Can Creek | Lost Maples State Natural Area
Missed a post? See these: Along the Sabinal, Hale Hollow Creek, The View, and Monkey Rock. I had thought that perhaps when we left the main area of the park and embarked on the West Trail that we would leave the crowds behind. There was a slight incline as we hiked up the trail which I thought might deter folks, and for awhile we didn’t see anyone. Then we saw one family, then another, and another until we knew this was not going to be our time for peace. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled by going to so many natural areas and not seeing a soul, or very few at least.…
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Grey Days
Yellow bird magnolia buds….these are going to be gorgeous! Winter thyme and a bunch of other seeds We had a sulphur and a moth hanging around during the cold days, not moving for a long time. Definitely alive, just chilling until it was warm enough to fly. One of the last weekends that Chris worked in Beaumont, we went to a plant nursery outside of Beaumont on Tx 105. I’ll have to dig up the name of the place, but we walked around the whole nursery wanting a lot of things but not putting anything on our list of things to buy until we walked in the main store area…
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Christmas
Christmas is so much more fun now that there are kids around. It is complete mayhem too! My nephew looks like my dad here quite a bit, particularly in the hair department (sorry dad!). Zoe loves Kylie (original name Colley, Zoe named her. Short story: Sugar and Spice are Kylie’s parents. Sugar and Spice are brother and sister. They weren’t fixed yet. They bred. Had babies. My brother and SIL didn’t need more kittens so my mom adopted Kylie after Red died in June. Mom didn’t like the name Colley so she renamed her Kylie. Kylie has a brother Nathan who is still at the other house. End story) but…
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Action(s) for 2013
Now that we have been in our house for six months I feel like I can have a clear head again. The unpacking, updating, painting, this-and-that of moving into a house is time consuming and we’ll be doing it for awhile. However, my studio is basically complete. All I need to paint is a baseboard on the wall that I did not paint white and the painting is complete. The general organization is done and I just need to buy some frames to hang some art. Hopefully I’ll be acquiring more art and creating more art to hang on the walls in the future. Since that is done, I have…