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Winter Warmth
January has been unseasonably warm and I have nothing bad to say about that. Flip flops in January? Yes! The warmth has tinges of Florida in it and it makes me happy. December and part of November were so dark, dreary and rainy that it was really depressing for me. January has turned beautiful, with a few cold mornings here and there, the sun seems to shine its warmth and heat the day up. The light is changing too. The sun is moving northward again. I know because it had hidden itself behind the curtain in front of my desk at work and has now worked itself into blinding me…
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Adiantum capillus-veneris | Southern maidenhair fern
A few weekends ago, New Years Eve weekend to be exact, we stopped by Westcave Preserve on our way home. We’d been by there a year before but did not have time to go in. I will have more on Westcave itself in two later posts, but this one is specifically about the beautiful maidenhair fern. The fern grows in all sorts of rocky outcroppings, and other nooks and crannies along the creek at Westcave. The creek flows maybe a quarter of a mile before emptying into the Pedernales River. It really makes pathways it lines a magical place. The Texas Vascular Plant Checklist lists one other species for Texas,…
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A Cairn for Ashleigh
If you’ve only recently started reading my blog you might not know that I have a second niece. She was born two years ago today and unfortunately only lived for 104 days. She died when we were on the Appalachian Trail, so after we returned back to the trail from home after the funeral, cairns become something symbolic for me with her, Ashleigh. Typically cairns are used for marking a footpath or a particular place on a mountain but occasionally we’d come across great areas of them for no particular reason. The ones above, at Sunfish Pond in New Jersey, were simple and modest but they reminded me of her.…
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Yarn Therapy
I toiled over this blanket for so long. Its original incarnation looked nothing like this. In fact it was going to be a simple square, half double crochet alternating between the back and front loops in a striped pattern. Somehow along the way I kept decreasing my rows. The first time I did not get very far into it before I unraveled it. The second time I thought perhaps it just needed to stretch out. I do not know what happened. All I knew was that I felt that I had just begun crocheting not that I had been doing it for 9 years. I was dumbfounded. Finally, I scrapped…
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An Enchanted New Years | Enchanted Rock Pt. 2
If you missed the first part of this series go here. On New Years Eve I slept in and Chris got up early to take sunrise photos. Once up and breakfast was eaten, we headed off for the eastern side of the loop around the rocks. It was a gorgeously clear day again, perfect really. Initially we were going to completely go all the way to the east on the loop but we came to the junction of the Turkey Pass trail and thought it looked good, a cut through up to another trail and we could catch the eastern loop up there. We passed this beautiful pond on our…
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There’s a reason I hug trees.
Unfortunately I did not get to hug this one as you can see it is/was behind a fence. This is a photo of Chris and I on the Florida Trail last January, almost a full year ago, with The Senator. The Senator is no more. You see, this estimated 3,500 year old bald cypress tree, and 5th oldest tree in the world, burned down Monday morning. Burned down.. It’s almost difficult to fathom. I’m part of a swamp hiking group on Facebook and I happened to check my email Monday morning with a notification stating that the tree had been burned. I quickly went to search for news stories, hoping…
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Fun with Fermentation
Due to the large amount of cabbage we currently have, I finally decided to make the sauerkraut. I debated on what kind of receptacle to use, finally deciding to use the large dutch oven I bought Chris for Christmas. Apparently there are fermenting crocks one can buy, and perhaps if I make sauerkraut in the future after this initial experiment I will buy one. For now the dutch oven will work. I alternated between chopping up the cabbage, rinsing it and then layering it in the dutch oven, sprinkling it thoroughly with salt on each layer. The salt assist with drawing out the water from the cabbage. I went by…
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Oh, Galveston
Last weekend Chris and I decided to go down to Galveston for the weekend. I’d been wanting to see two friends of ours and we decided to invite them to meet us for lunch down on the Seawall, a place called The Spot. It was a common place for us to go during college and a place we like to go when we return for visits. We met our friends and got to see new babies and chat for awhile during our meal and then afterwards when we walked across the street to the beach. My friend Erika’s daughter, Kayla, had a blast playing in the water and I think…
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The Garden Store
I pulled all of this out of our garden plots today. I could have harvested more but it is much easier and better to go every few days and get what you need. Tomorrow night I’m going to roast the beets and turnips with carrots, then cook up the turnip greens for dinner. The tops to the beets will be saved to be added into my green smoothies. Some of the Chioggia beets were getting rather large. I am loving the striped pattern on the stalks! Also, a few of the turnips were rather large and I will probably work my way through the larger ones this week in order…
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Transformation of a Cabbage
Our Chinese cabbage has been doing great but they are starting to bolt. We’ve been making stir fry with some of the cabbage and it has been great. Ok, *Chris* has made the stir fry. Anyway, I have been dying to make my own sauerkraut after seeing my brother make his own last year so that is on my agenda to make but I’ve also wanted to make chow chow. My grandmother used to make it a lot, well she canned most things out of her garden or from the farmers market and had a shelf full of jarred items in a small hallway in the house I visited growing…