-
Preoccupied
With books. The Hunger Games trilogy to be exact. Over the last week that’s what I’ve been reading. Of course I could read them all at once but other things have gotten in the way. Work for example. Went back to the field for a few days to the Big Thicket in Beaumont, so paired with my reading I don’t have much time for blogging. I will need to take a break from reading to tackle some creative projects though. Julia Cameron in The Artists Way writes that reading is often a good excuse not to get things done. And she’s right. Reading, at least for me, is very consuming.…
-
Leo the Model
So I made these two baby hats for some coworkers out of scrap yarn I had in my stash. Always a good thing to find a way to use leftover yarn! Leo obliged me with some modeling… A nice profile view. Not sure about this mom! But really, I’m just a cute baby! Of course Leo and Samson are no strangers to modeling! Hehe!
-
16 Miles Through Sam Houston
Mentally I was prepared for a 10-12 mile hike. Because our maps were conflicting and not quite accurate we ended up on a 16 mile hike and I could feel it at the end. Hiking as much as we have hiked in the last year and a half it is easy to gauge how far we travel. Sometimes I think that since we are going on a day hike that I don’t need to prepare as if I’m thru-hiking. That’s a mistake! I learned when we hiked to the giant sycamore and wore cotton socks. This time I didn’t wear my hiking underwear…bad idea. Chafing! I wore the right socks…
-
A Week of Food
I think a few people, Katie specifically, who were interested in what we made for our dinners since we pre-plan right now. Here’s a sampling of our meals for the past week: We kicked off with homemade pizza last week. Chris used a dough recipe he found in a cookbook from the library, a recipe we really love. I think it would even be a great flatbread/dipping bread, too. He made two crusts for us to each have our own pizzas the way we wanted them. He had a little extra dough so he made a few mini pesto pizzas to much on. Very good! A few weeks ago we…
-
Early September in the Garden
Chris spends most mornings at the plot watering and doing random chores. Right now we’re waiting on compost before starting more seeds in other beds. Here’s a snapshot of what’s going on: Watermelon’s from a school’s plot. We took one of them but it was not quite ripe and very seedy. Chris hand pollinated a few watermelon flowers to see if he could get a few more out of the season. Brussels sprout seedlings…I think Chris said Long Island Improved is the variety. Sweet potato vine flower Remember it a few weeks ago? Sumter cucumbers. More cukes The corn and zucchini bed Little zucchini flowers!! I went around doing random…
-
Goodbye Summer
+Summer is gone. Well, not officially, the autumnal equinox is still a week or so away. But, the lighting is different, it gets dark earlier and light later. I don’t like the light later thing, rather I don’t like either one. I’d prefer if it got light at about 5:30am daily and got dark at about 10pm. Year round. At the very least, in the winter it should get dark only at about 8pm, no earlier. +Working on some posts for next week. I’ve got a list of adventure books that I’m writing about, plus I’ll have a post about a week of our pre-planned meals and how they work…
-
Wordless Wednesday | Moody Gardens Aquarium Part 2: In Color
-
Evening at Brazos Bend SP
The weekend we moved to the Houston area we went out to Brazos Bend State Park to check out the Perseids in the night sky. We set up on a short boardwalk to a large pond not too long before sunset. This time I bought my tripod because we were aiming for star and moon shots. We ended up not seeing but a tiny handful of meteors due to the very bright moon. I ended up converting most of my photos to black and white because I liked the feeling of them better. I even tried an HDR image, something I haven’t done before. I’ve mostly avoided it because I…
-
Local Adventures| Little Lake Creek Loop, Sam Houston National Forest
On Labor Day weekend Chris and I took some time to explore trails in our area. We opted for the Little Lake Creek Loop in the Sam Houston National Forest in the Little Lake Creek Wilderness. We took several different trails including the Little Lake Creek Trail, the Pole Creek Trail and the main Lone Star Trail. We estimate it was about 13 miles, but aren’t quite sure on the mileage because we were using two different books to combine the trails together. I have to say I was very pleased with the condition of the trails and the forest is beautiful. We were also pleasantly rewarded with cooler, Fall-like…
-
Evacuation
Yesterday we were all ready to go to DFW for the weekend, it was about 2:30 pm. We were heading into town to return a RedBox before heading out and as we approached town we’d noticed that the fires were flaring up. It had been a peaceful morning with no smoke and we’d decided that it was probably ok to venture out. However, once we arrived in town, it was chaos with everyone standing at the intersections, in the gas station and grocery store parking lots, some with chairs, many with smart phone or cameras to take videos. Several fire engines from around the state arrived within minutes, probably moving…