• Botanic Gardens,  Gardening,  Photography,  Wildscape Photo

    Beaumont Botanical Gardens

    On our Sunday off a week ago in Beaumont we took a trip to a few botanic gardens. One of them is a free to the public garden, the Beaumont Botanic Garden. We arrived too early to see the conservatory but we did a tour of the garden. I think the rose garden was the most stunning but they did have some other beautiful parts in the garden. Several people were taking graduation photos. We’re off for at least a week as we switch projects down in the Big Thicket but when we return we’ll drop by the conservatory and see what’s blooming in there.

  • Creative,  Outdoors,  Wildflowers,  Wildscape Photo

    Texas Wildflowers: Oenothera speciosa, pink evening primrose

    Growing up I knew these flowers as buttercups. They would be picked and put into cups to enjoy and I can see my niece Zoe continuing in this fashion as she already collects dandelion flowers from my parents yard. It was only recently when my brother made a comment about them being primroses that I did some research and realized that was what they really were! This perennial is native to the central plains down into Texas and is a prolific bloomer. In fact I’d say it is the prominent flower on the roadsides now. I was thrown off that this was an evening primrose because these flowers are blooming…

  • Outdoors,  Texas,  Thoughts,  Travel & Places

    Swamp Creatures

    Today we had an amazing animal day despite our really crappy day of trying to get to our points to collect data. We ended up waist deep in thick floton (floating plant matter) in some areas and it was not pleasant. Sometime floton is thick enough to actually walk on, carefully, but this kind was not too thick and breaking through it was inevitable. That means you then post-hole through the floton moving at an incredibly slow pace. It was not pretty. However, we were able to get some awesome shots of animals today, including this alligator snapping turtle up on shore to lay eggs. She was ginormous!! And then…

  • Florida Trail

    Florida Trail Tales 6: S.R. 19 to Lake Butler

    After leaving Buckman Lock we crossed S.R. 19 and into an area that as best we could tell was only used by ORVs. I’m not sure if it was public or private land, but we weaved through all sorts of dirt and mud roads that were completely destroyed by off roading vehicles. There was a lot of trash in this area, too, which is always disappointing to see. We ended up following a fire break line at one point, another section of fluffy sand. *gah!* Eventually we found an old, overgrown railroad bed that we followed until we found what was listed a potential campsite in the guidebook. Yes, our…

  • Outdoors,  Photography,  Wildflowers,  Wildscape Photo

    Texas Wildflowers: Trifolium incarnatum, crimson clover

    I was drawn to this flower while photographing the white bluebonnets and was sad to read that they were not native wildflowers. These European natives are now used for roadside stabilization and as a forage crop for cattle but have taken over some areas and tend to shove natives out of the way. Too bad it isn’t a native because it sure is pretty! –FAO factsheet Other wildflower series: Indian paintbrush Texas bluebonnets

  • Thoughts

    “Botany is the science in which plants are known by their aliases.”

    Ah, the quote above is so true. (The quote is anonymous but I found it here.) If you’d asked me 9 years ago (9!!) when I graduated college that I’d be working with plants more often than not I would have probably laughed. After all I was a marine biology major! Now, that’s another rant into itself, marine biology, but don’t think you will get a great career in it unless you go to grad school or are willing to scrape by at cheap paying jobs. But, I did focus on wetlands in college and of course, here I am in wetlands. Except that all the plants I learned in…

  • Outdoors,  Texas,  Thoughts,  Travel & Places

    More Swamp Work

    Where Chris and I are working reminds us a bit of a mix of the Everglades, which I think mentioned in the last Swamp Work post. It isn’t common to walk through thickets of cut grass, getting cut up by it as we walk through. And then there is the mud slogging. Sometimes we’re able to walk through areas with a mostly hard bottom, albeit a little muddy, but then we get in areas that are 1-2′ thick of floating plants and root matter and once you break through that it’s mud on the bottom. Then you slog through that. Previously these areas in the ‘glades would’ve been accessed by…

  • Florida Trail

    Florida Trail Tales 5: Lake Mary to Buckman Lock

    After resting up in the hotel in Lake Mary the next morning we ate a filling breakfast downstairs, grabbed a sandwich from the Publix deli (best ever!) and set off on our way. We were aiming to get close to Ocala National Forest so we could walk in the next day. We still had some roadwalking to do, however, and that left us to follow more of the Cross Seminole Trail through some neighborhoods. Eventually we caught up to Max and Amanda from Chuck Norris’ crew and subsequently played leapfrog with them while we paralleled Markham Road and walked up C.R. 46A. At the C.R. 46 junction with 46A we…