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Wingstem Delights
The garden is running wild these days but one corner of the garden is a delight and that is the wingstem corner, Verbesina alternifolia. I added this plant in several years ago when I realized the deer didn’t touch its cousin frostweed and then set out to find other similar plants. I found wingstem, which in Texas is only native to a few North Texas counties. It has done really well here, though. I am working on growing out another cousin, Verbesina helianthoides, which I discovered growing at Mission Tejas State Park last spring and quickly found seeds at Prairie Moon to order. They have germinated and I hope to…
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Edwards Plateau Five-Eyes, Chamaesaracha edwardsiana | Wildflower Wednesday
In an effort to re-invigorate some of my weekly standards here, I’ll be getting back into Wildflower and Wildlife Wednesdays. Maybe a Wordless Wednesday or two throw in for good measure. I’m going to kick it off with a Wildflower Wednesday! Today’s species is Edwards Plateau Five-Eyes, Chamaesaracha edwardsiana, a new-to-me species that I found last summer at our AirBnB rental in Dripping Springs. As both the common and scientific names suggest, this is an Edwards Plateau specialty. iNaturalist shows most entries for sightings for plants around the Austin to San Antonio areas, with scattered sightings west of there. Bonap has a bit of a broader distribution, with even county…
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Bartonia texana in the Big Thicket
If you’ve been reading this blog for a few years, you may remember my post from 2020 about finding Texas screwsteam, Bartonia texana. Last year we didn’t go back to the same location and instead went searching in the Big Thicket. I’m being intentionally vague on locations because it is a sensitive plant species and is under review by USFWS for listing under the ESA. This location was a bit easier to get to, less bushwhacking, for which I was grateful. Two years of extensive bushwhacking to the other location had worn on me, though I do like the location once we get there! And there were a lot more…
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A Field Work Site That No Longer Exists
Passiflora incarnata, maypop blooms One of the tragedies of my line of work is that we can go to a field site and know that how we see it when we delineated the area for wetlands is that it is absolutely most likely to change drastically the next time we see it. You go out and find cool plants and interesting insects and habitat and the next thing you know there are box stores and parking lots on top of it. It’s frustrating and this probably deserves a longer post in regards to the conundrum of folks who get degrees in the biological or environmental sciences and the ability to…
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A Queen Visits Tadpole Hollow
Last night I had a few minutes to check on the garden before I went to a community meeting and as I was walking back towards the house I noticed a butterfly was nectaring on the tropical milkweed. It flicked its wings a few times before I figured out it was a queen, Danaus gilippus, and a male to boot. The queens usually visit in late summer but we don’t always have them. I’ll have to keep an eye out for females because on the occasions that I have had queens in late summer, they will often lay eggs and I will host caterpillars. I haven’t raised any caterpillars this…
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Whatever thrives, thrives.
As it turns out, a lot of my extra energy and oomph in getting this blog going again with steady entries was that I had the free time to work on it! Forest was at various grandparent’s for the last week of July and first week of August and because Chris and I were actually home and not galivanting about for work or pleasure, there was time to just be. And now, he’s back home, swimming lessons are back on schedule, there are bedtime routines, and school started today! Needless to say, life is full once again. I’m currently trying to figure out how to navigate my never-ending creative ideas…
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Current Obsessions | August 2022
Things I have been loving and/or obsessed with lately: This cover of Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters by Phoebe Bridgers. It came on during a Spotify playlist earlier in July and I have now become obsessed with it. Subsequently I have started listening to Phoebe’s music as well, which as it turns out, is right up my alley. There’s also a Miley Cyrus cover of that same song but I don’t like it nearly as much. via GIPHY The final season of Better Call Saul—Holy Smokes, it has been a good one! Two episodes left and we will finally have some closure to the entire Breaking Bad enterprise. I had thought…
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Purple Hyacinth Bean Happiness
I couldn’t tell you the last time I grew purple hyacinth bean, Lablab purpureus. Ok, so a quick search through my archives suggests it may have been back in 2013, and wow what a different scenario the garden is now compared to then. I decided to grow this continental African native this year on its own trellis in one of my beds, primarily after my cucumbers failed to thrive earlier this summer. It was such an easy replacement and the beans grew very well, tolerating the drought conditions happily. I wasn’t sure if they would bloom in the constant heat but alas, they have rewarded my patience! A certain delight…
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Amorpha paniculata in the wild!
Two weekends ago when we went to visit Gus Engeling WMA we had finished our jaunt into the bog area and had turned up the A/C and decided to just drive around the rest of the WMA and jump out if we saw something interesting. It gave me a lot of Florida vibes and driving through WMAs there and oh, how I miss how much public land Florida had (has). Chris inched by some plants and out of the corner of my eye I spotted something and I exclaimed, “Amorpha!” I stumbled over the words for a moment because I had dumbly mistaken another plant for an Amorpha back in…
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Diana Baby 110 Toy Camera | Fun with Film #1
After Christmas in 2019 I bought some 110 film from Lomography, one of the few places you can buy 110 film these days other than old expired rolls off of Ebay or Etsy, and also a toy camera, the Diana Baby 110. I also had a pink Concord 110 camera from childhood and wanted to take photos with it as well. And so the last 2.5 years I’ve been shooting a photo or two at a time on them. I’m unsure what exactly happened with this photo, I thought perhaps it was supposed to be a double exposure but it looks like half the film is from one photo and…
