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1SE – January 2023
I’ve known about the One Second Everyday App for several years now. I think I even tried it back when I had my old iPhone but could never get into a routine with taking the photos/videos. An internet friend has been using it to document her new baby and I thought I would give it a whirl this year. The good thing is you can import photos and if you use the Live photo mode it makes those photos a short video which really helps with having the 1-1.5 second clips needed to make this video. I’m not good with taking a video every day but I can manage a…
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Engulfed in Fungus – Attack of the Akanthomyces sp.
Forget COVID-19, it’s fungi we should be worried about! We stumbled across this moth covered in a fungus in Angelina National Forest last October and I knew it was one of the cordyceps family fungi as soon as I saw it, though I couldn’t quite place the name at the time. I had seen several people post their own photos of insects parasitized by this fungus or a related species in the few months prior and just never thought I’d stumble across my own sighting. So, the fun thing about these fungi is that once they parasitize their host, they cover the body with this weird growth so that it…
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Insects Lurking About
One of my favorite things to do when I have the time while hiking is to move slowly and see what insects and arachnids may be lurking about on a plant. There’s a good chance one is hiding in plain sight, like this American nursery web spider, Pisuarina mira. Common boneset, Eupatorium perfoliatum, the perfect haunt for that spider as it waits for insects to come nectar! This unassuming goldenrod looks devoid of faunal life but… you would be wrong. I’m unsure which bee this is and I may not ever get an answer because I only have the one photo, but it may be one of the leaf cutter…
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Christian Point Trail at Everglades National Park (2007)
Looking back through some of these photos I wondered why I didn’t bother editing some of them. I had completed a small handful but had left a decent amount untouched for over a decade it seems. And it made me wonder why we didn’t make the effort to go into Everglades NP more often, though I know the reason why—you had to pay to go in! Big Cypress and so many other areas were free, and though we did pay for a state park pass, the pass let us in to a lot of parks and the ENP pass didn’t. That said, it isn’t like I wasn’t spending 5 days…
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Life Lately | January 2023
It’s been quite a while since I’ve done one of these so I thought I would get back into the habit. I do like looking back at old ones to see what I was thinking at the time and they are fun to laugh at! Lots of gifs in this one because, why not? Thinking: About perimenopause. Yeah. Fun subject to talk about, right?! via GIPHY About 6 or so years ago I followed a crafting newsletter and she was in her very early 40s at the time and she would mention perimenopause from time to time. I didn’t really pay much attention to it because in my head, and…
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Mid-ish January Check-In
Lobelia cardinalis It seems January is blazing right on by, doesn’t it? We still have a week and a half or so left but typically January is one of those months that seems to never end. Maybe because we’ve had so much planned the last few weeks that time seems to be zipping on by. The warmer weather and the feeling as if spring is imminent isn’t helping. It makes me feel behind in gardening. One thing I need to do is assess what blog posts I need to write over the coming weeks. I haven’t shared much in the last few years from trips we’ve taken because I got…
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The Chickasaw Plum Declares the Arrival of Spring
I noticed buds on the tree on Monday but really thought it wouldn’t start blooming until this weekend at the earliest, but I was proven wrong. Happy January-Spring! *I’m terrified for February now.*
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Woolly Ironweed, Vernonia lindheimeri | Wildflower Wednesday
We came across this gorgeous ironweed species back in July 2021 at Pedernales Falls State Park. Like many other Texas species, it was named after Ferdinand Lindheimer, the botanist who was the first permanent-resident collector in Texas. I have a book about his journals that I’ve been meaning to read for a year and this might be the year I actually tackle it! This particular species is very much a central Texas plant, and on iNaturalist you can easily see all of the observations starting in DFW and trailing down along I-35 to San Antonio and then west towards Kerrville. There are a smattering of sightings west of this area…
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Family Photos on South Padre
During our trip to South Padre over Thanksgiving I took some photos of my brother’s family and my parents. The wind wasn’t the best and neither was the weather, but the overcast day actually made it fairly decent for the quick photo session. Grayson, my nephew, wasn’t in the best of moods, but eventually he was coaxed into smiling and even laughing! It was fun to photograph people, something I don’t do very often. Forest doesn’t want his photo taken that much these days so I have to sneak it in, usually with my phone. My SIL Stephanie took the last photo of my parents, brother, and me. Look at…
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Launching into 2023
2023, huh? Well, another year full of promises—hikes to be walked, photos to be taken, plants to be identified, words to put down on paper, and paint to spread onto the page/canvas. I have a lot going on in my head, creative ideas and things to do, projects to accomplish. I’m attempting to spend less time watching streaming services and instead work on creative projects or reading in the evenings, at least until the light changes and I’m sure I’ll be spending more time outside again. There’s just so much to do and if I can do a little less tv watching, maybe I can get some things done. About…
