-
Snippets from Florida
Eventually I will get around to editing photos and once my phone photos finish uploading to Flickr I can do more detailed posts, but for now I’ll highlight a few items from our week in Florida. As I mentioned in my post earlier this week, it was quite chilly when we arrived in Florida. Certainly not south Florida winter weather where you can go to the beach and feel comfortable this time of year. But Forest braved the water and played in the sand when he could and we even saw that one washed up horseshoe crab. I was a little disappointed that the shelling wasn’t better than it could…
-
Spring Break in Florida
*Stretches and yawns*…oh boy, now to get back into the swing of things again—hello! Last week, well, actually a week and a half ago, we headed east down I-10 to Florida’s Forgotten Coast and spent a week on St. George Island. Annoyingly, we changed time zones and lost an hour of time and then lost another hour two days later with the Spring Forward time change. Hence all the yawning around here! And I say we spent a week on St. George Island but in reality we were traipsing around Apalachicola National Forest, an FWC WEA area, and Tate’s Hell State Forest, a place I had always wanted to visit…
-
12 Miles in Sam Houston National Forest
*write up is at the end of the post!* Trees are banded white to symbolize red-cockaded woodpecker nesting trees. Japanese climbing fern, an invasive species, that has covered the forest here. They may have treated this area but likely it is only brown from winter freezes—it will definitely be back. Sparse-lobed Grapefern, Sceptridium biternatum American Nursery Web Spider, Pisaurina mira One of the winecups… Glandularia sp. Sundews! Carolina satyr About a week and a half ago my brother texted to tell me that he and Zoe were coming down with her scout group to hike on the Lone Star Trail for a weekend and invited us to come out and…
-
Easter 2021 at Mission Tejas State Park
White fringetree, Chionanthus virginicus Every time I look back at photos from last year I can’t believe I never wrote about hikes or trips here on the blog. Burn out was flaming high and the only way to tame it was to lay low and focus on other priorities. Thankfully I’m getting back into the writing groove, especially since today is meteorological spring! WAHOO! Which means that this coming week or so of warm weather will definitely awaken the plants and it will be grow-grow-grow from here on out. Thank goodness! So, today we’ll look back at a few highlights from last Easter at one of my favorite state parks…
-
Along Beech Creek
I know we’re about to get really going with spring and all that it has to offer but today we’re going to go back to October and into the Big Thicket with a jaunt along Beech Creek in the Beech Creek Unit of the Preserve. Lobelia cardinalis was the star of the creek, the only brightly colored species blooming along the bottomlands here. While Forest and Chris kept towards the creek, I deviated over to a large patch of Netted Chain Fern, Woodwardia areolata, that I felt created a bit of a fairy forest effect. I was particularly enamored with the mossy trunks of the trees and the ferns surrounding…
-
Definite tussock moth caterpillar, Orgyia definita
With Spring knocking on the door, I’m looking forward to caterpillar season once again. I’ve seen a few inchworms lately, dangling from their silks in the middle of the trails at Kleb Woods, but no gregarious species are out yet that I’ve noticed. Soon, though. Until then, let’s enjoy this lovely tussock moth caterpillar that I found among the leaf litter at the Big Thicket last October. The bright yellow knobs are called verrucae and while I can’t find that this is a venomous species (all those hairs!), I am reading that they can cause skin irritation, which is why I generally approach any of these fluffy caterpillar types with…
-
A Glimpse of Spring
Saturday was one of those February days that lets your know that spring is indeed on the way. Despite all of the rollercoaster temperatures, warmth is coming. We’re going to rollercoaster down once again later this week but for now we’re enjoying the high point of the rollercoaster, getting a look out of the landscape around us and knowing that the the growing season is coming. Chris went and got the final load of compost for the edible garden beds and I filled up my remaining bed, he topped off one of his, we piled on some cypress needle and oak leaf mulch, and then installed the trellises at the…
-
Postcard Art | 1
Winter means that my studio is too chilly for me to work in usually, and so I have been making do with watercolors inside the house. I keep several sketchbooks and now some watercolor postcard paper on my desk and have been working away these last few weeks on small art pieces that I am mailing out to folks. I’m trying to do monthly themes, January’s was orchids, as you can see. February is currently abstract and I think March will be native plants or spring. All of these are taken but when I have others in the future I will share them here and if you want a little…
-
Knocked Down by a Rando Virus
I am signing out of January by reemerging from some rando upper respiratory virus that Forest brought home last week. Last Monday we were all almost ready to leave the house to go to work and school when Forest decided to cough and sound like a barking seal. We stopped in our tracks, looked at Forest and made a beeline for the bathroom and some cough medicine chased by an at-home covid test. The test was negative but knowing how those tests can be negative despite actually carrying the virus, I rearranged my day to grab my laptop from work and work from home. Covid or not, he was sick.…
-
Goatweed Leafwing Caterpillars & Chrysalis
One of my more spectacular finds this last summer was finding a goatweed leafwing (Anaea andria) chrysalis tucked up under some croton (Croton lindheimeri) that had come up in our front right-of-way over the summer. I had noticed some leaves curled up on the croton but could barely make out the caterpillars, only knowing by feel that they were inside. And then I found the chrysalis! I looked for more and found an empty one and never did find any other chrysalides later on in the summer so either the caterpillars I later found never pupated or they crawled off elsewhere to pupate. And then a few days later I…