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Life Lately | December 2020
Thinking: Wow, I haven’t written one of these up since August! It has crossed my mind a couple of times to sit down and write one but I never made the space to do so. So, here I am, sitting down in the last month of this very insane year of 2020! If you’d asked me in January or February this year what December would look like I would not have said, “Sparingly going places, thrilled to go to the grocery store as an outing, wearing masks like nobody’s business, and pondering a very different Christmas season than is typical.” And here we are. We’re on the home stretch but…
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A Bit of Wildlife from the Texas Hill Country
While I get things together to write blog posts, here are some videos to entertain you! First, Chris put together this video from the trail cameras. Lots of great animals to see and some LOLs at the 7 minute mark from some pigs! Some strong Texas leaf cutter ants at Guadalupe River State Park (Bauer Unit) The western pygmy blue butterfly nectaring! I should have taken a longer video and taken it landscape but I was in get-what-I-can-get mode before it flew off. Some moving water scenes along the Guadalupe River on the Bauer Unit. And more moving water scenes from the Bauer Unit—this would be an excellent swimming hole…
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Thanksgiving in the Hill Country
Oh boy, it is only 6:36pm as I write this post up but wow, does it feel like it should be 9:30 and time for bed! The three of us spent the last week camping in the Texas Hill Country, first to Guadalupe River State Park for three nights and then further west to South Llano River State Park for another three nights. Overall the weather was spectacular and only this morning did we encounter any rain and that was after we bolted early and hit the road by 8am, driving through rain on I-10 the entire drive home. I was a bit skeptical if we should continue our trip…
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Eclosed on the Chinquapin Trail
A few weekends ago for Halloween we went camping at Huntsville State Park. On one of the days we were out we hiked the loop around the lake, the Chinquapin Trail. It’s one of the most popular trails and was very popular that gorgeous weekend. Out on the berm that creates the dam to Lake Raven is a grassy area. Being as it was a warm day and a few autumn blooming plants were still providing late season nectar, the butterflies were fairly active. Gulf fritillaries were the primary butterfly I noticed but there were common buckeyes as well. Chris and Forest were about 50 yards ahead of me because…
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Along the Sandy Creek Trail
Auricularia sp. In early October we headed east to Martin Dies Jr. State Park for our first car camping trip since late February/early March. Our plans when we made reservations back in the summer were for three nights out there as it was a long weekend for Forest from school. But Leo was still around at that point and we knew we could not be gone for more than one night with him, even with the pet sitter coming by. Plus one of the myriad of tropical systems we’ve had this year was coming in along the Louisiana border once again and that thwarted our plans as well. We found…
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Bidens for Biden
What a damn good day for Democracy!
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Halloween Weekend at Huntsville State Park
A short video I put together on my phone from a camping trip last weekend. I figured out iMovie on my phone and so expect more short videos in the future! Of course I’ll do a proper post eventually—probably February at this rate! haha!
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Watson Preserve in Late June
I thought I would dust off a few of the drafts languishing in my WordPress files and send some nature out into the world. There’s a lot going on right now and my mind is cluttered with it all, so why not deviate a bit and share some goodness. I had hoped we would get back to Watson Preserve this fall but we haven’t gotten there yet. Maybe in November! Asclepias rubra, red milkweed Actually looking back at these photos brightens my mood a bit. With autumn happening and everything senescing, it is sometimes hard to believe everything was alive and in bloom a few short months ago. A snowy…
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Over the Rainbow Bridge | Leo
Our sweet Leo has crossed the Rainbow Bridge. His estimated birthday was May 2004 as he came to us in July 2004 at our West Kendall apartment in Miami. It was the middle of the night and Chris and I were awoken by what sounded like a baby bird chirping. It chirped and chirped, annoying me enough to get out of bed and walk around to the back porch to see what was going on. I could never find anything but the next morning Chris woke me up because he had found the culprit—or rather, Samson had found the culprit! It was a scraggly kitten at the back sliding door,…
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Aglow on the Pond
This year the Bidens laevis, the bur margiold or beggar’s ticks, are on fire along the pond! We’ve had them sporadically over the years and then the taro choked them out, so I am delighted that they are returning in force this year in the area that is becoming a wetland behind the pine trees that fell during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. I wish the whole shoreline was covered in them as I recall seeing an entire wetland of them somewhere between Center and San Augustine, Texas 10 years ago near Sabine National Forest. That was gorgeous and it would be wonderful to have the entire pond shoreline lined with…