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That One Time Everything Iced
Ugh. This winter y’all. This winter is becoming unbearable. I don’t even know what zone I’m in anymore. Is this really gardening zone 9a? Sure hasn’t looked or felt like it. I’ve read a couple of articles about how the jet stream has been situated the last several winters to create harsher winters in the east and mild winters in the west and how it may be tied to global warming but no one is quite sure yet. Despite all of that, I think after the last several winters we may need to re-evaluate replanting certain plants like citrus. And only time will tell if the other tropical plants in…
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Post-Freeze Damage Assessment in the Garden
We left for DFW the day after Christmas and in advance Chris moved a lot of the tropical plants like the bromeliads and orchids into the man-cave to spend some time under the grow lights while we were gone. It wasn’t supposed to get terribly cold while we were gone but after our mishap last year of leaving town and not taking care of moving and covering some plants because we weren’t expecting that cold of weather, this time we learned our lesson and did some advanced planning. We knew that just as we were planning to return home that we were expecting a deep freeze so doing some work…
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The Council Bluff and Texas Oak Trails | Lake Brownwood State Park
It was brisk when we set off on the Council Bluff Trail the day after Thanksgiving. Forest was on foot, something becoming more common these days, but Chris wore the toddler carrying pack just in case. Sometimes Forest is more adventurous and can finish an entire hike but other times he starts slowing day and dilly-dallying and soon enough he asks to get in the carrier. The trail was gorgeous to start, with prickly pears finding ways to adorn themselves to rocks and crannies wherever they could deem suitable. It wasn’t a big climb up to the top of the Council Bluffs trail, just enough to feel the burn in…
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One Little Word | 2017 Recap and Plans for 2018
*cue record scratching sound* I had about a paragraph typed up in here from a draft over the New Year’s weekend but never got around to finishing the post up. Back to the drawing writing board I go! Honestly, it wasn’t until about a week ago that I really focused on what 2018’s word would be. And I hadn’t given a ton of reflection onto what 2017’s word was until I went back through my archives and remembered what it was. To really get my feet firmly planted in the direction I want to go for 2018, I downloaded the Year Compass to close out 2017 and start brainstorming on…
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Thanksgiving at Lake Brownwood State Park
It’s a full month later and I’m finally settling down to write about our camping trip to Lake Brownwood State Park. We were supposed to go to Mission Tejas State Park but Chris received an email a couple of weeks prior to the date that the park did not have electricity—including the bathrooms. Now, you are probably thinking, didn’t you do two thru-hikes and deal without electricity??, but that was without a 3 year old and it wasn’t at Thanksgiving when we were trying to make a decent meal. We’ve done front country camping without electric before at our campsite but there was always a bathroom. Plus, we had invited…
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Merry Christmas!
I hope your day was as cozy as ours!
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2017 In Books
Compared to last year I almost doubled the amount of books I read. And if I count the five or six books that I started but didn’t finish (they are good, I have just been reading them in spurts) my number would be closer to 50. The year started off good with reading and I dipped into audio books more this year, however I find that I can only really focus on those when I have a big project at work that lets me focus for hours on end. When I’m bouncing between projects or am doing other things that require more brain power like report writing, I can’t really…
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Music for Your Week
It’s been quiet around here despite the fact I have wanted to write. Over the last week I’ve been backing up our website files and then finalizing a conversion of our hosting setup with our provider and it has been slow and time consuming. If you saw a weird post in your feed this morning it was because I was setting up WordPress again. I’ve had to do this once or twice over the years and it always throws me for a loop before I remember how to do it all. Thank goodness for the Updraft plug-in which backs up my files and saves it on DropBox or allows me…
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That One Time It Snowed…
Last week was fairly dreary around here with on and off rain and chilly temperatures. We knew it was going to head towards freezing on Thursday and Friday nights so on Thursday at lunch Chris moved a lot of the sensitive plants indoors and after I worked I moved some of my stuff off the potting bench and under the porch. When Chris got home with Forest at dinnertime he said we might have some snow flurries around 9pm. That was exciting but I figured it would be just that—flurries. We had some sleet a year or two ago with a little bit that piled up in the corners of…
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The Importance of Public Lands
A post shared by Patagonia (@patagonia) on Dec 4, 2017 at 3:54pm PST I have never been to southern Utah. My only experience with Utah has been to SLC and some areas around the Wasatch but I’ve been to plenty of other public lands (local, state, and federal) and what happened yesterday is sickening. When shit hit the fan on election day 2016 I knew we were in for it with the environment and public lands, not to mention so many other things we’ve been watching go down during the last year. It’s sickening, enraging, frustrating, and all around awful. And I keep wondering when the insanity will end but…