I have a bazillion phone photos and eventually, when I edit them, photos taken with my camera. In the spirit of actually posting in some kind of real time perspective instead of months later, I’m just going to share the phone photos now. I’ll break up the flower garden and general snow photos into other posts this week. This was the edible garden on the morning of February 15th when I finally bundled up enough to venture outside. It was already very cold inside and the temperature was dropping rapidly there. It looked rather peaceful out in the garden and certainly better than having 2-3′ of water topping it as…

One bright spot this week was seeing all of the little birds floofed up in their winter plumage. Some would pop into our porch to take a break from the wind, giving us a closer look at how fluffy they looked! And being that it was so cold, they weren’t intent on flying away so quickly, which meant even if we encountered them in the yard they hung around a lot longer than they usually would. Many were looking for food and unfortunately couldn’t find a whole lot. Though, the cedar waxwings managed to find our one Carolina cherry laurel that had fruit on it. I noticed the cedar waxwings…

Within the last week or so the daffodils that are in an abandoned bed on the property line to our north, bloomed. These have been blooming every January/February since we moved here in 2012 and have likely been there for 20 years or more. They are among the first things to bloom every year and I hadn’t been paying attention and then suddenly, there they are. I’ve been slow to drag myself out of my usual November/December winter stupor in the garden. I wasn’t ready to deal with it all. But yesterday we made some progress in cleaning up the flower beds and getting mulch in because things are going…

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…

It was early September and we were eating dinner and Forest was in his usual eat a bite-turn around to look outside mode and he said he spotted a hummingbird that was red. We figured he had just seen the ruby part of a ruby-throated and didn’t think much about it. The next morning I was working upstairs and had a glimpse of the now dead mimosa tree that the hummingbirds always love to perch on and saw something rust colored. It sat there long enough for me to realize Forest really did mean a completely red bird, not just a throat. Chris was out in the field somewhere and…

Common Whitetail, Plathemis lydia If early summer felt like a bit of a drought in regards to pollinators, August and September always make up for it. This, I should know. And back with a fury they came! The gulf frits are busy as ever, searching for nectar, laying eggs, and generally enjoying life in the yard. I even happened upon a chrysalis by chance one day–I looked over and there it was! Clouded Skipper, Lerema accius on a Carolina cherry laurel And a good old house fly, Musca domestica, sat still long enough to show me it wasn’t a nasty old bugger and instead was a pretty insect worthy of…

There are three saddlebacks on the backside of this banana leaf—but we actually found a total of four later on! I have always wanted to see a saddleback caterpillar, Acharia stimulea, in person. Chris found one in the field a few years ago and texted me a photo of it and that has been the closest I’ve ever come to seeing one. Last week that changed. Forest and I were in the garden and he was asking for some of the small bananas that fruit on our pink banana trees. He likes to play with them and has since he was a toddler. So, I walked into the flower bed…

Yellow Star Grass, Hypoxis hirsuta Last weekend I noticed that the mountain mint was abuzz with insects so I grabbed my camera to see what I could a snapshot of. It turned out we had quite a few interesting characters in the garden! Common Thread-waisted Wasp, Ammophila procera Two-striped Forceptail, Aphylla williamsoni I caught this one out of the side of my eye and thought it was a small bird at first. When it finally settled I realized it was a really large dragonfly and one I hadn’t seen before. Since it was quite distinctive it was relatively easy to figure out what it was when I popped it into…

In one of my recent posts I know I mentioned that it seemed that all lepidopterans had taken to a quiet spell around the yard, though we would have a friend visit on occasion. This dun skipper would be one of those friends to visit back on June 20th, however after our recent rain over the last week or so our lepidopteran friends have started slowly returning. I’ve found a few bean leaf rollers in the garden which means one of my favorite butterflies, the long-tailed skipper, should be making more appearances around here soon! Thankfully growing the echinacea within the fence has allowed them to bloom and with that,…