Memes
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Spiranthes vernalis | Wildflower Wednesday
Years ago, when our front yard was frequently flooding after heavy rain events we had a random Spiranthes orchid show up in the lawn. We hadn’t mown in that area in weeks, maybe months, due to the persistent wet weather that had left ponding in the front yard. Chris managed to clear some of the drains that go under our driveway and our neighbor’s driveway one year and the yard now dries out much better after these events. However, about two years ago we started converting this low lying area in the yard into a more natural swale area, planting bottomland species to diversify and attract wildlife. I hadn’t seen…
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Sunday Reads (on Tuesday) | 1
Instead of sharing links elsewhere on the interwebs I thought I’d revive something I used to do on here and that is to share weekly (or monthly) various things I found interesting and read on the internet. And of course this was supposed to be a Sunday thing, for when people were having morning coffee and could take time to read, but this is the second weekend in a row that I’ve not been able to get the thing published so it’s going out on a Tuesday instead! Please feel free to share links you’ve enjoyed, too! Tulsi Gabbard Holds the Knife by Timothy Snyder – on one of the…
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Green-flowered Yeatesia (Yeatesia viridiflora) | Wildflower Wednesday
In mid-November we hiked all of the trails at the Roy E. Larsen Sandyland Sanctuary, something we hadn’t done in several years. It’s on the list of hikes for my book and we’d been at the Watson Preserve the day before for a volunteer work day so we paired the trip with a visit to the REL preserve, too. I love this preserve because it resembles the Florida sandhills quite a bit in the uplands and it is such a unique habitat here in SE Texas. But there’s also a really great bottomland trail adjacent to Village Creek and I also love rambling through that trail. The preserve deserves a…
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Hickory Horned Devil | Wildlife Wednesday
Back in late October we went camping at Huntsville State Park. It had been several years since we’d been and I needed to tackle some trails there for the hiking guidebook I’m writing. Which, now that I look at my archives, I can’t find that I wrote about that here….??? Oh, wait, I found it, hiding in a life update post from June. Yes, still plugging away on hikes for that and I probably should post an update soon of how that is going! It was rather warm for October at the state park but we carried on and sweated it out. On Saturday of that trip, we had one…
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American Lady Caterpillars (Vanessa virginiensis) | Wildlife Wednesday
Last spring we were fairy negligent about weeding our paths. Up popped all sorts of interesting but less desired native and non-native plants, including what I think was Pennsylvania cudweed, Gamochaeta pensylvanica. I knew they hosted American lady caterpillars but I had never seen any on the plants around our yard before so I left them to see what would happen. We had adults flitting about the Texas ragwort that grows in the front yard during March-late April and I knew there was a good chance we would see the caterpillars if I gave them time. And they arrived! The caterpillars make little leaf nests like other species such as…
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Large-flowered False Foxglove, Aureolaria grandiflora | Wildflower Wednesday
Bumblebee on large-flowered false foxglove BONAP range iNat Observations Aureolaria grandiflora and it’s Aureolaria cousins have been on my to-see list for quite a while now. Imagine my surprise when Chris found them growing at Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve last July. I wasn’t expecting them to be there but I should have checked iNaturalist and paid more attention. The bumblebee video is from July at Watson. The other photos are from stumbling across the plant alongside the road in the Turkey Creek Unit of the Big Thicket last September. We’d just come off the Turkey Creek Trail and were walking back to the truck when Chris saw them growing…
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Meeting Nabalus barbatus, barbed rattlesnake root | Wildflower Wednesday
We went camping at Martin Dies Jr State Park in October, and while I had some usual suspects to check out on the trails there, I had a plant in mind I wanted to attempt to scout out in Jasper County—between Jasper and Kirbyville. Nabalus barbatus, aka barbed rattlesnake root, came on my radar a few years ago. It is relatively scattered and uncommon in east Texas as you can see in the map from iNaturalist above. Being uncommon and also trying to make sure I’m in the area at the right time for a bloom, well, it hadn’t worked out for a while to visit. I asked Chris to…
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Two-striped Mermiria, Mermiria bivittata & Orchelimum sp. | Wildlife Wednesday
Mostly sharing these two because they have been sitting in my drafts for eons! I took their photos back in July 2021 in Dripping Springs when we went there for my birthday and unfortunately I’m just now getting around to sharing their pretty portraits!
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Early Winter at Watson | Silent Sunday
December 10, 2023 view of Geraldine Watson’s cabin at Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve I grew up in the, as I say, these beautiful woodlands and everything. And on Sunday afternoons my mother would take us walking in the woods flower-picking. And we would pick Birdfoot Violets and Winecups and all those things. And mother would point plants to us that her mother had made medicines from and dyes from. And she would tell us stories all about how they made their own cloth and all that. And, then I learned the trees from my father who worked for a lumber company. And, the mill there at Doucette was a…
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Big Thicket Coral Snake Encounter | Wildlife Wednesday
It’s been a hot minute since we’ve seen a coral snake so we were delighted to find one crossing the road on our way to the Watson Preserve one evening back in May. The road is lightly traveled, being residential and all, but we still stopped to get out, take photos, and to block other cars from coming and intentionally killing this beauty. We haven’t seen one in our yard in a few years so I figure we’re due for one soon!
