Memes
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4. If I was an Animal… – December Reflections 2022
I almost thought about making this a different prompt because I’m not particularly fond of the prompt, but let’s venture outside the comfort zone and go with the flow. Ideally, I wouldn’t be a different animal. I am already an animal, a human animal, and frankly we’re both the worst and the best animals there are. Do I want to have to hunt for my food in the wild like every other animal that isn’t kept in a zoo or as a pet? Not really. Agriculture has a lot of pros going for it! So does indoor sanitation services! Truly cannot believe we only modernized indoor sanitation within the last…
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3. Best Book of 2022 – December Reflections 2022
It’s been a rather lackluster reading year for me, this despite reading almost 55 books. Many of the books have been fine but very few have stood out to me as being so enjoyable I’d rave about them. I have plans to fix that next year by reading A LOT more fiction and some paper books on my shelves. I use NetGalley and Edelweiss to read and review Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs) digitally and have been slogging through some of those non-fiction ones. They are good, just slow reading. I need some fast paced, enticing reads for next year. Anyway, the one book that I have really enjoyed was Saving…
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2. My Favorite Mug – December Reflections 2022
Now, this is a prompt I love! I could easily become a mug collector, though I have limited space so I try to keep it reigned in. I can’t reduce it down to one so I’m going to share three. The first two I use at work. This mug I bought back in 2015 at some coastal beach boutique in Port Aransas while on vacation that summer. I was out shopping with my mom and Forest, who was an itty baby at that point, not even a year old. Sea turtles and the thick, white heft of the mug sold me the instant I saw it. I made it my…
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1. Here I Am – December Reflections 2022
Way back in 2016 I completed a December blogging challenge called A Month of Faves. It was a great set of prompts to keep me writing here. Recently Susannah Conway posted on her Substack a December Reflections prompt for her Substack chat. I’ve decided to turn it into a blogging challenge instead. A much more approachable one than what I attempted a few months ago. So, maybe I’m not going to hibernate this month! I admit, the first thing I thought of when I saw this prompt was the Dolly Parton song “Here I Am” from the movie Dumplin’. It’s a great movie if you haven’t watched it! So, here…
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Hibernation Mode
Pasture Heliotrope, Euploca tenella I have entered hibernation mode as we switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time. One thing I do relish about this switch, at least for the first two months or so, is that after dinner there is time to do nothing and everything. I don’t feel the need to have to go outside because it’s still sunny out. I can become a cozy hobbit and mindlessly move from one thing to the next and then ponder that it is really too late while looking at the clock and being dismayed it is only 6:30pm. *sigh* (Patrice, in Alaska, is laughing at me now!) I haven’t…
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Birdwing Passionflower, Passiflora tenuiloba | Wildflower Wednesday
Last summer during our stay near Dripping Springs I spent some time wandering the area just outside of our AirBnB to see what I could glean for iNaturalist. I noticed a gulf fritillary wandering along a vine and it made me pause for a moment. Gulf fritillary should mean a passiflora somewhere but nothing was standing out to me directly as a passionvine. Of course a closer look meant that I found small fruits and flower beds and once I focused in on the interesting leaf shapes I knew it was for sure a passiflora species. My first thought was Passiflora affinis, which I had seen in areas nearby in…
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Magnolia-cone Mushroom, Strobilurus conigenoides | Wildlife Wednesday
While fungi aren’t quite wildlife or plants and I probably should have called this Fungi Friday instead, we’re going to shuffle our mushroom friends to a Wildlife Wednesday today. And while we’re enjoying Second Summer, I’m dreaming about a day that will come soon enough, one that requires a light fleece in the morning, warming to the high 60s or low 70s mid-day, but under foot, while traipsing about the woods, are tiny mushrooms growing on decaying magnolia cones. I first saw magnolia-cone mushrooms, Strobilurus conigenoides, a few years ago when out in Sam Houston National Forest, not realizing that they were a specialized fungus that grew only on magnolia…
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Bumelia Borer, Plinthocoelium suaveolens | Wildlife Wednesday
Today’s Wednesday post is Wildlife Wednesday and a very gorgeous Bumelia Borer, Plinthocoelium suaveolens. Unfortunately our friend here was not alive, which made it a lot easier to photograph outside of our Dripping Springs AirBnB last summer. As the common name suggests, the larvae feed on the trunks and roots of bumelia species, Sideroxylon sp., the most common species in Texas being Sideroxylon lanuginosum, gum bumelia. Gum bumelia always tricks me a bit and I will initially think it is an Ilex decidua until I look closer and note my location and realize it’s a bumelia. The larvae also utilize Nyssa and Morus species, too. I’ll keep my commentary short…
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Edwards Plateau Five-Eyes, Chamaesaracha edwardsiana | Wildflower Wednesday
In an effort to re-invigorate some of my weekly standards here, I’ll be getting back into Wildflower and Wildlife Wednesdays. Maybe a Wordless Wednesday or two throw in for good measure. I’m going to kick it off with a Wildflower Wednesday! Today’s species is Edwards Plateau Five-Eyes, Chamaesaracha edwardsiana, a new-to-me species that I found last summer at our AirBnB rental in Dripping Springs. As both the common and scientific names suggest, this is an Edwards Plateau specialty. iNaturalist shows most entries for sightings for plants around the Austin to San Antonio areas, with scattered sightings west of there. Bonap has a bit of a broader distribution, with even county…
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Diana Baby 110 Toy Camera | Fun with Film #1
After Christmas in 2019 I bought some 110 film from Lomography, one of the few places you can buy 110 film these days other than old expired rolls off of Ebay or Etsy, and also a toy camera, the Diana Baby 110. I also had a pink Concord 110 camera from childhood and wanted to take photos with it as well. And so the last 2.5 years I’ve been shooting a photo or two at a time on them. I’m unsure what exactly happened with this photo, I thought perhaps it was supposed to be a double exposure but it looks like half the film is from one photo and…
