As the saying goes, “What a month this week has been!” Let’s step outside for a bit, even if it is in retrospect, to last Halloween weekend at Huntsville State Park. It was our first camping trip of the season, the first since our last one in late February/early March before the pandemic closed everything down. I believe it was Huntsville State Park that was our last camping trip, too! We set off for the large outer loop, the Chinquapin Trail, around the lake. Forest decided these roots along the trail were mountains to climb so he crawled up them and proceeded to do that for several others we found…

Whiteleaf Mountain Mint, Pycnanthemum albescens Digging back into some of my drafted posts, today we are going back to September and yet another jaunt on the Lone Star Trail. I really need to figure out what gaps we have left on this trail. We’ve very nearly finished a lot of the portion west of I-45 but there are some small gaps where we turned around and didn’t connect. This trip was after our yearly trip to a patch of beautyberries where we take birthday photos for Forest. A wine colored fruiting beautyberry. Violet Coral Fungus, Clavaria zollingeri This may be one of the coolest fungi I have ever come across…

On Saturday Forest and I escaped the house for a short hike. We had actually first escaped mid-afternoon on Thursday for a wonderful, warm and sunny hike to another nature preserve after a very frustrating online school morning. But otherwise we’d mostly been clinging to the house from online school to work, and if the weather was nice we would go out and wander the yard a bit. Chris had gone to Mississippi the Sunday before and I was single parenting it for the next week+. And by the end of the week my mental reserves were gone and getting outside was needed. We hadn’t been to Lake Creek Preserve…

The last two Octobers we’ve tried to find the Texas screwstem, Bartonia texana. And we had no luck finding them. But this time we were successful! Actually, Chris was successful because he went out a day before and spent more time looking and expanded his search zone and came home to tell us he had found them! So we made a backpacking trip out of it and stayed out there for a night so we’d have time to take photos and relax a bit for all of the effort bushwhacking to this location involves. A faded luna moth returning to the soil of the forest. A three-toed box turtle, Terrapene…

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…

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…

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…

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…