Outdoors
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Definite tussock moth caterpillar, Orgyia definita
With Spring knocking on the door, I’m looking forward to caterpillar season once again. I’ve seen a few inchworms lately, dangling from their silks in the middle of the trails at Kleb Woods, but no gregarious species are out yet that I’ve noticed. Soon, though. Until then, let’s enjoy this lovely tussock moth caterpillar that I found among the leaf litter at the Big Thicket last October. The bright yellow knobs are called verrucae and while I can’t find that this is a venomous species (all those hairs!), I am reading that they can cause skin irritation, which is why I generally approach any of these fluffy caterpillar types with…
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A Glimpse of Spring
Saturday was one of those February days that lets your know that spring is indeed on the way. Despite all of the rollercoaster temperatures, warmth is coming. We’re going to rollercoaster down once again later this week but for now we’re enjoying the high point of the rollercoaster, getting a look out of the landscape around us and knowing that the the growing season is coming. Chris went and got the final load of compost for the edible garden beds and I filled up my remaining bed, he topped off one of his, we piled on some cypress needle and oak leaf mulch, and then installed the trellises at the…
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Extreme Low Tide at Pine Gully Park
On Sunday we made a trek to southeast Houston to Maas Plant Nursery in Seabrook. Unfortunately the trip was a bust, a lot of plants weren’t out quite yet for spring and their native plant selection was lower than it has been in years past. We’d promised Forest a trip to a playground and just down the street is Pine Gully Park, a park I’ve seen for years during our trips to this plant nursery. We opted to poke into the park and see what it looked like and luckily enough there was a playground to go with the hiking trail that I had seen. But before either of those,…
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Charon’s Garden Wilderness | Wichita Mountains NWR
Getting up to DFW for Christmas break was one of those is it going to happen? ordeals since Omicron broke out. Skipping out on a trip up there last December meant that I really wanted to get up there this year. Plus, my nephew was going to be my parent’s house for a week while his sister and parents went to New Mexico for a scouting ski trip. Which meant a lot of uninterrupted cousin play time for Forest and Grayson and in turn meant that Chris and I could likely slip away for a couple of days and let the grandparents wrangle the two boys for a few days.…
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First Day Hike – 2022
Chris and I got out on Saturday morning to get a First Day hike in at Tandy Hills. Every year the Friends of Tandy Hills hosts a First Day hike over the perimeter trail, which is usually done in a group. This year they continued last year’s option of going solo and emailing them and getting a certificate for completing it solo. I haven’t gotten around to submitting for a certificate but I will say it was a lovely 2.5 mile hike. Plus, we got to see sections of the new Broadcast Hill purchase that has expanded this little prairie remnant just east of downtown Fort Worth. As it was…
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Thanksgiving Out West
I had better write something about Thanksgiving or else I will let the months pass by and I will never get around to writing here. And to be honest, I have never finished editing last Thanksgiving’s photos! Or writing here…or finishing up writing about Alaska. I truly have been trying to let go of my need to write chronologically and yet, here I am still fighting the desire. I believe the last time we set out for the Davis Mountains three years ago at Thanksgiving, we left on a Friday evening and stopped in Kerrville for the night. This time we left on Saturday morning, stopping in Sonora instead. Which…
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Snapshots from Goose Island State Park
Our trip to Goose Island State Park in early October was lovely, though the mosquitoes and the heat were still ramped up onto “high”. But we made do and enjoyed what we could. The Goose Island Oak still stands tall, though quite weathered and who knows how many more decades (or centuries) it still has left in it. Wineflower, Boerhavia diffusa As is my usual these days, I am always on the prowl for plants and interesting fauna to add to my iNaturalist sightings. This interesting little plant I only took a few quick pictures of because I thought it was nothing of particular interest but if it is what…
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October Wanderings at Lake Creek Preserve
A few weeks ago we escaped the constant weekend work that has been pouring concrete raised beds and went for an early morning hike at Lake Creek Preserve. Chris and I had visited by ourselves in July while Forest was visiting grandparents and the mosquitoes were terrible then. I guess I didn’t end up writing about it here but you can read a post from Dec 2020 to see this park in a different season. Autumn has brought out the fungi once again and I got a kick out of this fungi upon fungi situation with the mold growing on the mushroom. There used to be a sign marking this…
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Close Encounters with Diamondback Terrapins
A few weekends ago we camped at Goose Island State Park. Despite a brief period of time where cooler weather prevailed, it had retreated and in came the heat and humidity once again. And the mosquitoes. It was quite possibly the warmest October camping I’ve ever done in Texas. Goose Island was lovely as always and despite the mosquitoes we had an enjoyable time. One of the bonuses was getting to see Texas Diamondback Terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin littoralis)! In the summer of 2014, while I was heavily pregnant with Forest, Chris did a field job in coastal Louisiana. There he got to see a lot of terrapins, though I think…
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First Fall Hike of the Season
Contrast it with this next one—> First family Hike North Wilderness Loop from February 2015. The weekend before Tropical Storm/Hurricane Nicholas came ashore, the three of us headed for Sam Houston National Forest to start off the fall hiking season. It had been several months since we’d done any significant hiking and the day was perfect. It was warmer than it is currently but the light had changed and you could just tell the seasons were changing. We opted for the North Wilderness Loop, a loop we’ve done before as I’ve linked above, but it has been quite a while since we hiked it. I enjoy revisiting hikes and loops…