Outdoors
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Cloudless Sulphur Butterflies
Can you find the butterfly? Remember all of my cloudless sulphur caterpillars? Well, they all pupated—or I think they all pupated. I could only find two so far! First I found a chrysalis attached to a wire up against the house about a week ago. I was very thrilled to see it and I had to do a double take at first because the chrysalis looked like a leaf. That’s a pretty fantastic cover if you ask me—and just like a changing autumn leaf to boot! Since then I have been on a mission to find more but they have proved elusive. I’ve even looked further away from their host…
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Autumn at Huntsville State Park
Symphyotrichum drummondii maybe—definitely a Symphyotrichum We’ve had a busier fall than normal, I think, or maybe it is just that we’ve been spending time at home a little more frequently. We had a camping reservation for October but that was cancelled by Texas Parks and Wildlife because the state park flooded during Harvey and they don’t know when it will open again. Chris has been working on several different projects around the house, namely building an aquarium, but he also had to replace our water heater a few weekends ago and that took some work as well. Needless to say, getting out for hiking or camping hasn’t happened nearly as…
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Piecing Together Trails at Pedernales Falls State Park
A late blooming Castilleja indivisa I think this is Sorghastrum nutans, yellow Indian grass. The end of September marked our first camping trip of the season. We drove out to Pedernales Falls State Park, somewhere we hadn’t been since the spring of 2016. Forest was only 1.5 at the time and definitely a little more difficult to deal with camping but this time around he was much easier and definitely more fun! We didn’t end up doing as much as hiking as I envisioned we would this time around and instead we spent more time at the river and hanging out at the campsite, too. But when we did hike,…
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Stay Safe Goose Island Oak
Hurricane Harvey is poised to slam into Rockport and the surrounding vicinity pretty heavily so I send good thoughts to The Big Tree at Goose Island State Park this weekend. Chris reminded me that the hurricane in its 1000+ years has seen plenty of hurricanes but still, it could use some good thoughts. Probably more in need of good thoughts is the Zachary Taylor Oak in Rockport. It was looking a bit worse for the wear when we visited in 2015. Here in NW Houston we’ve prepared for what we can. While we may have some tropical storm winds at first the big problem will of course, be flooding. The…
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Evening Ramble at Kleb Woods
One thing that was been hard for me to adjust to over the last three years since Forest was born was not being out and about in the evenings. Where our house is located, it makes driving anywhere a bit of a chore, about 20 minutes into town and then further for just about anything else, and having a newborn, then older baby, and then toddler, made going out after dinner or doing anything else not worth it. Before Forest was born Chris and I had a standing dinner night out during the week, and we attempted to keep that up during my maternity leave but it became clear evenings…
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A Golden Evening
I find myself longing for hikes and camping these days. Most everyone else not in the humid south is out enjoying hikes and adventures and here we are sweltering in Texas, hibernating indoors during the afternoons. This is fine, I enjoy letting Forest play upstairs for awhile as I read a book or do some chores. I peer outside the windows at the garden or pond, often falling into a daydream. It looks enticing to get out there but the heat has a way of making us cranky. I’ve actually been enjoying getting a run in at lunch twice a week with the searing sun beating down—the only thing I…
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Lake Explorations at Brazos Bend State Park
As I mentioned in last week’s post about Brazos Bend State Park, there are plenty of alligators at this park to oogle at. Elm Lake and 40-acre Lake would be the primary places to see alligators but the smaller lakes host alligators, too. Alligator gar Chris spotted this quickly on one of the little docks on Elm Lake. Thalia dealbata Of course there was some fishing time put in on 40-acre Lake! Yellow-crowned night heron Yellow bladderwort Yellow and purple bladderwort Dragonflies were very active in the wetlands. I really need to get a dragonfly identification book. I am awful at telling the difference between anhingas and cormorants, especially from…
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On the Trails at Brazos Bend State Park
Now that we’ve entered the non-camping zone of summer, I am now looking back at our second to last camping trip of the season. In early May we went to Brazos Bend State Park; it was warming up but it wasn’t unbearable quite yet. Thanks to the shady campsite we had, we were able to stay a little cool in the middle of the day by lounging in the tent. Our last camping trip, to the LCRA Matagorda Nature Park was the opposite of that—hot, sticky, no shade. At Brazos Bend there really is a plethora of things to do and it is probably one of the more popular parks…
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Propeller Iris | Wordless Wednesday
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Pineywoods Nature Trail | Lake Livingston State Park
Thicket of blackberries Prunella vulgaris Salvia lyrata Yaupon flowers Prairie plantain, Arnoglossum plantagineum Looking at a lizard. Five lined skink A Vaccinium in bloom. Wild onion flowers The Pineywoods Nature Trail turned out to be a fascinating trail for us to hike and one that was perfectly suited for Forest to explore on foot. We went through the loop twice over the weekend we were camping and each time saw new things. Forest really enjoyed being able to explore on his own and funnily enough he remembered some key points about where we’d visited on the first round, such as where exactly we had found a green anole on the…