Outdoors

  • Outdoors

    The Peace of a Tent

    Over the weekend we drove up to Elkhart to camp at a new-to-us location, the Ivy Payne Preserve. It’s a Texas Land Conservancy property, donated to the TLC by Ivy Payne in the late 1980s. I stumbled into the whole ordeal in early March when looking into a different TLC property to see if I could access it (I couldn’t) and decided to click around to see what other properties they might have available that were open to the public. Enter the Ivy Payne Preserve and the Weekend at Ivy’s campout! It turned out to be a wonderful weekend, full of meeting new people, hiking a rarely visited property, and…

  • Cemetery Botanizing,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Cemetery Botanizing – Tillis Prairie Cemetery | 3

    Oxalis dillenii Carolina anemone, Anemone caroliniana – so glad I got to enjoy these this spring! More prolific than I expected. Missouri violet, Viola missouriensis The non-native largelower sorrel, Oxalis debilis Sidewalk firedot, Xanthocarpia feracissima – I think. Cemeteries are a great spot to find interesting lichens! Bulbous woodrush, Luzula bulbosa – I’m beginning to really love this plant and wish I saw it sold in garden centers. Beaked cornsalad, Valerianella radiata Another Missouri violet Stemless spiderwort, Tradescantia subacaulis What remains of a poor armadillo. It has been a couple of weeks since I’ve done any cemetery botanizing (or naturalizing!) and I’m feeling it a bit. Twice a week physical…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Butterflies at Medina River Natural Area

    Little yellow, Pyrisitia lisa Dainty sulphur, Nathalis iole Orange sulphur, Colias eurytheme Gray hairstreak, Strymon melinus Reakirt’s blue, Echinargus isola Orange skipperling, Copaeodes aurantiaca Gray hairstreak, Strymon melinus Ailanthus webworm moth, Atteva aurea Vesta crescent, Phyciodes graphica We went to San Antonio for a weekend getaway back in January with no real plans other than going to the zoo, eat at La Gloria on the Riverwalk, and going to the Alamo. I hadn’t been to the Alamo since I was in high school and I don’t know if Chris recalled when he had been, and it was Forest’s first time. We had driven by it several years ago but now…

  • Cemetery Botanizing,  Outdoors

    Cemetery Botanizing – Corgey Cemetery | 2

    Back to some more botanizing of cemeteries today! This one is a very tiny family cemetery, with one or two more recent burials. On aerial imagery this area is mostly undeveloped, some farm field and thick pine forests but when I arrived I found one of the pine forests clearcut for a housing development. “Progress” continues onward… There were a lot of Carolina anemones (Anemone caroliniana) here! I think I still love the tenpetal anemones better but I do love seeing these! And then I found something interesting! The leaves were tall and they had what looked like sporangia on the back, which led me to thinking this was some…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Big Sky Country

    A week in the Davis Mountains, spring this time instead of our usual Thanksgiving. Which meant warmer, but much windier weather, and the beginning of spring blooms for plants we haven’t gotten to see bloom before. All the warm weather and early blooms will be dusted with snow this weekend as a cold front came through last night, our last night. The city of Fort Davis was preparing for the storm by salting the roads and brought out a big truck with some weird thing on the front, and after our southern sensibilities faded we realized was a snow plow! Hah! You certainly don’t see those around our part of…

  • Florida,  Hiking,  Native Plants,  Outdoors,  Travel & Places

    Mahogany Hammock Trail at Everglades National Park (2007)

    Let’s travel back to Florida and less depressing things like losing a state park—because nature continues on even while we fight to save it. I actually remember very little about this trail. I can recall part of the boardwalk and that there were mosquitoes but I don’t recall seeing some of these plants! The peeling skin-like bark of a gumbo limbo tree, Bursera simaruba The fruits of a Florida strangler fig, Ficus aurea A nurse log filled with long strapferns, Campyloneurum phyllitidis…a common scene in many swampy hammocks in south Florida. An orchid that has died, probably a butterfly orchid. Hammock viper’s-tail, Pentalinon luteum. This is one of the plants…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Goodbye to a State Park | Fairfield Lake State Park

    Carolina larkspur, Delphinium carolinianum Rose bluet, Houstonia rosea Prostrate grapefern, Sceptridium lunaroides Trout lilies, Erythronium sp. Spiranthes tuberosa Carolina violet, Viola villosa—so many all over the park! I have never seen so many. Parlin’s pussytoes, Antennaria parlinii “One waxes pessimistic? Not so much … There is a pessimism about land which, after it has been with you a long time, becomes merely factual. Men increase; country suffers. Though I sign up with organizations that oppose the process, I sign without great hope.… Islands of wildlife and native flora may be saved, as they should be, but the big, sloppy, rich, teeming spraddle will go. It always has.” ― John Graves,…

  • Cemetery Botanizing,  Outdoors

    Cemetery Botanizing – Cartwright Cemetery | 1

    Small skullcap, Scutellaria parvula Possibly bare-bottom sunburst lichen, Xanthomendoza weberi Carolina anemone, Anemone caroliniana Common blue violet, Viola sororia Southern bluet, Houstonia micrantha Early buttercup, Ranunculus fasicularis I’m not sure why I haven’t though to do this before but I got the idea from several botanists and naturalists who do this on social media: they go to old cemeteries to look for plants! A lot of times the cemeteries are somewhat neglected or at least frequently mown short which in turn promotes the growth of species that like that type of attention. Sometimes they are rare plants that can’t be found many places due to habitat loss. I typically frequent…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Thoughts,  Travel & Places

    Does Texas actually care about its land? The Pending Loss of Fairfield Lake State Park

    Sometime in the fall I started a Substack newsletter where I was hoping to focus my writing efforts on Texas nature and environmental writing. I was going to re-purpose some blog posts here but also work on focusing on other important environmental news efforts in the state. It was a different kind of writing than what I typically share here, which is sometimes rambling and a lot more personal. The Substack was a way for me to stretch my writing skills and write for a different audience. If you haven’t heard of Substack, it’s a newsletter platform that allows writers to be paid if they want, so you can write…

  • Outdoors,  Thoughts

    Heart’s A Bustin’ on Valentine’s Day

    I totally meant to actually schedule this post and write something more formal but I forgot I had even drafted this to begin with! Euonymus americanus, also known as strawberry bush or hearts-a-bustin’, is a really cool native shrub that comes over into east Texas. Unfortunately it is also known as Deer Candy so it isn’t something we really really grow, though I do have one in a pot on the potting bench that I am hoping to possibly grow in my perimeter bed in the edible garden once we get that finalized (someday). But, I hope your heart’s are a bustin with love for someone, or at least for…