Outdoors
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Luna
A few weeks ago I saw a wing in the garden. Just the wing, nothing more. I figured the cats had gotten to it, but I knew it was a luna moth, a species I’d only see online but never in person. The ferals frustrate me in this aspect, they like to chase after the lepidopterans in the garden and I’m not fond of that aspect of their disposition. Or their snake killing aspect…but I digress. Luna moths! Chris came to me a couple of nights ago to show me where two were laying low near the ground down by the pond. We had to walk carefully as they do…
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Leprechaun Lake | Enchantment Lakes
On our hike through the Enchantment Lakes we hiked as far as Leprechaun Lake before deciding we didn’t want to descend further down into the Snow Lakes zone. We figured that going down meant having to come back up and well, we liked up already. Looking back I think we should have sucked it up and gone down into those zones, but at the same time what we ended up doing worked out too, leaving us time to explore other areas of Washington instead of staying only in the Enchantments. There was some rock hopping and precarious log walking involved to get across the streams leading to the lake. I…
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Early Spring At Tandy Hills
A couple of weekends ago I was in Fort Worth visiting my folks and I really wanted to go for a short hike, get out and stretch my legs. I managed to convince my dad and mom to come along to Tandy Hills for an hour long jaunt to see what was blooming, if anything. I noticed paintbrush coming up but not yet ready to bloom. We found a different pocket of trout lilies than we normally visit, but I couldn’t even find an old flowering spike. They would have bloomed in early to mid February. I wonder if the drier winter prohibited their blooming this year. Lots of yucca…
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Alpine Wildflowers In Macro | Enchantment Lakes
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Evening Along The Shore
Ah, Galveston. I love this island. For those who haven’t been reading long, my history with the island is that I spent four years there while in college. The island is equal parts old money, spring break, summer vacation, and ratty hole-in-the-wall. It’s still a little bit of a place called home for me, though. Chris and I spent a little bit of time down at the beach that we got engaged at. We think.. You see, when we got engaged there were more dunes and vegetation and a sign for riding horses on the beach. That was back in 2001. Since then Hurricane Ike came through and well, the…
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Birding at Sportsman Road | Galveston
Last Saturday Chris and I drove down Sportsman Road on the west end of Galveston Island to scope out the birds before we went home from a couple of days on the island for a conference. We are familiar with Sportsman Road as it was a place Chris fished regularly while in college (we went to TAMUG) and a place I went to for a few field labs. It is a popular place to not only fish but to launch kayaks too. There were quite a few birds out in the marsh that morning and a few of them let me take their photos. These were all shot via our…
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Sprite Lake | Enchantment Lakes & Wenatchee National Forest
After we found ourselves at Perfection and Inspiration Lakes we wound our way around the north end of Perfection back down towards the much smaller Sprite Lake. We took a few minutes here for a snack and photo break. There were several wildflowers along the path that I won’t even try to identify, though I did briefly look online. If you are familiar with alpine flora in Washington state please help me out! I do think these are some kind of phlox though. These little flowers are reminiscent of blueberries so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in that family. Sprite Lake was a pleasant resting point before we…
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Loggerhead Shrike & Roseate Spoonbills
I’m not usually a big bird photographer but there’s a lot of bird activity these days and they can be fun to photograph. I don’t have the right lens for any decent shots of the little-brown-jobbers but I thought it would be fun to shoot some birds when we were in Galveston last week for a conference. We had a field trip during one of the days to Galveston Island State Park, a state park that Chris and I are both familiar with since we went to college in Galveston. We were driving along the main road on the back side of the park when we saw the loggerhead shrike…
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Backyard Nature
Sunday was a gorgeous day and I spent some time wandering our yard looking at the flora and fauna in it. The turtles started gathering at their usual spot for a morning sunbath. I noticed a Rubus trailing down by the pond. The rattlebox (Sesbania) mesmerized me for a few minutes… so much so I took two different photos. The sky was the color I always wish I could just roll in, a stunning blue that puts a smile on my face. I tried to get closer to the turtle but it saw me move and dashed under the water never to return. Some resurrection fern was rehydrated, others were…
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Inspiration & Perfection Lakes | Enchantment Lakes
I know, I know, I haven’t finished writing about our trip to Washington State. My excuses are a: laziness, b: a crappy computer that has on several occasions shut down when I’ve had photos open in Photoshop thus leading to loss of interest in processing photos, and c: other interesting things that have been going on. But, I’m hoping to remedy this soon and finish the photos and writing about the trip. When I last left off, I was talking about goats. The goats were still prevalent for the rest of the trip and were definitely a source of entertainment! On our second morning of being in the Enchantments we…