Outdoors
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Salvia lyrata | Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
Salvia is one of those plants in which I could have a bed of many varieties and species…much like passiflora, brugmansia/datura, tomatoes, and probably too many other plants to name. I’ll take one of each please! Take in the spring of 2012.
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Asclepias asperula | Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
I may or may not be still working through photos I took in Austin last spring. Yeah…. I love milkweeds not only because of their host food abilities for monarch caterpillars but because they are just a beautiful native plant to grow. A great Texas milkweed website for reference.
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Up Top | Enchantment Lakes & Wenatchee NF
Climbing up Aasgard Pass was slow going, taking us about three hours to get up to the top. For the first third of the trail cairns marked the path somewhat clearly. I was leading, and somewhere near the middle of the climb I started having difficulties following the trail as the path became more scree-like instead of boulders. It didn’t help that there were smaller cairns that sometimes lead in different directions. A couple of times we slid a bit, causing us to halt in our steps and steady ourselves. Around the two-thirds-of-the-way mark I heard sounds but couldn’t see anyone. I looked up and to the left and found…
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Colchuck Lake | Enchantment Lakes & Wenatchee National Forest
At the junction of the Stuart Lake trail and the trail that leads to Colchuck Lake we stopped on a rock to take a break. The walk from the Mountaineer Creek had left the shade of the forest and began winding its way up the side of the mountain. Overall not difficult but the heat was rising. Despite the northwest having a reputation for being rainy and cloudy, we came during a week or sunshine and temperatures upwards of 100* in the valleys and 80s and 90s in the mountains. We sat eating a snack, fending off a sneaky chipmunk and then meeting several groups of hikers, including two women…
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Red On Yellow
Yes. Yes, this is what you think it is. You can finish the rhyme if you like…kill a fellow. Red on Black, friend of Jack. I was unpacking book boxes with my brother in law’s girlfriend, Jessica, when Chris beckons from downstairs to come outside, quick! I’m expecting an animal but of the cute and furry type. Was a fawn in the yard? Did the kittens do something sweet? So, we barrel down the stairs and around the corner outside to where Chris is standing, pointing to the back side of our storage shed/carport/my art studio building. It was slithering up against the wall. My initial reaction was that of…
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Rambling at Kleb Woods
It had been far too long since I’d spent any considerable amount of time outside, so last Sunday I decided to brave the 100* heat and go for a walk at Kleb Woods. I almost left to go at 1pm but waited an hour, thinking I would postpone until later in the evening, but I needed out and so at 2pm I left for the woods. Chris and I had been here back in the Fall on a weekend. It was busier then and the hummingbirds were around, sipping nectar from the feeders and the flowers in the hummingbird garden. This time the heat of the day brought stillness over…
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The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center | Part I
So way back in March when we went to Austin we went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Sunday morning before driving home. And yes, here it is late June and I am just now posting photos from them! I can’t believe I have been so unattentive to my photo processing and writing about our adventures. Nonetheless here is round 1 of our trip: Lady Bird herself on the rain barrel. Not to be confused with this Ladybird. Lace cactus, Echinocereus caespitosus Horse rush Horse crippler cactus Echinocactus texensis Gregg dalea, Dalea greggii Foxglove, Penstemon cobaea Columbine Trumpet creeper Blackfoot Daisy, Melampodium leucanthum Antelopehorn (butterfly weed) Asclepias asperula And…
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Eagle Rock Loop 3 | Ouachita National Forest
Did you miss Day 1 & Day 2? After leaving the campsite by the river the next morning we had about 9 miles left to return to the trailhead we started at two days before. It was overcast and looked like potential rain but at least it kept the heat down. There were going to be a couple of river fords that day as bounced back and forth across the river. The river in this section was already narrowing but was still flowing faster than the creeks we’d passed the days prior. At this crossing we meandered up and down looking for a possible rock-hop to avoid taking our boots…
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Eagle Rock Loop Day 2 | Ouachita National Forest
Read Day 1 if you haven’t already…. We woke up the next morning around 6 a.m. Dawn had already broke and the sky was getting light. Some of the other hikers had begun to rouse before 6, knowing it would take them longer to get ready and drink their coffee that morning. We were hoping to make maybe 12 miles that day in order to ease our mileage for the third and final day so we wouldn’t be leaving the forest so late for our four to five hour drive back to DFW. The ups and downs of the previous day were mostly over; the topo map showed mostly level…
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The San Bernard Oak
Prior to visiting the art show at the Migration Celebration at the San Bernard NWR I took a tour of the San Bernard Oak, the largest live oak in Texas. The trail had been freshly mowed and maintained so it was not nearly as buggy as I was expecting. I took my time, meandering along, snapping photos of the way the light hit the vegetation along the trail. Fairly certain this is a mustang grape… A gas pipeline provided a nice opening for the sun-loving plants to thrive like these Mexican hats Ratibida columnifera. Finally I arrived at the oak tree, however due to the tours (they were mostly self…