Outdoors
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Wonderful Fall
Leading up to the Autumnal Equinox it really felt like summer was going to keep on going. The heat was stifling, the flowers that bloom this time of year seemed to be stalled and the leaves on the trees were holding back. Then it seemed like, BOOM! And everything is like Fall, complete with the lighting changes. The other day we met my brother, SIL and Zoe at the Dallas Farmers Market and held back on taking photos until I saw an enormous pumpkin patch. All I wanted to do was save seeds from the wacky ones! Aren’t they divine? I’ve never been able to grow any gourds or pumpkins…
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Wildlife in Dinosaur Valley SP
Our biggest wildlife score was seeing a fox run across the main park road one evening as we did an evening ‘animal run’. Dusk and dawn are the best chances to see wildlife, usually deer, but this fox crossed the road. It startled me at first and I went through coyote, wolf, and bobcat before I registered that it was a fox. Chris even had to say the name before I could get it out. Mr. (Ms?) Grey Fox was nice enough to linger in the grass long enough for Chris to grab his camera. Then it took off running! Of course there were plenty of deer! I’m trying to…
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Reverse Macro Love
On Monday we went to the Dallas Arboretum with Chris’ dad. I had never been so it was a nice experience. After being so used to Fairchild Gardens in Miami, it’s hard to get used to non-tropical plants. There are some nice tropicals such as this Pride of Barbados, but a lot of them are temperates. They also have a great test garden where they do try some of those tropicals like mandavilla and tropical hibiscus. It was blazing hot and though we didn’t walk fast or far, we were sticking to our clothes pretty quickly. It was 107* for a high here on Monday. Yesterday it was about 12*…
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Trout Lilies at Tandy Hills
When we came back to town I asked my brother and dad where some good places to hike were and one place they mentioned was Tandy Hills. This park is very close to where my parents grew up in E. Ft. Worth and where my grandad still lives and I had no idea this park even existed. It is tucked away in the Meadowbrook subdivision, which is a nicer, historic part of the area (go a few blocks and it might not be so great of an area) and once you get in to the park you don’t realize you are surrounded by the city. Well, except from some trash…
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Wordless Wednesday—More Mushrooms
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The Last Trip to Fakahatchee Strand
This week will be full of ‘last’ trips. Every time I go somewhere or drive somewhere I wonder if it will be the last time I’ll drive by it. When we left Fakahatchee yesterday I was reading a magazine and when I looked up and realized it’d be the last time for awhile I said goodbye while watching the evening sun glisten across the fields. I wanted to go for one last trip there but my idea was to go see some variegated Guzmania monostachia. Instead Chris and his hiking friend Rich wanted to go to a very distant population of Cranichis muscosa, the moss loving orchid. It was lost…
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Have you hugged a tree today?
It’s best if you pick a big one—they are the lucky ones to have survived being logged. Hug ’em tight. Kathy in Little Slough, hugging a cypress
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The Last Ghost Orchid Trip
It was bittersweet taking our last ghost orchid trip to Little Slough. When Chris found our slough in 2007 (you’ll have to scroll down to May because I didn’t link titles back then) we’d been searching for ghost orchids for several years. We’d tromped all around Fakahatchee Strand looking for various plants and just exploring, not really knowing any different orchids. When we found this orchid, Campylocentrum pachyrrhizum after a geocaching camping event, we were super excited because we thought it was a ghost orchid. Only, it wasn’t. Close—but no cigar. Sadly, this orchid isn’t even there anymore, it was taken by someone right off the tree. Bummer. We looked…
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Dinner Island Part II: Macro and Sunset
After going through the rest of my photos of Dinner Island I realized I didn’t have enough macro shots to warrant a separate post. Alas, you’ll get a mix of macro and sunset. I love looking at the little details… Lichen holding on… I think this is one of my favorite shots. It can be difficult to get light coming in like this, but I love it! Probably my favorite sunset shot out of the set. I didn’t think this one was going to turn out that great when I looked at it in the camera, but I think I like it! A few things: -Does anyone else have horrible…
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Destination: Katahdin
I could blame Eliana. After all it was practically this time last year when we went to Payne’s Prairie and met up with them after their epic adventure across North America. She gave me a few magazines to read on the way home and one of them was Backpacker. I didn’t read it until a few days later, but inside was an article on the Appalachian Trail. It took all of finishing the article for me to develop a plan. When Chris got home from work I brought up my great idea: Thru-Hiking the Appalachian Trail. He looked at me with a quizzical brow (ok, it was more like, whaatttt?)…