Thoughts

  • Thoughts

    The Great Houston Snow of 2014

    Oh, our weather people down here. I really don’t know what they are thinking. Last Friday it was going to be Snow! Ice! Craziness!!! And then what did it do? Not a whole heck of a lot. It did rain and some bridges might have had some ice, but for the most part it was giant over reaction. And then today? It was supposed to sleet over night and snow today. Snow! Ice! More Craziness! Schools and businesses were closed once again. Chris and I got up this morning to well, not much. It had rained, but there wasn’t even really any ice. The radar suggested ice in our location…

  • Thoughts

    Bats and a Mantis

    For months and months we had a single bat holed up in one of our bat boxes. Then sometime in December a few friends joined in. Chris noted at one point that there may have been seven or so in there at one point. The numbers are fluctuating at the moment, down to a couple, up a few. I guess the bats are coming in when they migrate through. This makes us hopeful for a good population of bats using the house this summer. Just the other day a juvenile woodpecker—we weren’t able to identify it yet—attempted to make the bat house its home too. Or maybe the wood looked…

  • Thoughts

    Evening Fog

    It’s been a drizzly and rainy day here today. Grey, cloudy, dreary. At least the temperature was respectable, in the 60s. This after two nights of deep freezes, something we’re not used to getting often. The rain is appreciated. It was nearing an inch at lunch and nearing two this evening when we got home. The depression in the front yard had ponded and the creeks we cross were swollen with muddy waters. ‘Our’ pond was rushing over the spillway and had inched up along the perimeter in some areas, though hadn’t come up much in our yard at all. It is within an inch or two of the new…

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    Reviewing The Year | 2013

    I debated if I was going to do a review of the year or not like I see other bloggers doing, but then I went back through my archives from January of last year and though ‘Awww, I remember that!’ and decided I was going to give a whirl. First, a short run-down of my ‘word’ from last year and then a post or three from each month that I enjoyed while reviewing my archives. Action was my word for 2013 and beyond March I think I dropped it. In fact, I was thinking my word was prolific but apparently that was my word for 2012. Sooo…I think I’m going…

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    Projects, Projects, and More Projects

    A house….is full of projects. I mean, they are good projects and I love my house, but sometimes it seems never ending. The lists had been compiling in my head for long enough that today I sat down and wrote out everything we still needed to finish, such as the laundry room which is 90% completed. I wrote the other day about Chris’ dock building adventure and he got a lot more accomplished today. Now we can walk out over the pond!! Looking north into the pond, towards the creek. And south towards the dam and the entrance to our neighborhood. It’s so cool! I went out and I told…

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    ‘Diagon Radish’ + Loving Lately

    +I pulled out the first daikon radish yesterday. When we planted the seeds Chris kept calling them Diagon radishes, a nod to Harry Potter. And thus, forevermore they will be Diagon radishes whenever we plant them. It was milder than a typical radish, we’ll have to cook it up in a stir-fry this week. Bookmarked lately… +What Makes a Champion Tree +Eternal Flame Falls +100 Years Since the Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon +Cauliflower Mac and Cheese…looks yummy! +AT: Bulls Bridge to 10 Mile Hill +Foothills Trail: Around Whitewater Falls +Life In the Slow Lane: Profile of a Gopher Tortoise +Pumpkin Spice Chai Tea Concentrate +Invasive vs. Aggressive: They are…

  • Thoughts

    Autumn Chill

    +Plant sitting an old favorite, staghorn fern, for Chris’ dad. Not that we’re much warmer here in Houston, it is a bit better than Dallas over the winter. +Digging out the long, patterned socks is one thing to look forward to in winter. I found the patch of leaves that were the greatest around the yard—don’t mistake that we have a yard of leaves. +Twilight moon. Probably taken at only 5:30ish pm. +I did a doubletake at an oak leaf and found a gall. Love them. +Daikon radishes are growing in thick. +African blue basil prior to being chopped down and turned into pesto. Chilly temperatures here, by far not…

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    Bits & Pieces

    Life has been full of doing other things besides hiking or outdoor adventuring lately. Mostly we’ve been working on projects around the house. Recently we started working on renovating the laundry room. I hated the floor, the walls were crap, and there was no hot water running to the washing machine. Now there’s hot water, 3/4 of a new floor, the wall painted with touchups needed, and a few other items to do such as install cabinets. We’re waiting on the cabinets to come into the store we ordered them from so that we can finish the painting and the flooring. But, the whole room already looks much better. After…

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    Sally

    This is Sally. (Chris actually took this photo, I forgot that when I put the watermark on here.) Sally showed up on our pond about six weeks ago or so. Muscovy ducks aren’t normally on our pond, in fact I’ve never seen one here before Sally showed up. Which makes me wonder where she even came from. Was she someone’s pet that got loose? A lone duck that lost her way? She floats around the pond all alone, sometimes perching on downed tree branches along the shoreline, or waddling along the roadway-dam at the end of the pond. I’m worried someone will hit her one day. Some jerk had the…

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    Snakes: Friends Not Foes

    Over the weekend a friend of mine had a snake in her yard which she ended up killing due to its being near where her dogs were located. She didn’t know if it was venomous or not at the time and later posted a photo of it which her friend identified as potentially a rat snake, to which I conconcurred it likely was. Now, I’m not writing this to pick on my friend, but it really was a bit of a tipping point for this post to be written as I’ve read several different items from other people in the last year about snakes being killed by people who felt…