Thoughts
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Swamp Work Part III
Similar posts: Swamp Work & More Swamp Work. More happenings in the woods and swamps of SE Texas: So, I love my job, even when I’m wading in chest deep water. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do! Luckily we didn’t see any alligators or water moccasins! You know it’s a good day when you are canoeing at work! We had a nice canoe, though it got a little bit tough when we ended up in a thick mat of salvinia…talk about friction! Look at that view! The salvinia we paddled through, tough stuff! Frog on salvinia. Driving down a canal road we saw our first softshell turtle, a…
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Sunday ’round here…
Lots of good things I’ve read in the past week or so on the ‘net. Thought I’d share: +Dr. Who Regenerations: A compilation of all of the Dr. Who’s through the years. I’m personally fond of David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston. That’s when I first started watching, however sporadically I watch. +Sour Cream and Onion Kale Chips. I tried making kale chips about a month ago or so and while some tasted well they didn’t come out how I imagined. Chris turned his nose up at them and while they didn’t taste bad, they weren’t as crunchy as I thought they’d be. Not sure what I need to do next…
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Going Veg
About a year and a half ago, before we went on the AT I tried a week of going vegetarian while Chris was on a business trip. It was really easy for me then, I was able to cook what I wanted and try new recipes. I haven’t tried this again until the last two weeks. We’re back in Beaumont for our job for about two months and I got the idea to try going vegetarian again. I thought it would be easy but we eat out most of the time and it is really hard! Vegetarian options are either making something meatless or eating lots of salads and pasta.…
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How Oceanic Wilderness got its name.
My brother recently texted me a photo of a book Oceanic Wilderness, but published in 2007 long after I started blogging as Oceanic Wilderness. It made me think that perhaps I should do a post on how I even came up with this name since I rarely blog about anything ocean related. So. I have a degree in marine biology. I graduated in 2002 from Texas A&M University and was gung-ho on using that degree for what it was intended, not to teach or go into a field that was not marine related. *snort* look where I am now! It should be noted that most marine biology majors don’t really…
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Retro Writings
I’ve been writing here in some variation this blog for 9 years now. I started on a blogspot account rambling some crazy stuff, doing some weird memes and well, a lot of non-sense. That I won’t show you, but I will dig up some goodies that you may have missed if you haven’t been reading since the good ol’ days! Blogging has evolved a lot and my initial readers were some internet friends and my family so my audience was different. I’m not sure what my audience is now, but I am trying to at least write better content instead of rambling. Anyway, I thought I’d dig out some posts…
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A Good Day
Yesterday…. +Breakfast with my mom at Bacon’s with a Groupon coupon. Tried a salmon eggs benedict—delish! I love me some hollandaise! +A trip to the Parker County/Weatherford Farmers Market despite cooler weather and clouds. Bought some veggies for dinner and browsed at the plant selection. Can’t wait to go back when Parker County peaches come in season! +Dropped by Foch Street in west Ft. Worth, the ‘new’ upgraded area around W. 7th to stop by The Greener Good. Found them at Prairie Fest the other day and wanted to see their location. I had a 15% coupon from the fest and bought some bamboo ‘silver’ware to use in the hotel…
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Being Green
I’m trying to re-think my enviro ways a bit and go at it a little harder. When you see a coworker use the same styrofoam cup over and over and over again you kind of realize that you could do that too. Or, just bring the cups you were supposed to down to where you were going to work! Duh! My goals for the next two months when we go back to work: +Take my own leftover container when going to restaurants. +Always use my own cup or mug when I can. +Take recycling to a higher level and recycle everything I can. +Rethink items I buy or am thinking…
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Swamp Creatures
Today we had an amazing animal day despite our really crappy day of trying to get to our points to collect data. We ended up waist deep in thick floton (floating plant matter) in some areas and it was not pleasant. Sometime floton is thick enough to actually walk on, carefully, but this kind was not too thick and breaking through it was inevitable. That means you then post-hole through the floton moving at an incredibly slow pace. It was not pretty. However, we were able to get some awesome shots of animals today, including this alligator snapping turtle up on shore to lay eggs. She was ginormous!! And then…
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“Botany is the science in which plants are known by their aliases.”
Ah, the quote above is so true. (The quote is anonymous but I found it here.) If you’d asked me 9 years ago (9!!) when I graduated college that I’d be working with plants more often than not I would have probably laughed. After all I was a marine biology major! Now, that’s another rant into itself, marine biology, but don’t think you will get a great career in it unless you go to grad school or are willing to scrape by at cheap paying jobs. But, I did focus on wetlands in college and of course, here I am in wetlands. Except that all the plants I learned in…
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More Swamp Work
Where Chris and I are working reminds us a bit of a mix of the Everglades, which I think mentioned in the last Swamp Work post. It isn’t common to walk through thickets of cut grass, getting cut up by it as we walk through. And then there is the mud slogging. Sometimes we’re able to walk through areas with a mostly hard bottom, albeit a little muddy, but then we get in areas that are 1-2′ thick of floating plants and root matter and once you break through that it’s mud on the bottom. Then you slog through that. Previously these areas in the ‘glades would’ve been accessed by…