Thoughts
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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…
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Swamp Work
Chris and I have made it to our job site down here in S.E. Texas. I spent a little bit of time in Sabine Pass back in college when I was capturing and tagging Kemp’s ridley sea turtles. Luckily I am in a bigger area and not so near all of the petroleum refineries this time around. We’re working in the Big Thicket doing a wetland inventory for a bigger project that will be handled later. Much of the project area is similar to where Chris and I hiked in south Florida, similar to regions of Big Cypress and the Everglades and Water Conservation Areas. But, there are different plants…
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Pull up a seat—link love
These chairs used to be at my grandfather’s house and now sit at my parent’s house. Last summer they worked on getting him to a retirement complex and kept some key items from around the house and yard. They used to sit on an old concrete pad that my brother and I would play on growing up. ~*~Avgolemono Soup recipe…looks delicious! ~*~Spinach risotto recipe…made this one a week or so ago. Loved it! I’d only made risotto one other time and it took much longer than this one did. ~*~Patrice and her husband have made it official, they’ll be hiking southbound on the AT in June! It’s been awesome getting…
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Consumption and Conservation
Chris’ mom and step-dad have Netflix via their Wii and we’ve been watching a few movies from that lately. My brother also only has Netflix for his tv now, something Chris and I will probably be doing when we settle down again. We never paid for cable other than the very basic stations in conjunction with our internet. However, I enjoy watching movies and there are some tv shows on cable stations I enjoy so it will be nice to have Netflix in this aspect. We’ve been watching a few documentaries, two of which were AT related, Southbounders, though more docu-movie since it has actors, and the Nat Geo Wildspaces…
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Spring Link Roundup
Things are starting to flush out in green here and a few things are blooming. However, it is very dry here and we need some rain to get more spring wildflowers growing here in Texas. Flower photos to come! First up, I added a widget that allows you to bookmark a blog posting in a social networking site or to email it. It will be at the very end of a post. Yes, I know I am decades behind in this trend, but I thought it would be very useful for the posts that are most interesting (I’m hoping there are some!). So, there ya go! And a few links…
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Tame, Feral Albino Ferret
We went to Kathy and Randy’s friend Dar’s house last night for their Thursday Night Drinking Club. Dar is an animal lover and feeds the local cats, an opossum and apparently one day an albino ferret showed up. It came around last night for us to see and Chris took a camera phone photo of me with it. It had a nice, outside smell to it and was super sweet, yawned a few times for us and made me want a cute little ferret. I think Leo would eat it, though.
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2011–The Year of Possible???
It took me awhile to come up with my word for the year. 2011 is a year of a fresh, blank book with crisp white pages to be written. The first few chapters have been sketched out, the Florida Trail, but haven’t been written yet. The rest after that are full of possibilities. It’s Misti’s version of Choose Your Own Adventure. Aside: You have to check out my Flickr friend’s Florida panther photos!
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New Years Eve in downtown Ft. Worth
Having grown up in the suburbs of Ft. Worth I am partial to this town versus its neighbor Dallas. I love walking through the streets, checking out the old buildings and when the Tandy Center was still in existence, my friends and I would drive down to the subway that took you to the Tandy Center and we’d go shopping or ice skating and then walk around Main Street or Sundance Square. It’s an easily maneuverable city and in the past several years has seen a revitalization on the west side of the town. I particularly love the arts district on the west side and with the new shopping and…
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2010 in Review
In January: I learned how to use the reverse lens technique for taking macro photos—my newest obsession! I finished Ashleigh’s blanket a mere few days before she arrived. And then the little bit was born at 1lb 1oz on January 21st. Photo from my brother and SIL. It seems like so long ago but yesterday, too. We took our final trip to Dinner Island WMA with Kathy and Randy. In February: We took our last trip to Fakahatchee Strand to see the Cranichis mucosa orchid way out in the boonies of the park. We went to see the ghost orchids for the last time in Little Slough. We left Florida…