Texas
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Limpkin Invasion!
It was Saturday late afternoon in September before dinnertime, and Chris decided he needed to run to Dollar General to get a Monster energy drink to cure his lingering headache. Off he went and minutes later I get a phone call from him telling me about a Bird Alert. A Bird Alert is usually when we see a rare or uncommon bird in the area, something to get worked up about! We’re not birders per se, though my Chris is much more in tune with birds than I am. I gravitate towards the more gregarious species and generally ignore the little brown jobbers. Yes, I know this makes me a…
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Thanksgiving at Lake Brownwood State Park
The lake was very low, still feeling the effects of the drought. Don’t cut hearts into the prickly pears, y’all. We made Thanksgiving camping reservations a little later this year and paired with only having the four days off instead of taking the entire week, we needed to go somewhere mid-range, not making the trek to South Llano River SP or the Davis Mountains as per what we’ve done frequently in the last several years. Plus, we’d already hit the Davis Mtns back during Spring Break in 2023, though I could easily go there twice a year or more if time was available. Lake Brownwood is “out there” in that…
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Large-flowered False Foxglove, Aureolaria grandiflora | Wildflower Wednesday
Bumblebee on large-flowered false foxglove BONAP range iNat Observations Aureolaria grandiflora and it’s Aureolaria cousins have been on my to-see list for quite a while now. Imagine my surprise when Chris found them growing at Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve last July. I wasn’t expecting them to be there but I should have checked iNaturalist and paid more attention. The bumblebee video is from July at Watson. The other photos are from stumbling across the plant alongside the road in the Turkey Creek Unit of the Big Thicket last September. We’d just come off the Turkey Creek Trail and were walking back to the truck when Chris saw them growing…
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Meeting Nabalus barbatus, barbed rattlesnake root | Wildflower Wednesday
We went camping at Martin Dies Jr State Park in October, and while I had some usual suspects to check out on the trails there, I had a plant in mind I wanted to attempt to scout out in Jasper County—between Jasper and Kirbyville. Nabalus barbatus, aka barbed rattlesnake root, came on my radar a few years ago. It is relatively scattered and uncommon in east Texas as you can see in the map from iNaturalist above. Being uncommon and also trying to make sure I’m in the area at the right time for a bloom, well, it hadn’t worked out for a while to visit. I asked Chris to…
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Exploring the Big Woods Nature Trail
In December, after the three of us went to a volunteer workday at Watson, we stopped by the Big Woods Trail in Woodville at Heritage Village. I only found out this trail existed back in October when I did a different volunteer event at the Village with a couple of other Watson folks but at the time I didn’t have time to explore the trails. This time I had an agenda (hopefully more on that soon!) and I was also just curious about the trails, too. Here’s what we saw: There are less than a mile of trails but all of the little side trails make it feel as if…
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First Day Hike at Lake Arrowhead State Park
It was January 2022 the last time we did a First Day Hike, that time we tromped around Tandy Hills and the newly opened Broadcast Hill trail system. Last year my parents were at our house for New Year’s so we didn’t get out for a hike. This year we spent the week after Christmas in DFW before Chris and I drove to Wichita Falls on New Years Eve to stay at our favorite B&B, the Harrison House in Wichita Falls. We first stayed there in late 2021 after our Charon’s Garden Wilderness Hike in the Wichita mountains and stayed there again on our drive back from New Mexico in…
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Down but Not Out
*TLDR: Short backstory for what I’m talking about. Energy company created Fairfield Lake for cooling water for its power plant back in late 1960s. Early 1970s, they asked the state to put a state park in on part of the land. State leased the land for ‘free’ (re: yes, monetarily free to landowner but also consider the millions in infrastructure and staff put in by the state, but also the repercussions for the plant to pollute, tax incentives, etc, etc…so very much tit for tat here…) for 50 years. Energy company went bankrupt in mid 2010s, closed plant in 2018, decided to sell off portion of their property, 5000 acres…
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Mountain Pinks (Zeltnera beyrichii) at Pedernales Falls State Park
Turns out when you stop blogging and trying to feed things through social media you just stop sharing all of the good stuff you have backlogged. Which means I have many things from the last three years to share, plus I know I do have the tail-end of Alaska in 2019 to share, too. We encountered these mountain pinks on the south side Pedernales Falls State Park, some along CR 201 but the white ones were encountered along the Juniper Ridge Trail in the far southeast section of the park. This was back in June 2021 when we rented a cute AirBnB in Dripping Springs for my birthday. Now revisiting…
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May 2023 at the Big Thicket Pitcher Plant Bog
In May, we spent a weekend around the Big Thicket, the same weekend we went to the Solo Tract. There will be several posts from this weekend as I divvy them up and share here. On Saturday evening before we went to the Watson Preserve to do some mothing, we stopped in at the Big Thicket Pitcher Plant bog to eat dinner, drive-thru Whataburger. I don’t think I had been to the bog in the early evening before so it was nice seeing it in a different light, literally. Sarracenia alata, yellow pitcher plants in the Big Thicket’s Pitcher Plant Bog Rhexia lutea, yellow meadow beauty–my favorite of the Rhexia…
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The Big Thicket Solo Tract | May 2023
I first heard about the Solo Tract at the Big Thicket from Linda Leinen when she started a blog series called A Year of Going Solo earlier this year. Since seeing her posts, I have dipped into this tract myself twice, the most recent time back in May. It’s very close to the Big Thicket’s Interpretive Center which makes it easy to access if you are short on time but need to get into the Thicket for a few moments. Some highlights from that trip: Wooly rosemallow, Hibiscus lasiocarpos blooming. Tall green milkweed, Asclepias hirtella—I was very excited to see this one in bloom! I love when I come across…
