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Blossoms
I wish that these blossoms would last longer than I know they will. The magnolia might be ‘Ann’, but we’re not sure. The tag disappeared off of the tree, however it might be lingering somewhere in our piles of garden tags and information….somewhere. The two ‘Yellow Bird’ magnolias have not bloomed yet. Even so, only one will. The second one was rammed down by a buck and we left it to determine if would sprout back in the spring. I’m still tempted to rip it out and put a bigger one back in its place. We have a ‘Jane’ magnolia as well but it hasn’t bloomed yet either. Down the…
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The Next Garden Phase
With spring weather appearing Chris and I have been outside in the yard working furiously on various projects. Our current project is what will hopefully be a quick perimeter flower bed around the man-cave. This area had previously been landscaped as per evidence we’ve found in the bed: soaker hoses, old stumps, telephone poles acting as a border, pieces of green plant tape, and other miscellaneous items garden related. We still had plenty of stone left from the other flower gardens that needed to be put to use and they have worked out perfectly for this section. Standing back further in the driveway, the new bed really does tie together…
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Pizza On The Grill
The first thing we cooked on our new grill was pizza. I had seen several people blogging about pizza on the grill and had been intrigued for awhile. We use a dough recipe from a Pampered Chef book that is usually made on a pizza stone, but it worked well on the grill. Bubbling up nice! A little olive oil on the top side… And then flip it over! The process is incredibly fast, so you really need to be on top of your game and have all ingredients ready and on hand. Pizza! I’ve now had grilled pizza three times in the span of two weeks and I am…
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Pineywoods Native Plant Center | Nature In The City
Over the weekend Chris and I were in Nacogdoches and spent some time around Stephen F. Austin State University and their outdoor botanical parks. The first one we stopped at was the Pineywoods Native Plant Center on the north side of the campus. The directions to get there were a little sketchy for our Garmin to figure out, but eventually we found it. There was a family event going on with kids running to different stations to learn about nature—at one station I saw something called the ‘Bird Olympics’. I wonder what that was about? After walking around the front part of the center we found out there were trails…
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Caddo Mounds State Historic Site
Over the weekend Chris and I were in Nacogdoches to attend a short bat seminar. Before we arrived there on Friday we detoured to the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site about 30 miles west of Nacogdoches. I’d seen the park on Google Earth and thought it would be interesting to check out. We arrived right as they were getting ready to close but were allowed in anyway. Unfortunately they’d already closed their register for the day, ($2 per person), so we dropped back by on our way out of town later in the weekend to pay. The man in charge was friendly and let us use their golf cart to…
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Spring…around the corner??
It sure seems that way with our forecast for the next 10 days being in the 60s and 70s. Even if spring isn’t around the corner, I think some plants in the yard believe it is. The crocus we planted last year are sprouting and blooming out in the right-of-way. In the edible garden a lot of our greens are bolting. There’s a plethora of yellow blooms out there, so much so that they are attracting our bees! One of the side by-products of the first trimester has been an aversion to vegetables. Therefore a lot of our greens have gone uneaten and I feel really guilty about that. I…
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I Wrote A Book!
Y’all. I have been slogging away on my Florida Trail memoir for 2.5 years. I swore way back when I started it in August 2011 that it’d only take a year and since then I had several ambitious moments when I said “I’m gonna finish it by such and such time” and those times came and went. But finally two days ago I wrote the last sentence. Or, well, the last sentence of my first draft. I have a feeling I’ll be adding an epilogue and reworking the ending. In all, the first draft is 111,100 words long. I really didn’t go into our hike with the intention of writing…
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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…
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Eagles & Snakes
Last weekend we were working on our penny porch (more on that soon!) when a bird flew by the edge of the pond and made a distinct call. Without looking up Chris said it was an eagle. The bird landed within view in a tree on our neighbor’s property and I went inside to get my camera. My photos aren’t good, they are more like ‘proof’ photos. The eagle is real! We hopped in the canoe to see about paddling closer to the tree they were on, however I couldn’t find them despite Chris continuing to tell me ‘There they are!’ This meant that my photos turned out pretty crappy,…
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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…