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Wildness | WG Jones State Forest
Heading east down the Middle Lake Trail (not to be confused with the Middle Lake Hiking Trail), I came to the Deep Gully Trail. To the north it was another wide dirt roadway, to the south I saw a fairly well worn but slightly overgrown singletrack. Feeling adventurous I decided to try the singletrack. Worst case, if it dead ended I’d just turn around. Planted pine stood in rows, sometimes not very obvious, and other times you noticed that this was a managed forest. I’m at a loss for identifying this pea. I was thinking Centrosema or Clitoria but I really just don’t know. I saw some down by our…
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Middle Lake Explorations | WG Jones State Forest
When I arrived at Middle Lake I saw several fishermen on the south end. I spotted a park bench on the east side of the lake and had to wade through calf deep grass to get there. A path was not worn well in this direction. Lake levels were down due to the summer and drought so I put my camera back down on the bench and edged closer to the water. I looked to the north and noticed more cypress trees, deciding that it was worth going off and exploring. A berm separated the lake and the smaller pond behind it to the north. The pond was down as…
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Fall Seedlings
Spinach mustard seedlings after the first round of thinning. I’m keeping the competition open to see who will be strongest. Arugula, not thinned yet. It is the first of the salad greens to be planted. Lettuce gets to be sown in about two weeks. Carrots, not thinned yet either. Soon. Not a seedling, but my sweet dumpling squash has bounced back. One plant was on the verge of failure after the rest of its friends bit the dust, but it recovered. I planted a few more seeds and they are doing well. The spaghetti squash I replanted is also doing well (photo still of the sweet dumpling). I’m beginning to…
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Late Summer Hike | WG Jones State Forest
Feeling the need to get out and stretch my legs, I drove to WG Jones State Forest, which is about 25 minutes from my house. It really isn’t that far away but all of the roads to get there are minor surface roads with a lot of traffic signals and speed limits are only as high as 55 in a few places. Nonetheless, it is a nice little bit of green space surrounded by suburbia. The town of The Woodlands abuts the forest to the west and south, though the park is technically in Conroe city limits. Chris and I went and explored the north portion of the park sometime…
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Paddling Galveston Island State Park
Last weekend Chris and I drove to Galveston for a short weekend stay over the Labor Day holiday. We headed for Galveston Island State Park to kayak their paddling trails on the bay side of the park. I hadn’t even used my kayak since getting it last Christmas and Chris hadn’t taken his out in awhile either. We launched from the Jenkins Bayou trailhead, driving the truck down a narrow two-track road to the launch to drop our kayaks off before parking back up the way in the parking lot. This made it a lot easier than wheeling our kayaks down the road like we’d thought we were going to…
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Propagating African Blue Basil
Ignore the old masking tape tags there…. I started taking cuttings of my African Blue Basil in hopes of containerizing it for the winter and replanting in the spring. The plant won’t take a freeze, as evidenced by the plant I bought last fall dying last winter, so I thought I’d help continue on this plant’s existence in our garden by rooting cuttings. Since this variety of basil is sterile, it does not produce seeds and cuttings are the only way to continue its life. Previously I had tried rooting them in water only to have the leaves brown in a few days. This time I just stuck them in…
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Compost Bin Update
As I was putting plant materials on the right side of the bin yesterday evening I thought that I’d post a short update on how the composting is going. You can read how it was built and what it looked like when it was started for a frame of reference. As you can see we’re adding to the right now and the left has reduced considerably. The left was having difficulties getting going but an addition or two of grass clippings from my dad (thanks Dad!) helped speed things up this summer. Paired with regular watering and turning, I think we’ll be able to use the left side in a…
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Backyard Birding
The waterbody we live on is named a lake but really it is more of a pond. There’s another pond adjacent to this one with a few other houses on it as well and it also has a lot of wildlife. Here you see a single roseate spoonbill and a plethora of black bellied whistling ducks. The ducks are very fun but noisy. Sometimes I can hear them inside my house at 11pm or later, just whistling away! I have no idea what they are up to at that hour, but so they are sometimes. (OK, according to multiple resources they are nocturnal feeders. There ya go!) I took a…
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Waiting for Fall
Just a few trees and plants are beginning to work themselves into fall foliage changes. Some are just calling summer ‘done’ and switching over to hibernation in favor of not putting up with the drought any longer. The ones that are truly beginning to turn colors are the mulberries like the one in our backyard. I remarked on Sprout Dispatch that I’m really enjoying this change, this tip of the switch between seasons. I am ready for Autumn. Puttering about the garden the other day I found the mimosa tree still putting out blooms. I’ve seen hummingbirds and swallowtail butterflies enjoying the nectar from the flowers. Walking near the edge…
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On Writing A Book
Writing is hard. Much more difficult than I imagined. And it’s not like I’m writing a completely made up fiction story here, I’m writing about something I actually did. Two years ago, late summer 2011 at about the same time of year it is now—the sun adjusting its position in the sky, the flora preparing for a time of rest—I decided I’d write about our thru-hike of the Florida Trail. Back when we started on the Appalachian Trail in March of 2010 I’d decided before the hike that I was not going to go into the hike with the intent on writing a book. There were already a lot of…