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Texas Wildflowers | Clematis texensis
First we were into passiflora (still are), but now we’ve found clematis! This is another game of once you see one plant you start seeing them everywhere! These were shot at Lost Maples State Natural Area in November. +Information via the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. They say blooming time is March through July….well, November is quite outside of that window so I don’t know it if was a freak of nature or what for them to be blooming at that time of year. +There are some cultivars of this species apparently, Duchess of Albany, Princess Diana, Gravetye Beauty were a couple I saw online.
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Snail Mail
A couple of months ago the mailbox that our house came with was halfway knocked off its post. One of our neighbor’s was knocked off as well. At first I thought a: Drunk Driver or b: Teenagers With Too Much Time On Their Hands. But then Chris saw the deep scrape marks in the asphalt and decided it might have been the city lawnmower guy when he was mowing the ROW area. No matter, we wanted a new mailbox anyway and it took us forever to decide on one. I don’t like generic mailboxes. I don’t mind the ones bricked in but our house isn’t brick so it would look…
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Texas Wildflowers | Maurandella antirrhiniflora
How ’bout those pearly whites, there? Chris had heard about snapdragon vines before and I *think* maybe we have seen them at a nursery or something, but we were walking the trails at Lost Maples State Natural Area a couple of months ago when Chris bent down to check out a plant that he thought could be the snapdragon vine. Well, all it took was verifying that it was indeed the plant for us to realize that it was *everywhere*. Funny how plants blend right in and pop out at the right moment only to be seen everywhere you look. A pretty interesting native, don’t you think? +Information from the…
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Morning Along Can Creek | Lost Maples State Natural Area
We got up early from our campsite in order to take our time driving back home, a good five hour drive without stops. On our way into Vanderpool we had seen several plant nurseries and other random places we wanted to stop, so in order to do that we arose early while the fog was still lingering and the crowds were snug in their sleeping bags. It would be an easy hike out along mostly flat trail once we descended the bluff. Our exit route was via Can Creek and the West Trail, merging with the East Trail and dumping back out at the main entrance road. We arrived at…
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Poking Around Campsite H | Lost Maples State Natural Area
Since our hiking mileage wasn’t large, maybe six miles or something, we took several breaks during the hike to campsite H. We got behind a slow group of hikers on a very narrow trail, stopped to check out a clematis, and refilled our water at the last place before climbing up the bluff. It was the furthest campsite out at the park and I thought maybe we’d be alone….which of course was dumb of me to think. The campsite is up a bluff and we took the long way around to see what the rest of the trail in that area looked like. Unfortunately we were mostly socked in with…
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Along the West Trail & Dry Can Creek | Lost Maples State Natural Area
Missed a post? See these: Along the Sabinal, Hale Hollow Creek, The View, and Monkey Rock. I had thought that perhaps when we left the main area of the park and embarked on the West Trail that we would leave the crowds behind. There was a slight incline as we hiked up the trail which I thought might deter folks, and for awhile we didn’t see anyone. Then we saw one family, then another, and another until we knew this was not going to be our time for peace. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled by going to so many natural areas and not seeing a soul, or very few at least.…
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Grey Days
Yellow bird magnolia buds….these are going to be gorgeous! Winter thyme and a bunch of other seeds We had a sulphur and a moth hanging around during the cold days, not moving for a long time. Definitely alive, just chilling until it was warm enough to fly. One of the last weekends that Chris worked in Beaumont, we went to a plant nursery outside of Beaumont on Tx 105. I’ll have to dig up the name of the place, but we walked around the whole nursery wanting a lot of things but not putting anything on our list of things to buy until we walked in the main store area…
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Action(s) for 2013
Now that we have been in our house for six months I feel like I can have a clear head again. The unpacking, updating, painting, this-and-that of moving into a house is time consuming and we’ll be doing it for awhile. However, my studio is basically complete. All I need to paint is a baseboard on the wall that I did not paint white and the painting is complete. The general organization is done and I just need to buy some frames to hang some art. Hopefully I’ll be acquiring more art and creating more art to hang on the walls in the future. Since that is done, I have…
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2012 In Review
My word for 2012 was Prolific. I’d say the first half of the year was pretty good word wise but the last half went downhill, unless you count endless work on the house and yard as being prolific! I definitely find that the first half of any year is better word-wise but some years are better than others. The year I turned 28 I had a list of 28 things I wanted to do. I made my way through the list pretty well but didn’t manage to get them all done. Oh well, but the point was having something tangible, writing actual goals down instead of something general. Picking a…
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The Buzz
Yesterday our beehive arrived! Yep, we’re going to delve into the world of beekeeping! A couple of weekends ago I went to a beekeeping forum at one of our local nurseries and it really set us off about getting our bees set up for the spring. We put our order in with R. Weaver Apiaries and we can pick them up in Navasota, Tx on April 13th! Chris put the hive together yesterday and will be adding a few things to make it nicer over the coming weeks, including building a stand for it. As for what else is going on around here, nothing that I can think of worth…