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The Adventure I Wasn’t Planning On
It’s been a rainy last several days, really starting last weekend it has rained daily in some capacity. On Wednesday, my birthday, we had a good downpour for several hours and the local creeks swelled towards the top of their banks, and the pond in front of my house rose just a bit, maybe covering a little of the fringe wetland around the perimeter as it became more muddy. Chris came home from his field project because the day had been cancelled for rain and so he could spent my birthday evening with me. I remarked that with all the rain that it didn’t seem that the pond really was…
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Baloo | A Pencil Drawing
Whenever I think of myself as an artist I usually feel like a fraud. The simple fact is that this is the first thing I’ve drawn in a year. The last thing I drew was a sunflower for my sister in law and the month before that a hollyhock pastel. The drawing of this sweet doggie is titled Baloo after the man himself. If you’ve only been reading in the last two years and haven’t followed during my life in Florida, then you wouldn’t know that Chris and I dog-sat this fella for nearly a year and a half with many other fun stays along the way. We became his…
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Welcome To Our (In Progress) Home
Well, I’m barely coming up for air, I still have a lot to do around here and at our old place. I forsee weeks and week of work! This is the part of the process that drives me nuts for so long, the constant organizing, cleaning and moving. Thankfully we did not get our POD when we thought we would, it arrives next weekend. It would have been even more mayhem if we had of received it. Chris had to cut our counter in order for a regular sized fridge to work. The delivery guys came and then promptly told me it still wouldn’t fit. I could have cried. I…
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Paynes Prairie
I’m taking this week to move into a new house so new writing is scarce. I thought I would find some long-lost posts from before I moved my blog to its current format. This one is from early 2009. Enjoy! This past weekend we ventured up to Gainesville to meet Marc and Eliana since they had made it back to Florida. Chris and I had been wanting to go up to Payne’s Prairie for awhile and so we asked them if they would like to meet us and check it out. Our main reason was that we wanted to see some whooping cranes. Whoopers are highly endangered birds, with only…
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Day 1: Tomato Season 2008-2009
I’m taking this week to move into a new house so new writing is scarce. I thought I would find some long-lost posts from before I moved my blog to its current format. Enjoy! This is what the yard looked like, finally, after around six or so hours of working on it yesterday. Chris started before I did, working to right the ylang-ylang tree that has been battling itself these past two weeks, as it kept falling over. It originally was in a too small pot and a gust of wind during a rain storm blew it over, damaging one of the roots that had went into the ground from…
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Florida Trail: Seminole Reservation to I-75
I’m taking this week to move into a new house so new writing is scarce. I thought I would find some long-lost posts from before I moved my blog to its current format. Chris and I did this hike in January 2009 prior to thinking about hiking the Appalachian Trail (or even the Florida Trail)—this was on my list of things to do during my 28th year. On New Years Day our friend David and his kids dropped Chris and I off at our north entrance to where we were going to hike southbound through the Seminole Big Cypress Reservation, enter Big Cypress National Preserve, stay for a night and…
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A Ghost Orchid Time Lapse
I’m taking this week to move into a new house so new writing is scarce. I thought I would find some long-lost posts from before I moved my blog to its current format. Enjoy! In 2007 Chris found Little Slough an area in south Florida with 607 ghost orchids. We spent several summers documenting the orchids and enjoying our slough. Chris put together this time lapse a few summers ago. Enjoy!
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How to Pollinate a Passiflora Vine
I’m taking this week to move into a new house so new writing is scarce. I thought I would find some long-lost posts from before I moved my blog to its current format. Enjoy! The vine grew along our fence in Florida and we loved having a couple of varieties of passiflora. As you can see in the last photo we harvested quite a bit, too! I’m hoping I will be able to grow some at our new place along with the other edibles we hope to keep! Have you grown passionvine?
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Happy Birthday Bro
Happy Birthday Bro. 29 isn’t so bad…Enjoy it! Curtis posted this on Facebook a few weeks ago and I got a good laugh out of it. Gauging by the time on the clock, I’m thinking this was a first day of a school photo, maybe 7th of 8th grade for me and 4th of 5th grade for him. We were stylin’!
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The Exploding Melon Bed
I should have taken a photo of this bed a couple of days ago before I trimmed up the vine on the left hand side, closest to the beans. It’s already impossible to walk between the bed and the eggplants on the right, but I really didn’t want to have both sides overtaken. The melon in this bed is the Bidwell Casaba melon—and apparently tastes like orange sherbet. Two weeks ago we had several afternoons of thunderstorms which provided a much needed drenching for the beds. In turn the beds responded by exploding in new growth. This one has just kept on going. The vines of the melon aren’t the…