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How Oceanic Wilderness got its name.
My brother recently texted me a photo of a book Oceanic Wilderness, but published in 2007 long after I started blogging as Oceanic Wilderness. It made me think that perhaps I should do a post on how I even came up with this name since I rarely blog about anything ocean related. So. I have a degree in marine biology. I graduated in 2002 from Texas A&M University and was gung-ho on using that degree for what it was intended, not to teach or go into a field that was not marine related. *snort* look where I am now! It should be noted that most marine biology majors don’t really…
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Wildlife Encounters: Speckled King Snake
I was a bit late in getting the perfect shot of this speckled king snake. We were driving down a narrow dirt road through private property, returning from the Preserve when I noticed a bit late that the stick laying across the edge of the road was in fact a speckled king snake. A quick check in the side mirror after we’d passed it showed it moving but I wasn’t sure if it was because we’d just ran over it. We hopped out and found that it was just fine and had coiled up as we passed by. I ran back to the truck to pull the camera out of…
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Florida Trail Tales 9: S.R. 221 to S.R. 319
After resupplying in Shady Grove we got back on the trail through more private logging areas. This time we mostly followed well drained logging roads so there was no water involved—mostly! We had a few miles stretch between U.S. 221 before we crossed over U.S. 19. This was more of a major artery into Perry than the other road had been so hitching would have decent here. We took a short break to dry out our tent in the afternoon sun. We had continuous problems with dew on the tent and had to constantly take time in the morning or afternoon breaks to let it dry. We entered an area…
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Growing | Flowers
Here’s some eye candy, full of colors, of what was blooming two weeks ago in my parents’ yard. Verbena on the left and two kinds of spiderwort, Tridescantia, on the right. The amaryllis blooms were on their way out, but a few lingered. Clockwise: Oxalis, snapdragons, good question with a fly, phlox. Nicotiana, honeysuckle, columbine. I think the one on top is a coneflower that is getting ready to bloom but mom, if you’re reading, feel free to correct me! We’ve worked hard on getting the side garden going, adding new plants and seeds and I spent a few evenings pulling weeds. Chris has brought his variegated obsession (ok, I…
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Silent Sunday | Daisy Lou
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Texas Wildflowers: Spigelia marilandica, pinkroot
We’d just driven by some coral bean, Erythrina herbacea, when we spotted these flowers. Though we weren’t going terribly fast I initially thought they were the same until I realized they weren’t. Chris reversed the car and we stopped and looked at them for awhile before deciding we’d have to look them up later. This woodland plant likes loamy soils and occurs fairly widespread in the southeastern United States. There’s also another species with a white flower in Texas, Spigelia texana. It seems that it will grow in USDA zones 5 to at least 9 so there is wide variety for garden usage. The shape of this flower seems to…
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Retro Writings
I’ve been writing here in some variation this blog for 9 years now. I started on a blogspot account rambling some crazy stuff, doing some weird memes and well, a lot of non-sense. That I won’t show you, but I will dig up some goodies that you may have missed if you haven’t been reading since the good ol’ days! Blogging has evolved a lot and my initial readers were some internet friends and my family so my audience was different. I’m not sure what my audience is now, but I am trying to at least write better content instead of rambling. Anyway, I thought I’d dig out some posts…
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Edible in the garden
Since planting a lot of the vegetables in early March (mom planted some in February, too) here’s a follow-up on how things are going. Right now the garden in the backyard is great but at the plot—not so much! We’re not sure what the culprit is, too many coffee grounds, too much water, who knows, but everything is fairly stunted. The onions are just now starting to bulb whereas my brother’s plot has well bulbing onions. The potatoes withered and are basically dead, something ate the tops of the okra, and whereas everything else is alive and doing ok, they aren’t growing and seem to be stunted. It’s very strange.…
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Prairie Fest 2011 Recap
It’s been over a week since Prairie Fest happened and I’m just now getting around to blogging it, but here it is! It was a gorgeous day, albeit windy, but still beautiful. Storms plagued the evening, but we were there during the pre-lunch hours so it was great during that time. The place was crawling by the time we arrived and got even busier by the time we ran back after lunch to pick up some free plants from a scout troop that we forgot to pick up when we left the first time. Lots of dogs out and about in the park. The fest was set up primarily along…
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Silent Sunday | Green Anole