• Food

    A Week of Food

    I think a few people, Katie specifically, who were interested in what we made for our dinners since we pre-plan right now. Here’s a sampling of our meals for the past week: We kicked off with homemade pizza last week. Chris used a dough recipe he found in a cookbook from the library, a recipe we really love. I think it would even be a great flatbread/dipping bread, too. He made two crusts for us to each have our own pizzas the way we wanted them. He had a little extra dough so he made a few mini pesto pizzas to much on. Very good! A few weeks ago we…

  • Gardening

    Early September in the Garden

    Chris spends most mornings at the plot watering and doing random chores. Right now we’re waiting on compost before starting more seeds in other beds. Here’s a snapshot of what’s going on: Watermelon’s from a school’s plot. We took one of them but it was not quite ripe and very seedy. Chris hand pollinated a few watermelon flowers to see if he could get a few more out of the season. Brussels sprout seedlings…I think Chris said Long Island Improved is the variety. Sweet potato vine flower Remember it a few weeks ago? Sumter cucumbers. More cukes The corn and zucchini bed Little zucchini flowers!! I went around doing random…

  • Thoughts

    Goodbye Summer

    +Summer is gone. Well, not officially, the autumnal equinox is still a week or so away. But, the lighting is different, it gets dark earlier and light later. I don’t like the light later thing, rather I don’t like either one. I’d prefer if it got light at about 5:30am daily and got dark at about 10pm. Year round. At the very least, in the winter it should get dark only at about 8pm, no earlier. +Working on some posts for next week. I’ve got a list of adventure books that I’m writing about, plus I’ll have a post about a week of our pre-planned meals and how they work…

  • Creative,  Photography

    Evening at Brazos Bend SP

    The weekend we moved to the Houston area we went out to Brazos Bend State Park to check out the Perseids in the night sky. We set up on a short boardwalk to a large pond not too long before sunset. This time I bought my tripod because we were aiming for star and moon shots. We ended up not seeing but a tiny handful of meteors due to the very bright moon. I ended up converting most of my photos to black and white because I liked the feeling of them better. I even tried an HDR image, something I haven’t done before. I’ve mostly avoided it because I…

  • Local Adventures

    Local Adventures| Little Lake Creek Loop, Sam Houston National Forest

    On Labor Day weekend Chris and I took some time to explore trails in our area. We opted for the Little Lake Creek Loop in the Sam Houston National Forest in the Little Lake Creek Wilderness. We took several different trails including the Little Lake Creek Trail, the Pole Creek Trail and the main Lone Star Trail. We estimate it was about 13 miles, but aren’t quite sure on the mileage because we were using two different books to combine the trails together. I have to say I was very pleased with the condition of the trails and the forest is beautiful. We were also pleasantly rewarded with cooler, Fall-like…

  • Thoughts

    Evacuation

    Yesterday we were all ready to go to DFW for the weekend, it was about 2:30 pm. We were heading into town to return a RedBox before heading out and as we approached town we’d noticed that the fires were flaring up. It had been a peaceful morning with no smoke and we’d decided that it was probably ok to venture out. However, once we arrived in town, it was chaos with everyone standing at the intersections, in the gas station and grocery store parking lots, some with chairs, many with smart phone or cameras to take videos. Several fire engines from around the state arrived within minutes, probably moving…

  • Thoughts

    Autumnal Thoughts

    +It’s the end of a weird week. Started off with a holiday on Monday, which was wonderful and we got a 13+ mile hike in at the Sam Houston National Forest. Tuesday was busy at work and then yesterday I was in the field and had a very long day, not returning home until well after 8pm. Then the smoke from the nearby fires lingered in the air causing our office to let everyone work from home on Thursday if they had something to work on. Feeling a little disjointed after having some semblance of routine. +Excited to see the family this weekend as we go up to get the…

  • Texas,  Travel & Places

    Surfside

    Two weekends ago our friends Meghan and Jesse came down for a mini-vacation to Jesse’s parents’ beach house. They live in the D.C. metro area and so I used to try to see her when I went up to D.C. for work when I was in Florida, but the last time I saw them was in Harpers Ferry last summer while we were on the A.T. It was nice to meet up with them and their extended families and some of their friends. Here’s a bit of what we saw: The house is right on the intercoastal waterway so we watched barges and boats coming and going. Chris got some…