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Happy Birthday to my little bro!
Happy Birthday bro! 28 isn’t that bad! 🙂 Love you!
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Texas Wildflowers | Calopogon tuberosus, grass pink orchid
This orchid is a familiar orchid as we saw it often in Florida. It’s always nice to see familiar plants back here in Texas. This beautiful orchid, according to Wildflower.org gets it’s genus name from a Greek word meaning beautiful beard. You can definitely see that beautiful beard in the photos above! Calopogon tuberosus is a widespread ground orchid occurring in many states of the U.S. and is typically found growing in wet pine ecosystems. Flowering time is late spring to early summer—these were blooming in late May/early June at the Watson Preserve. As always with orchids, you should never collect them from the wild and find a reputable source…
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Perched Swallowtailed Kites
+On our second to last day of work on the Neches River and the Beaumont Unit of the Big Thicket National Preserve our animal score for the day were these perching swallowtailed kites. +Only one other time have I ever seen these birds perched, once on the 8 miles of the Florida Trail between Loop Road and the Oasis Visitor Center several years ago. Normally they are constantly flying, searching for lizards to pick off on the trees. +I am so happy to have these birds here in SE Texas so that I can visit them every year when they migrate through. I was definitely bummed to have left Florida…
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“Decide what to be and go be it”
My musical obsession of late has been The Avett Brothers and particularly their song Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise and of course the lyrics, Decide what to be and go be it. So, I’m deciding what to be. I am a runner: It keeps nagging at me, this running thing. It was a minor addiction for a few years in 2002-2005 and forgotten. A few 5Ks were run and then I just stopped. But I’ve been running now. I’m following a plan and being strict. No starting over, just picking up where I left off if I miss a few days. I figure I can walk 3300…
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Bird Butts, A Swim and a Gigantic Cypress
More from our work adventures. Only a few more days out here in the Big Thicket. We came across a similar nest last week but didn’t get a photo. This time we stopped to peek in… There were bird butts in there! The term ‘bird butts’ stems from ‘pony butt’ a baby pony we met in the Grayson Highlands on the AT. It carried over to my niece so she would want to see “pony butt” on video. Now any baby animal ends up with ‘butt’ at the end. So, baby bird butts were silently whining for their mom and their unhatched sibling was waiting patiently to come out (hopefully!)…
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2011 Summer Interview Series | Chel Micheline at Ginger Blue
I first came into contact with Chel via Marc and Eliana when they stopped over at Chel and Tom’s house on their cross country road trip a few years ago. I started reading her blog and became hooked and through commenting and friending on Facebook we’ve become internet friends. It’s a shame I never actually got to meet up with her while I was living in Florida! She’s got some fantastic bead work and has started a new project called the Common Miracles project. Read on! First off, give us an idea of who you are, why you blog and your geographic location. I recently turned 37 (but I REALLY…
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Blue, Green, Yellow and Complete!
I inched along long enough that I finally finished the shawl! I’m not quite sure when I will ever wear this. Maybe it will be a take to the movies shawl or a grab to fancy up something when I go out shawl. I dunno… It would also make a great scarf, too, so I like that aspect of it. The yarn grew on me despite being quite slippery at first. I still had some dropped stitches and would have to back track but it worked out well in the end. YAY! I go through creative cycles where I make, make, make and then read, read, read…it’s time for the…
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Texas Wildflowers | Rosa bracteata, McCartney Rose
We initially saw these roses growing along Texas Point NWR and later discovered they are an invasive rose. Originally from China they join a host of other roses that have naturalized across the south, including the Cherokee rose and prairie rose. While they are beautiful, they are like other invasives and smother out native vegetation. Definitely think twice before planting or starting these plants in your own yard and opt for a non-invasive rose! This guy in Tampa had a tree sized McCartney rose! Yikes! More information: +Texas invasives +Galveston Bay invasives +USDA plant database
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June in the Garden
I had to go home a few weeks ago for an interview so I snagged a few photos of my parent’s backyard while I was at it. The tomatoes were doing great and had a ‘doh’ moment and forgot to take any back with me to Beaumont. Anyway here’s a mini-tour. Hoping some are still on the vines when I get home at the end of next week. A tiny little spider hanging with the four o’clocks I started from seed. The corner bed has become a jungle so I wanted to see how it felt looking up. Part of the tomatoes… Moss rose that reseeded itself in one of…
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Florida Trail Tales 14: Navarre to Fort Pickens
As we crossed over the bridge at Navarre, across Santa Rosa sound, to Santa Rosa island, we had to squish against the side railing of the bridge for bicyclists who couldn’t manage to get off and walk their bike and share the path and fisherman reluctant to move their poles. Where’s the common courtesy?! We picked our poles up off the grate that was beneath our feet and I pretended I couldn’t see below and notice the ocean. Somehow over the years I’ve developed a small fear of heights, nothing big, only if I think hard about it do I get a little nutty. I was glad to get off…