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Texas Wildflowers | Vernonia missurica, Missouri ironweed
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed by email! Thanks for visiting! While we were doing our field work in the Big Thicket this late spring and early summer we kept coming across this plant in its pre-blooming stage. No one could figure it out until finally it was identified by Ron Lance. And not much later the plant started blooming and it was beautiful! The tell-tale white stripe in the leaves helped us identify it later on without blooms. This particular plant was photographed at Tandy Hills. I was relieved to see a plant I knew among the many unknown prairie plants that…
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The Fall Crops
Our new place doesn’t really offer us any place to grow anything, though our landlord, who lives next door, offered to till up some space for us. Since we are only hoping to stay six months before finding a place to buy we didn’t want to mess up his yard for that short period of time. So, Chris did some research and found the local community garden, Helping Hands. We are set up with two of our own personal plots and will be taking care of three additional plots until someone else gets those. In addition to growing our own vegetables and fruits, leftovers and extras will go to the…
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Wordless Wednesday | Moody Gardens Rainforest Part I
*Ok, nearly wordless, but the next several Wednesdays will be from the trip, so they will be wordless. I worked at Moody Gardens in 2001-2002, my senior year of college, as an Interpretive Naturalist, the people who man the touch tanks and talk about the exhibits. We recently went back for a visit a few months ago. The aquarium was still the same, the same smell, the same sounds, and mostly the same exhibits, but the rainforest was completely re-done after Hurricane Ike did some flood damage to it a few years ago. Here’s some of what we saw.*
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Pumpkin Beginnings
Chris planted pumpkins seeds at my mom and dad’s house before we moved. Here’s a bit of the chronology of the first few weeks. We’re guessing they will be ready around Thanksgiving. I’ve never had luck with pumpkins in Florida, bugs got to them fast and even if they lived long enough to bloom, nothing was pollinated. I’m interested to see what kind of luck with have with these. Casper and Big Max were the seeds of choice. Anyone had luck with pumpkins? I’m interested in organic methods, too. Please share!
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Local Flavor
Last weekend we moved to our new house in far-far-far Northwest Houston. So far out we’re not even in Harris county, but we’re close enough to all of the far suburbs that it is easier to call it Houston. Except we’re in the ‘country’. There are more country-ish places out there, but this is pretty much the most country place we’ve ever lived except the hotel we stayed at in San Augustine, Tx last fall for work. *That* was country. We were out in the nearest big town to us, Tomball, checking on various things like furniture and getting the various sundry items to fill up the house so it…
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Grayson
My nephew was born on Thursday making me an aunt for the third time. Chris and I drove back to DFW for the weekend to spend time with the family and meet the latest member of the clan. He is *so* sweet! I was glad that Chris got to see him as an infant since he did not meet Zoe, our niece, until she was a year and a half. I took a zillion photos but I pulled these out quickly to post. I’ll be going through more of them this week. Low light conditions for the most part kept me at ISO 800 or 1600, though I was able…
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Texas Wildflowers | Eustoma exaltatum ssp. russellianum, Texas bluebells
This annual Texas native is not very common, though we did see the ones shown above at Tandy Hills. The subtle blue-purple flower deserves more respect than it gets, being out shown by other grand Texas natives like the bluebonnet. You may know this genus as also Lisianthus, which can be found at garden centers. Wildflower.org suggests their rarity is due to their beautiful stature and having been picked too much that they cannot reseed. In the gardening world there are many varieties and cultivars, so you’ll be able to find some variety. More information: +A really good write up on the Eustoma genus and the differences regarding the species.…
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The Folks | Then & Now
I was digging through some old photo albums the other day looking for photos for the front of some houses (another blog series I’m contemplating) and found a few old photos of my parents that I loved. On their wedding day. Mom recently went through her clothes and was going to get rid of her wedding dress. At the last minute I pulled it out of the donation pile, though I ended up leaving dad’s leisure suit in. I should’ve gotten it too. I need to get rid of my wedding dress before I have a kid who wants to take it out of the donation pile. I love this…
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Wordless Wednesday | Firestone Building Downtown Fort Worth
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Nature in the City | Cross Timbers Park
I wanted to get out for a walk a few weekends ago and the closest natural area that I knew of was Cross Timbers Park in the same park as Adventure World. For those in the North Richland Hills/Northeast Tarrant County this area you might be familiar to you. I’ve been to a few times in the past while geocaching and I think my brother might have done/helped an Eagle Scout project there. If you need a nature fix, this is a great place with some trails that let you experience it. It was much too hot for wildlife, so we didn’t see anything, not even a snake! And the…