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The Egg Hunt
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed by email! Thanks for visiting!A few of my favorites from Easter, I took tons so I picked a few to share. If you are friends with me on FB the rest of the album is over there. Zoe had a blast looking for eggs, is now smart enough to organize and separated the plastic ones from the hard boiled ones, even sometimes eschewing the hard boiled ones for the plastic because she knew candy was inside. She even said one of the hardboiled ones was ugly and didn’t pick it up! It was brown on one side…
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Silent Sunday | Green Anole
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Texas Wildflowers: Clematis crispa, swamp leatherflower
We first saw this flower on the side of a levee in the Beaumont Unit of the Big Thicket National Preserve. We later found another plant on another roadside in the northern section of the same unit. The initial flower we saw had more purple in it compared to this nearly all white flower above. It appears they can vary in color from pink, blue, purple and white. Blooming throughout the spring to very early fall, Clematis crispa isn’t relegated only to Texas and occurs throughout the southeast. We found this plant among purple vetch and pinkroot, two plants that will be shown on another wildflower post later. The Lady…
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Florida Trail Tales 8: Suwanee River to U.S. 221
I forgot to mention in the last post that Shamrock Steve had shown up at our motel the evening before after spotting our boots out drying. He’d been doing some hiking around the Osceola National Forest area and had left us a message on our phone but we had been further than where he was planning to hike. He’d seen our note in the journal at the Madison shelter that we were planning on taking a zero in White Springs so he knew he’d catch up with us. After breakfast at the bbq joint that morning with Shamrock Steve we left White Springs. It was a sunny, beautiful morning as…
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A Good Day
Yesterday…. +Breakfast with my mom at Bacon’s with a Groupon coupon. Tried a salmon eggs benedict—delish! I love me some hollandaise! +A trip to the Parker County/Weatherford Farmers Market despite cooler weather and clouds. Bought some veggies for dinner and browsed at the plant selection. Can’t wait to go back when Parker County peaches come in season! +Dropped by Foch Street in west Ft. Worth, the ‘new’ upgraded area around W. 7th to stop by The Greener Good. Found them at Prairie Fest the other day and wanted to see their location. I had a 15% coupon from the fest and bought some bamboo ‘silver’ware to use in the hotel…
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Big Thicket Pitcher Plant Trail
On our way home from Beaumont we stopped by the Pitcher Plant Trail in the Turkey Creek Unit of the Big Thicket. We showed up just after sunrise, Chris was a bit miffed we didn’t get there a few minutes prior, but I think it worked out anyway. We’d been to this trail before last November but the pitcher plants weren’t blooming or looking too swift. Now they were blooming and looking great! It’s only about an hour from Beaumont so I’m sure we’ll end up there again during our next two months in Beaumont. I tried the white background thing again but it wasn’t that great, however I got…
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Being Green
I’m trying to re-think my enviro ways a bit and go at it a little harder. When you see a coworker use the same styrofoam cup over and over and over again you kind of realize that you could do that too. Or, just bring the cups you were supposed to down to where you were going to work! Duh! My goals for the next two months when we go back to work: +Take my own leftover container when going to restaurants. +Always use my own cup or mug when I can. +Take recycling to a higher level and recycle everything I can. +Rethink items I buy or am thinking…
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Where the 20 & 30 year olds have as much fun as the 2.5 year old.
We should’ve used a wax pencil but instead went with tape. Chris did the Z, I did the AT symbol. Mom had the best idea of buying a tablecloth to put down instead of splashing newspapers everywhere. Worked well, too, because I knocked a bowl of coloring over and so did Zoe. Zoe had a ton of fun! Stephanie, her mom and my SIL, said that the adults were having too much fun and it was supposed to be for the kid. I hadn’t done this in, oh, maybe 20 years, maybe less, so it was a blast revisiting a childhood craft. Curt had a lot of fun in between…
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Shangri-La Botanic Gardens: Orange, Tx
Great white egrets nesting Itea virginica and white ginger flower Bunny, something I don’t know, beaver dam, and green heron Pond covered in small and giant salvinia, an invasive exotic Banded water snake, Nerodia fasciata The same day we went to the Beaumont Botanic Gardens we drove over to Shangri-La Botanic Gardens to see what they had in store. This was an affordable garden, $6 entry for a regular garden tour and then $10 for a garden tour and a boat tour down a bayou to a few of their education centers and maybe to see a beaver dam or two! We opted for the $10 and arrived there when…
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Gayle’s Roses
My mother in law has beautiful roses and they are always blooming like crazy. She has some in the ground in the back yard but she also has these gigantic tubs of them in her driveway. One side of her driveway is lined in roses and the other in tomatoes. It’s a pretty neat way to drive into your garage! I’m a sucker for roses anyway. I would often go home from my grandmother’s house with a rose or two to stick in water at home. She had a great green thumb and it’s too bad she can’t get out and garden these days. Enjoy these Friday roses!