• Family,  Thoughts

    Hello!

    If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed by email! Thanks for visiting!Hi there! I’ve been super busy and now that I’ve started a temporary job I will be working 10+ hour days for the next whenever. Yep, whenever. We were told 10 on, 4 off, but apparently that isn’t quite the way it works. Some people have been working three weeks on, a week off, some are on 47 days straight. I dunno, but I’ll do this for awhile but I am hoping to hear from something with a better schedule! Until then I am spending evenings working on photos and who knows what…

  • Botanic Gardens

    Grapevine Botanic Gardens

    Driving around Grapevine the other day we saw a sign for the Grapevine Botanic Gardens and for as long as I’ve been in Texas (minus the 8 years in Florida) I had no idea they existed. We thought they might charge to get in, but nope, they are free! Honestly, I loved it more than some larger botanic gardens I’ve been to around here. I think an oak hairstreak, Satyrium favonius on mist flower. Oakleaf hydrangea I was very happy to smell this butterfly ginger. I missed having it this year in my yard. One of my favorite plants in the garden for scent; strong and heady. They had quite…

  • Photography

    Love That Shot Contest

    I normally don’t do contests and almost didn’t enter this one, but I decided that even though I don’t really like Photoshop Actions, I could handle winning some of the black and white actions that are available since I love me some black and white as seen in my submission below. Taken a few weeks ago in September in east Texas, and seen on my blog a few posts ago, this is my friend Kylen! Yes, 2 year olds can be friends! All I did to this shot was desaturate it, bump up the contrast and blacks and adjust a little bit of ISO. I’m pretty simple with what I…

  • Nature in the City

    Nature in the City: Katie’s Woods

    Katie’s Woods Park After visiting the Trophy Club Park we drove around Lake Grapevine and saw a sign for Katie’s Woods. We decided to take a peek. Snakes??? Sweet! Too bad we didn’t see any. I spotted this flower to take a shot when I noticed the little friend underneath the petal there on the right. I moved the flower ’round and ’round to get some shots of what I believe to be Misumenops celer. I loved this little purple flower, thinking it was a violet, but the rest of the plant is distinctively non-violet. Any ideas? We took the trails alongside the lake. Several fishermen were hoping to catch…

  • Nature in the City

    Nature in the City: Trophy Club Park

    Trophy Club Park at Lake Grapevine Sunday morning we went for a hike and picture adventure at Trophy Club Park. There is a fee and all of that information is in the link above. We had a nice hike, though we had to share the trails with off road vehicles. We chose to start off in the far parking lot, C, and walk along the lake. We stopped to take a look at some bugs. I narrowed this one down to the leaf footed bug family, Family Coreidae. Some bug eyes…. Another one munching on a flower. The light was gorgeous coming from the east through the grasses that are…

  • Gardening,  Photography,  Thoughts

    Monday Musings: Tomatoes, Jobs and Photos

    This cool weather has me missing tomato season in Florida. This time of year we would have already started our seeds and they would be growing and starting to bloom. Our biggest harvests would be from December to February. Chiot’s Run was showing some seed saving recently and it had me dreaming about tomatoes. I miss the Ball jars lining our sink and kitchen window, fermenting and cleaning off the left over tomato bits. Oh, they stunk to high heaven when you took the plastic off, but the beautiful little seed pearls were what we wanted for growing next year. All of my seeds are tucked away in our storage…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010

    Trail Tales 7: Southern Virginia (Damascus to Pearisburg)

    Relevant posts: 500 Miles Ponies Magic Bus Section Hikers A Beary Special Post Beautiful Woodshole Hostel Well, I did find a few photos from Damascus, this one being The Place, the hostel we stayed at. When we arrived in town we ran into Pirate and his friend at the outfitter and they told us where to find the hostel, next to the burning pile of rubble. Sure enough there was a pile of rubble as the house next door had burned down! The trail goes straight through Damascus so it is easy to stop in and resupply. Apparently after talking to a few other hikers we learned that the AT…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010

    Trail Tales 6: Erwin to Damascus

    Pertinent Posts: V is for Virginia 400 Amy and Me TN/Virginia Border Laurel Creek Falls Leaving Erwin was difficult as usual when leaving a town. Spring was coming out in Erwin and the town was one of the bigger towns we’d been to thus far, complete with a Sonic and Walgreens. We left out and the weather was just beuatiful. The trail out of town was gentle and beautiful, walking along creeks for quite a way. Early on there were still quite a bit of blown downs on the trail, some creating unique climbing situations, others with trails down or up and around the trees. After climbing up Beauty Spot,…

  • Friends,  Photography

    Little Ones—Portrait Session

    In my quest to find other kids to take photos of I thought about my friend Candace (Annekind to you forum folks) who had moved to the area near where my in-laws live. I met her at a local park yesterday and took some shots of her 2.5 year old and 3 month old. It was really fun to catch up with her and to hang out with some sweet little kids. In a ‘small world’ sort of deal, a few months ago my friend Amanda from highschool put out an APB for people to come to her for some free portrait sessions while she was portfolio building. I’d just…

  • Family,  Thoughts

    The Ocean

    Yesterday Zoe got to play in her pool, she is such a water baby. While jumping up and down to give me some big splashes she tells me that she’s swimming in the ocean. The girl has imagination! She’s swimming in a teeny tiny kids pool and think she’s in the ocean! And I started thinking, what if we all turned our pools into oceans? I If we turned our city houses into farm houses? If our neighborhood walks became ridge walks in the woods? Or if we became so excited about seeing the moon in the middle of the day we grab the nearest person to share it with?…