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Charon’s Garden Wilderness | Wichita Mountains NWR
Getting up to DFW for Christmas break was one of those is it going to happen? ordeals since Omicron broke out. Skipping out on a trip up there last December meant that I really wanted to get up there this year. Plus, my nephew was going to be my parent’s house for a week while his sister and parents went to New Mexico for a scouting ski trip. Which meant a lot of uninterrupted cousin play time for Forest and Grayson and in turn meant that Chris and I could likely slip away for a couple of days and let the grandparents wrangle the two boys for a few days.…
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First Day Hike – 2022
Chris and I got out on Saturday morning to get a First Day hike in at Tandy Hills. Every year the Friends of Tandy Hills hosts a First Day hike over the perimeter trail, which is usually done in a group. This year they continued last year’s option of going solo and emailing them and getting a certificate for completing it solo. I haven’t gotten around to submitting for a certificate but I will say it was a lovely 2.5 mile hike. Plus, we got to see sections of the new Broadcast Hill purchase that has expanded this little prairie remnant just east of downtown Fort Worth. As it was…
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Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas, folks! I’m surrounded by gifts and wrapping paper and have turned the last episode (on Netflix) of Call the Midwife on to watch. Chris is cooking bacon and cinnamon rolls and Forest is trying his new and improved Kindle tablet out downstairs. Dusty is giving himself a Christmas morning bath on the back of the couch and Rusty, well, I’m not sure where he has disappeared to. Probably looking for bacon! Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas and holiday season!
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Salvia madrensis Blooms + Bonus Orchid Spikes
A few years ago I bought a Salvia madrensis plant from the local nursery only to have it never make it to its late fall/winter blooming period as it ended up being nipped by a freeze. This year our very warm fall, soon-to-be winter, has allowed a new plant I bought earlier this year to actually spike and begin blooming. While a lot of the garden is attempting to rest, many plants are trucking along, though a bit weary. Salvia madrensis is not weary, as you can tell, and is rather lovely. I know eventually winter will catch up with us (I think?!) and it will move on into the…
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Thanksgiving Out West
I had better write something about Thanksgiving or else I will let the months pass by and I will never get around to writing here. And to be honest, I have never finished editing last Thanksgiving’s photos! Or writing here…or finishing up writing about Alaska. I truly have been trying to let go of my need to write chronologically and yet, here I am still fighting the desire. I believe the last time we set out for the Davis Mountains three years ago at Thanksgiving, we left on a Friday evening and stopped in Kerrville for the night. This time we left on Saturday morning, stopping in Sonora instead. Which…
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Winning at Writing
On a whim at the end of October I decided to actually participate in Nanowrimo. Back in the mid 2000s I gave it a half-hearted go and quit pretty early, enough that I didn’t even have any of it documented in my Nano account. I hadn’t logged in there in years and saw the last time I gave it a real whirl was in 2011, when I was writing my FT hiking memoir. I made it to something like 26K words, I believe, at that time. I accidentally deleted that after I logged in and tried to set up my new book. Oh well. The only way I was going…
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Friday 5 | 11/19/2021
It’s been a bit since I’ve done one of these, so let’s dive into five things I’ve been loving lately! +Lesson 6. Be wary of paramilitaries – via Timothy Snyder’s newsletter – I’ve listened to Mr. Snyder on a few podcast episodes, mostly to talk about his book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which is on my ever growing stack of books to read, but I recently found out he has a newsletter so I subscribed. The first one to come through was this audio clip about paramilitaries and it is extremely prescient to today’s times. +City Cast Houston – This is a podcast and newsletter hosted…
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Snapshots from Goose Island State Park
Our trip to Goose Island State Park in early October was lovely, though the mosquitoes and the heat were still ramped up onto “high”. But we made do and enjoyed what we could. The Goose Island Oak still stands tall, though quite weathered and who knows how many more decades (or centuries) it still has left in it. Wineflower, Boerhavia diffusa As is my usual these days, I am always on the prowl for plants and interesting fauna to add to my iNaturalist sightings. This interesting little plant I only took a few quick pictures of because I thought it was nothing of particular interest but if it is what…
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At last, the garden beds are done!
Well, it took a good six or so weeks of us putting our heads down on the weekend and just getting the work done, but the concrete beds are all poured! We finished the last one on Saturday afternoon and my back rejoices! The next steps will be to fill the remaining beds with soil, put some mulch down, and eventually get the perimeter beds done. Chris has figured out a way to make that work, I think, by creating smaller concrete sections and piecing them together. I’m just glad we can finally grow something out there once again! I’m really looking forward to a stellar tomato season! The beds…
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October Wanderings at Lake Creek Preserve
A few weeks ago we escaped the constant weekend work that has been pouring concrete raised beds and went for an early morning hike at Lake Creek Preserve. Chris and I had visited by ourselves in July while Forest was visiting grandparents and the mosquitoes were terrible then. I guess I didn’t end up writing about it here but you can read a post from Dec 2020 to see this park in a different season. Autumn has brought out the fungi once again and I got a kick out of this fungi upon fungi situation with the mold growing on the mushroom. There used to be a sign marking this…