-
Grabbing Hold of The Feeling
We had stayed up beyond midnight the night before, talking and catching up despite that it was well passed our middle aged bedtimes. Bleary-eyed I woke up on Saturday morning as the sun broke through the curtain in the loft upstairs. I rolled over a couple of times, got on my phone to distract myself, and then finally convinced myself that I should get out of bed and do the thing I wanted to do, which was explore the pastures on the property of the AirBnB we were staying at. Downstairs, Michelle and Stephanie were already awake. Steph had made coffee and the two of them were talking quietly while…
-
Mid-Summer Nature Tidbits | Neighborhood Nature
Summer is slipping away and I feel like I have had my head down and haven’t been enjoying nature the last couple of weeks. Everything is happening in a blur. But the monarchs are here again, not that they totally left this summer, but we’ve had more hanging around this last week than I’ve seen since spring. And they’ve been leaving evidence of their progeny all over the place. I get a kick out of watching them methodically chow down on a milkweed leaf! I have not been able to identify this caterpillar yet. I found it on the path leading to our office and moved it over to a…
-
July 2021 Rewind
It’s feels like the first of July was in one year and the end of it was in another. What a long month it was! Apparently at the first of the month I was hanging out with a toad friend from the yard. Thank goodness for photos because I had completely forgotten about this happening! Before Chris and I left for San Antonio the weekend of the 4th I noticed that the pipevine chrysalis that was on Chris’ man-cave door had eclosed with a very fresh pipevine swallowtail butterfly. I was loading stuff into the car and noticed it was clinging to the chrysalis so I went in to grab…
-
Another Trip Around the Sun
The last five weeks have been a whirlwind of go-go-go! We have been making up for our lack of going in 2020. We spent two weekends up in DFW, then Chris and I went to San Antonio solo, and then we picked Forest up from my parents who met us in Waco and then the three of us traveled down to Dripping Springs for my birthday weekend. Another trip around the sun! Last weekend Forest and I were home by ourselves as Chris was in Mississippi working so we were able to recuperate somewhat from all of that busyness. But two weekends away in AirBnBs were magnificent and the little…
-
June 2021 Rewind
June blew by and July feels like it is on the precipice of doing the same. But the month started of with cuddles with the cats and has continued as the cats have gotten more used to us since moving into the house in April. Early in June, Forest’s school district had a reading event and book fair. It was a great way to kick off the summer and Forest was able to get a ton of books in some of the games they had plus the bookfair was buy one get one free! Lots of new books for a budding reader! In addition, he was very intrigued with the…
-
The Garden in June (2021)
This month has felt very long and also incredibly short. It kicked off with this momma wolf spider out in the edible garden. I was trying to pull the pennywort that had taken over one of the perimeter beds when she scurried out with her babies. I quickly took some photos and let her be. And it wouldn’t be a spring season without a little too much water. After a rather soggy May and then a week of some heavier rain that lingered in early June, we had some minor flooding of the yard and pond fringe. Then of course, as per normal, we dried out and had nothing for…
-
Searching for Denali
After leaving the Denali Highway way back in September of 2019, we managed to get a glimpse of Denali itself from the Parks Highway one of the pull-offs at Denali State Park. I took quite a few photos from the Denali Highway facing west, thinking that perhaps there in the haze that I could see Denali. But of course once we got to the state park and looked from there it was quite clear I was imagining things before then! And even in these photos you can’t see the entire mountain because it is still socked in the clouds. But—it was a glimpse! And now that our friends Patrice and…
-
Morning Rainshower
*Alright, email readers of this blog! I have finally managed to switch you off of Feedburner and onto Mailchimp! Whenever a new blog post is out it is set to send out at noon central time so keep an eye out in your email and be sure to make sure your email filter doesn’t send it to spam. Let me know if you are having problems reading it and I can adjust font size and such (I think!)* Just a quick post for today so this blog situation can get sorted in the email, but I took this photo over Memorial Day weekend in Galveston when we dodged a mid-morning…
-
May 2021 Rewind
My online friend Danielle at Suwannee Rose does these lovely monthly wrap-up posts for the month, such as April In Bloom. So, I’m going to borrow her idea and replicate that here for a few months until I get the inspiration to write again more. I’ve actually had the inkling to post a few times but then the effort involved to sit down and type it all out sounded terrible so I moved on. To kick off the month, my parents came down for Mother’s Day weekend. It was their first visit since March 2020 and Forest was thrilled to have them down again, as was I. Thank you vaccines!…
-
Wet and Soggy on the Lone Star Trail (Phelps Segment)
Earlier this year my friend Keely had inquired if I wanted to attempt to go backpacking with her and another friend. This was before vaccines were prevalent and at that point I hadn’t had mine, so I declined. Well, a few weeks ago she emailed again and asked if I had my vaccine yet and if I wanted to go backpacking. Of course I did! We pinned down a date and of course as the time got closer the rain chances went up. In fact, it’s been rainy for the last week! First it was thunderstorms coming from the west and then an unnamed tropical system came up from the…