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Adapting
When things get hectic, blogging is the first thing that goes for me. It always has. I’ve tried to keep up during hard times over the years, the biggest adaptation happening when Forest was born to some themed posts to keep me going. And it works, usually. I certainly don’t want to quit writing here. When you’ve been putting your writing online in some form since 2002 it is hard to give it up because you’ve turned into one of those hardcore old-style bloggers and, well, I don’t want to stop blogging yet. But….writing and reading blogs has been more time consuming this last year. And I need to adapt…
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Back to the Pitcher Plant Trail
Let’s pretend this isn’t a dusty post languishing in my drafts folder since last summer! I wanted to post it a few months ago but lacked the interest in getting it out. And seeing as I took these photos in June 2020 and a new June is rapidly approaching I figured I might as well get this one up. And I am itching to get back to the Big Thicket soon, too. I am leaning towards this being a Carolina satyr Hermeuptychia sosybius however Intricate Satyrs are very similar and this one has that look like it is just slightly different and could be an Intricate. Going through my iNaturalist…
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Life Lately | April 2021
Thinking: The last time I did one of these was in December and I lamented then that I hadn’t done one since August. I don’t have a very good track record lately, do I? Well, a lot has been going on behind the scenes. First off, we have new feline overlords! I first found Rusty and Dusty on the Petfinder app back in January. Forest and I had started looking for cats and I was favoriting ones that were kid friendly and those who were in bonded pairs. These two were brothers and they had/have three sisters. Chris wanted to wait until we took our Arkansas trip before we started…
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Guadalupe River Shoreline Explorations | Guadalupe River State Park
Hi there. It’s been a few weeks. I haven’t felt much like writing here and to be honest, I’ve got a huge back log of things to share from not only Thanksgiving but I still have Alaska items to share, and now I have posts from Arkansas and a camping trip we took over Easter—and it’s a lot. I have enough photos processed to write a few weeks worth of posts but the last thing I feel like doing is sitting down and writing. I feel stuck in my writing here. I basically feel like I just do trip reports and while I enjoy that I need to figure out…
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Spring Wake-up at Roy E. Larsen Sandyland Sanctuary
Reaching back into late February with this post to go with a couple of others I wrote about our hike at the REL Sandyland Sanctuary. I actually had to look it up because I was unsure of who Mr. Larsen was, and it turns out he was an executive with Time, Inc. and as a conservationist later in life he organized the Nantucket Conservation Fund and joined the board of The Nature Conservancy, who later dedicated this tract of land to him when it became a sanctuary. A glimpse down to Village Creek before we headed for the trails. Swamp Azalea, Rhododendron viscosum I imagine it is a much different…
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To the Ozarks
It’s back to the grind for us this week, but last week Chris, Forest, and I checked out of state and drove to Arkansas to spend the week in a cute AirBnB cabin on the SE edge of the Ozark National Forest. Between cooler weather and the state of Arkansas not being on their spring break, it was fairly quiet for us on the trails except in a few areas. We could see that ramping up as we left our cabin on Saturday, the start of a glorious weekend meant an influx of ORVs, and canoes and kayaks being driven into the Ozarks as we passed heading south to I-40.…
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Question Mark on Chickasaw Plum
Coming out of the stupor of winter has been cathartic. February was a mess but even in February I felt a shift in life. Getting my first vaccine shot amplified that shift but the return to blooming plants and insects flying about has really set in motion this feeling of life switching again. Being able to witness the evolution of spring in the yard has been delightful this year for so many reasons. It is always something I enjoy but I think February just wore me down that everything in nature is a marvel. I was heading out to the edible garden on a walkabout with Forest last weekend when…
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Front Porch Moths | 1
Finally we are entering into front porch moth season once again, that time of year when I leave the house in the morning there may be a couple of moths to be found resting on the side of the house. We’ve had a few friends visit over the last week and so I thought I would start a new series here on the blog, Front Porch Moths! Hübner’s Pero Moth, Pero ancetaria The first and more unique looking species is the Hubner’s Pero, which is relatively uncommon in this part of the US and is much more widespread in the mid-Atlantic region. Host plants include Alnus sp., Shepherdia canadensis, Prunus…
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Early Spring Lepidopterans at Roy E. Larsen Sandyland Sanctuary
These days I almost always just keep the 75-300mm lens on my camera when out for a hike. Any time I use a normal lens I’m always sad because I can’t get a good photo of a butterfly or an insect and I would prefer the ability to get a good wildlife shot than a landscape shot for now. So, of course, that was the lens I had on me during our hike two weekends at the Sandyland Sanctuary. While it wasn’t quite a lepidopteran extravaganza it was fairly eventful and exciting outing! The first find was this moth which I believe to be a Ruined Chocolate, Argyrostrotis deleta. My…
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Checking in on an Old Friend at Roy E. Larsen Sandyland Sanctuary
February 2016 February 2021 Yesterday we drove over to the Beaumont area, Lumbertson and Silsbee to be more precise, because I found a COVID-19 vaccine appointment over there earlier this week. Among our state’s list for current requirements in 1A and 1B is a BMI of more than 30. I had known this for a few weeks but vaccine distribution was far harder to find in January and February but some of the lists I had signed us up for in January were finally starting to have some movement but most didn’t have appointments by the time I saw emails or were still in the stage of, ok you are…