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Coconut Point Sanctuary | Melbourne Beach, FL
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed by email! Thanks for visiting!It’s July 11, 2009, my 29th birthday. At this point we are already full throttle into planning our Appalachian Trail thru-hike. I mean, in the fact that we are pretty sure we are going to quit our jobs and pack away our things in early 2010 and head out on our thru-hike, pending on what our bank account looks like towards the end of the year of course. With that in mind we are kind of on a roll to hit up a lot of places in Florida that we may not see…
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Chironomus sp. | Wildlife Wednesday
The last camping trip we had in the spring was to Martin Creek Lake State Park near Kilgore. We had stopped here once on our way home from Caddo Lake when Forest was newly 2 for a short hike, to break up the long drive back to Houston with a then potty training toddler. Kilgore also happens to be near where my friend Michelle and her family used to live so every time we roll through there I think of her, even though she now lives an hour away from me in College Station. We found ourselves chilling at camp one of the afternoons and I was bound and determined…
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Weekend in Austin
Over the 4th of July long weekend, the three of us buckled in and drove over to Austin for the weekend. It had been quite a while since we had just tinkered around Austin without camping plans, so Chris found an available hotel room in north Austin and we set off to do some Austin exploring. I even came up with a list of new things to do after trolling around on Google Maps and checking out various parks, but of course we resorted to going to the places we always go to! And they are good places, of course, but one of these days we’ll manage to see something…
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Who Cooks For You? Who Cooks For You All? | Wildlife Wednesday
A week ago or so Forest and I were headed out to daycare and work down the driveway and I startled one of the local barred owls out of the swamp chestnut oak. It swooped low over the car and floated onto the electric pole on the property line. I stopped and got my phone out to take a few photos to show Forest since he was situated in a position that he couldn’t see the owl. Then, a few nights ago as I was working in the edible garden another owl (maybe the same owl) hooted from the woods down the way. It wasn’t terribly far as it was…
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Oleander Aphids | Wildlife Wednesday
I’ve come to enjoy seeing the oleander aphids in the garden when they colonize the milkweeds and their allies. Of course they also feast on oleanders themselves but I don’t have oleanders so I’ve never seen them colonize on an oleander but then next time I am near one planted in a landscape I’ll give it a look. Oleander aphids are parthenogenic, which means the females basically clone themselves (I’m simplifying here but if you want to delve deeper you can read more here. I did a few papers on parthenogenesis in college on tardigrades and parthenogenesis and found it fascinating!) and can be winged or wingless. It looks like…
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Foxglove Season
Foxglove season has come and gone, late April and early May was peak blooming around our garden. In those early days of the spring garden the tall flower spikes of the foxgloves were a welcome sight to see as all of the other plants were growing and working their way into filling in. It helps that the deer steer quite clear of the foxglove so we never have to worry about an impending bloom being eaten and coming home to a disappointing scene. The only downside to foxglove is their biennial nature but such is the way the garden goes—sometimes you have to be patient to wait for a tiny…
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Snapshots from the Last Few Months
Instead of my usual ‘Life Lately’ posts I thought I’d go through and share photos I’ve taken, mostly from my phone, the last few months. I may not have been writing much here but there’s been quite a bit going on. If you can’t view, click here If you can’t view, click here Back in May I started working on removing several inches of dirt, mulch, debris, and weeds from the garden path in preparation for soil solarization. I had been out there working one afternoon on my lunch break and as I was about to leave I remembered I wanted to snap a photo of my work. After I…
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Celebrating Pollinators for National Pollinator Week 2019
I thought I’d dig through some photo archives to showcase some fabulous lepidopteran pollinators this week for National Pollinator Week. I originally had a couple of non-moth and butterfly pollinator friends but then realized that I’ve not had a great track record of taking photos of them over the years so there aren’t nearly as many. So, we’ll make it all about Order Lepidoptera today! Someone with more time on their hands would spend time giving a little information about them all but I’m doing good just getting this out! Here’s a small assortment of beautiful moths and butterflies! Eastern Tent Caterpillar Moth, Malacosoma americana – my yard here in…
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Spring Monarch Season
Spring monarch butterfly season is now several months in the past but I thought I’d take some time to write about how it went overall. This season I opted not to use the tent mostly because I didn’t have a lot of tropical milkweed left from winter and by the time the monarchs started flitting through here we didn’t have a lot of new growth due to a late freeze in March. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop two females from egg bombing what milkweed I did have and I had somewhere between 40-50 eggs when I counted. I started the season attempting to be hands off. Most of the milkweed I…
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The Last Green Thread | FL Wildlife Corridor
If you’ve got 17 minutes today, hit play and watch. I have a lot of thoughts about this that I’ll have to expand on another day so I’ll leave it at this.