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Formosa Lilies | Flower Friday
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed by email! Thanks for visiting! The Formosa lilies have finished blooming for the season. I noticed a few differences this year than in previous years. For starters, they didn’t grow nearly as tall. Usually they grow at least 6′ tall. This year they hovered between 4-5′ which made them the perfect height for deer chomping. I took a photo of two blooms at lunch and came home to find them devoured by the deer. The other thing I noticed was that I didn’t have as many plants as previous years, mostly from pulling too many seedlings (the…
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April, May, June, July 2018 Book Report
Eek! I didn’t mean to go four months without a Book Report here! Soooo, obviously that means I have a lot to catch up on…here we go! I’ve decided to start adding some books from the library (or our own library) that Forest and I enjoy. I’m starting to try to go at least once a month with him. The trick I’m employing is to renew the books online immediately after we get them so that we have them for that full month instead of two weeks. So far it is working! Forest Books: Box Turtle by John Himmelman: This was an ARC from Net Galley and Forest loved(s) reading…
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Afternoon Ramble at the Pineywoods Native Plant Center
Let’s reverse a few months and blow off some dust on a draft post I’ve had sitting here since May and head to Nacogdoches and the Pineywoods Native Plant Center. The last time we were here was in 2014, though I feel like I’ve been to Nacogdoches since then and haven’t dropped by the Native Plant Center. Chris was working in Angelina National Forest and so Forest and I drove up over a weekend to visit him. On our way we stopped at the Ellen Trout Zoo in Lufkin, which I had only really seen at night when Chris and I went for a Zoo Brew event in 2013. Chris…
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Silver Springs State Park
After we left the Ocala National Forest, we drove towards Ocala and made a stop at Silver Springs State Park. It’s taken me some time to rack my brain and then look at Google Maps, but Chris and I had been here before in maybe 2007 or 2008. I recall a trip to Potts Preserve to look for orchids and maybe geocache and then a driving up to Ocala to geocache and I feel like we did something else in Ocala but maybe not. But, I did remember being somewhere near the town of Silver Springs because when we arrived there in June I definitely remembered the area. A quick…
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Summer Lepidopterans
Long-tailed skipper, Urbanus proteus Long-tailed skipper larvae—aka: the bean leaf roller! Between the lull of monarch seasons—I’m awaiting their return but we did see one at the zoo the other day—there is plenty of other activity in the lepidopteran world. Here’s just a sample–I’m seeing plenty of others I just don’t have my camera on me lately. And these are all phone photos–I’m sad to admit I’m blogging with phone photos!!! Time to pick up the big camera or even the point and shoot a bit more than my phone. I noticed a beautiful butterfly bouncing along the agastache on the side yard garden last week. I took a few…
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The June Garden | 2018
*Photo Heavy* There’s been a definite jungleization of the garden since the beginning of June photos I took. The cucumber photos I show here are now a massive tangle of vines, threatening to over take each other with a few vines wanting to just have a run of the bed. Which is fine, I suppose I’ll be eating a lot of cucumber salads over the next few months. It’s just too bad the tomatoes aren’t on the same page—or rather our climate isn’t on the same page. Actually being able to enjoy the garden this year has been wonderful. Ooo, as I’m writing this from our dinner table I’m watching…
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The 88 Store & The Florida Trail
After we left Astor Park and from visiting the Bartram Tree we continued west down SR 40 through Ocala National Forest. We had thought about going down to Alexander Springs at first but with the rain showers it didn’t seem like an ideal thing to do. Instead, Chris looked at the GPS and opted to head north on SR 19 towards Salt Springs into a part of the of the forest we hadn’t driven through before. Well, we’d been on a bit of it before, when we’d been transported from the end of the Juniper Springs Run at the Juniper Take-Out in 2009 when we’d paddled the Juniper Run. And…
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Life Lately | June 2018
Thinking: Elections have consequences. I’ve mostly stopped writing political things here because there’s only so much I can handle. Of course it seems pitiful to say that when others are going through some right shit while seeking asylum in this country. “Misti, you can handle the political BS because you are in a perfect position to do so. Suck it up, read all about it. You sit comfortably in a house you bought, with a child who goes to his room every night, and you aren’t fleeing political discourse and violence in your country (yet!). No child has been ripped from your arms and flown to who knows where with…
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William Bartram Tree in Volusia County
After our visit to Deleon Springs, we headed west down SR40 towards Ocala National Forest. As we approached the town of Astor and the St. Johns River, I noticed a large live oak on the side of the road with a historical marker. Because we had nowhere specific to be, Chris pulled over and the three of us got out to see what made this tree interesting. The rain had mostly stopped at that point, maybe to drizzle, so a photo op was merited. William Bartram and his father John, were noted botanists and naturalists in the 1700s. They explored a large part of the eastern US during those early…
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DeLeon Springs State Park & Old Spanish Sugar Mill Restaurant
*Note: if you view this via email or a feed reader, I don’t think the last post loaded correctly, the Forest Friday post. There’s a video in it and it wasn’t automatically syncing to play unless you went to the website to read. I do recommend going back and clicking through to watch the video because Forest is super cute as he explains his drawing.* Before our trip to Florida I saw Florida Hikes post about the Old Spanish Sugar Mill restaurant in DeLeon Springs State Park. Since Chris had wanted to visit some of the springs in the state during our time before Disney, I thought this sounded like…