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Sunday Brain Ramblings
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed by email! Thanks for visiting! Hello friends (and family!)…I’m around! I kept meaning to get some posts written last week but alas, I still have photos to edit and well, I’m barely finding time to get on top of laundry and to keep the house clean. We’ve been super busy the last few weekends and this weekend we were finally at home but I already know my to-do list will not be completed. Oh well! Our friends Marc and Eliana are on their second cross-country road trip! They did their first in 2008, which you can see…
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Overnight on the Four Notch Loop/Lone Star Trail
Last weekend we made it happen—we got out and did our second backpacking trip with Forest. If you remember last year’s trip, well, we intended to make another trip much sooner than we did. But finally, we made it out and did another overnight with Forest. Now, Forest loves to hike and camp and any time we bring it up that we may be going camping or hiking he gets very excited and happy at the prospect. So, when camping plans go awry due to weather conditions it dampers his mood a bit. It seems like every weekend these days it appears that a chance of rain is in the…
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Late February/Early March in the Garden
So long cilantro! Milkweed seedlings #*(&$#(*& Deer! I love you Virginia creeper, but not in the garden, ok? Aristolochia fimbriata Tomatoes are now in the ground! Happy sunchokes! #(*&#$(*& Deer! Every day it is changing out there—new things sprouting and taking off by the day.
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Along the Lone Star Trail | Four Notch Section
Over the weekend we got out and stretched our legs a bit on the Lone Star Trail. Chris picked a trail head near Coldspring, NE of I-45. The drive there wasn’t too bad and I want to come back to this section to complete the loop trail here. It would make an excellent day hike or a short overnight hike with Forest. Our plans originally were to backpack over the weekend, do a short mile or two in and camp, but the weather looked sketchy for overnight Saturday/Sunday—turns out we never got that weather so I guess we could have gone. Oh well, you can only go with what the…
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February 2018 Book Report
As I mentioned in my recent Life Lately post, I signed up with NetGalley to read some pre-published books at the beginning of the month. Two of those books are on this list and I’ll note them in the summary. I’m in the middle of two others with a third on the back burner because it doesn’t expire until May. +The Garden in Every Sense and Season by Tovah Martin: *NetGalley* If you are familiar with Tasha Tudor you may already know who Tovah Martin is as she wrote a couple of books about Tudor, the more known book being Tasha Tudor’s Garden. The Garden in Every Sense and Season…
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Life Lately | February 2018
+In My Head Finally, we are warming up, though I could do without the constant cloak of grey the sky seems to be enveloped in for 5 out of 7 days of the week. Chris and I have already been talking about spring storms and the possibilities of floods occurring. Our consensus is that the likelihood is high considering the wet winter and the fact the low spots in the front yard haven’t been dry in about two months. I’m hoping not because I’d rather not have spring and early summer crops thwarted because of their being emerged in water. I find myself needing to talk myself down from all…
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Forest Friday | Fennel Chomping Edition
My child has turned into an herb connoisseur. The moment he gets into the garden he’s searching for dill or fennel to snag, and of course carrots if they are available. In the flower garden we have creeping thyme and he’s all over that, too. I mean, I’m pleasantly surprised and delighted that he’s into eating fresh herbs from the garden but I wouldn’t have pinned it as something he would do. The dill we had in fall and early winter succumbed to all of the freezes and I have since resown more seed, both for Forest and our pantry, but for the hopes to get the black swallowtails to…
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Warming Up in the Garden
I’d like to throttle whomever put up the forecast on Weather Underground yesterday. Every time I looked, the temperatures were in the high 60s or low 70s for the next forseeable future. This morning I dressed Forest in shorts and a t-shirt and even felt how warm it was when I sent Chris and Forest off. Thirty minutes later I was out the door and enjoying the balmy morning and then ten minutes later I opened the car door to get out at work and wondered if I’d entered a different world. It was at least 15* cooler! That was not what Weather Underground said was going to happen today!…
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January Camping at Lake Livingston State Park
Unlike last year, this time around there was no burst of caterpillars for spring, no thunderstorm to attempt to obliterate our tent, and the freshly poured concrete for the campsite driveway showed signs of aging from the last year. More importantly, the woods were still brown and leafless for the most part—no coloring of green other than the pine trees and any other evergreen type plant. It did drizzle a little bit and there was quite a bit of fog but overall it was a cozy winter camping event instead of an energetic spring one. While we did end up snagging the same campsite we had last year, we will…
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Signs of Spring
Finally, we are edging towards warmer days. The last week or two we’ve had a series of warmer days, though yesterday we dipped back into the 30s and 40s and I was shivering once again, but we’re on the upswing. Soon I’ll be dripping in sweat when I step outside—thanks high humidity! I’m ok with that, though. Give me tank tops, shorts, and flip flops any day. The bright side is that all of the tropical plants are providing a flush of green to the garden after hibernating inside for more of the winter than usual. But the fig tree they all hang on is putting on leaf buds and…