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Update on the Side Yard Garden
January 2017 The good thing about having blogged and taken photos all of these years is that it is an excellent way to be able to revisit the garden to see the changes, good and bad. Over the weekend I managed to weed and mulch the two beds on the side of the house and I thought it would be fun to do a little photo history tour of the side yard garden beds. Here we go! A week ago—right after the freeze November 2016 August 2016 August 2015 March 2015 April 2014 September 2013 July 2013 February 2013 October 2012 September 2012 — we moved in last few days…
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Morning Hike at W.G. Jones State Forest
Saturday morning we got out for a bit to do a little hiking at WG Jones State Forest. We’ve been there many times but this time we opted to park in the eastern parking lot on the south side of FM 1488 instead of the usual parking lot on the western boundary. This entrance was hopping with trucks towing horse trailers entering through a locked gate to park about a half mile down the dirt road at the horse parking lot. There were a lot of riders out that morning! We crossed over Rice Branch, seen in the photo above, and I think both Chris and I wished we had…
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Freeze Damage in the Garden
Attention Houston: This is your once-a-decade reminder that you don't quite live in the deep tropics. — Eric Berger (@SpaceCityWX) January 7, 2017 Oh man. We left town Friday evening prepared for the weekend deep freeze with what we thought was going to be mid to high 20s and instead woke up Saturday morning in Dallas with Chris checking the temperature for our town to find out the low was 20*. There’s a good chance it was a little lower than that, too, but either way, the damage was done. Saturday night was more of the same, a double whammy. Chris has prepared by putting up all of the orchids,…
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Being a Trail Advocate from Afar | Florida Trail
A few days ago I received the fall issue of Footprint, the magazine of the Florida Trail Association. It was a big issue, at least to me, one where the call to protect to the trail and be a trail advocate was once again in the spotlight. The trail recently celebrated its 50th anniversary with a celebration at the first blaze in Ocala National Forest and the placement of a plaque to commemorate the historic blaze that began the Florida National Scenic Trail. In addition last year, a new monument at the northern terminus at Fort Pickens was erected. Two very exciting events! This post is being published today on…
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Early Winter Garden Videos
Edible Garden Tour Flower Garden Tour A conversation with my brother kind of lit a fire under me to make more videos of the garden this year. Actually, I’ve been really lax in making videos of any kind over the last year, even with Forest, and I kind of regret it. I think I did so much that first year of Forest’s life that I really wanted to pull back a little there for awhile. I do miss being able to watch videos so I’m planning to be more proactive this year. Expect more!
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Hello 2017!
The last week has been quite the lazy one around here. Chris and I were off work and the first half of the holiday week was warm and pleasant and we spent a lot of time outside playing. However, by Wednesday Forest’s cough that had started developing last Monday grew worse and we had a camping trip planned for New Years weekend and I didn’t want to go without getting him checked out. So, off to the pediatrician we went. She prescribed some cough medicine—so nice that we’re finally getting into the ages where more medicine can be prescribed for him!—and thought it was RSV or some similar virus and…
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Reading Year in Review for 2016
I tried to find a post for my ‘word’ of 2016 but I guess I didn’t end up writing one. I decided my word would be ‘read‘ which seemed more actionable and doable than anything else. If I had chosen ‘run‘ I’m not so sure I would have been very successful. I have yet to figure out a word for 2017 but it may be a phrase instead. So, here’s my round up of total number of books read for the year and what they were. I was aiming for about 25 books, approximately two a month; let’s see how I did! In alpha by author: The Highly Sensitive Person…
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Six Miles on the Lone Star Trail
We went for a hike yesterday afternoon on the Lone Star Trail and really enjoyed the warm weather!
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Scenes from Christmas Weekend
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The Garden Before the Freeze
I took all of these photos earlier this month, before we had any actual cold weather. We had a night or two early in the month that might have touched freezing for an hour or two overnight but for the most part we just stayed shy of that line. After last year’s mild winter I was kind of hoping for more of the same this year but that was not to be. The strong front came through late evening Saturday the 17th and we woke up the next morning to temperatures around freezing or just above that. The sensitive plants in the garden still looked pretty good but I knew…