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Early March Yard Ramblings
I walk around the yard these days and I get glimpses of life pre-Forest. I will never be that same person, have those same moments, but I get glimpses. It’s peaceful, and yet still incredibly fast-paced and definitely not still. Just being able to notice the sun (Earth) changing positions as it heads towards spring, seeing the different ephemeral weeds popping up in the yard, or the budding of the trees; those were things I barely caught a glimpse of last year. As much as I get those pre-Forest glimpses I really, really love the here and now with Forest as he wanders the yard. He loves it so much…
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Friday Five | 5
Downton Abbey!!! The series finale was almost everything one could want after several ‘blah’ seasons. You know, one character I never thought I would come to like was Thomas. Frankly, I think he and Edith might have become the better characters by the end of the show. And Bates? His character just went from loveable to creepy. 7 Lessons Bindweed is Teaching Me Super Tuesday and Primary voting: I know this is not the week that happened, but I did vote in my first ever primary and Super Tuesday. Florida has closed primaries, and as I was a registered Green party member in that state, I did not ever get…
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February 2016 Book Report
Read The Lady Elizabeth by Allison Weir: I started this back in late January but didn’t finish it until sometime in mid-February. It was fairly long and took a lot out of me! However, I really did enjoy it. The author has several historical fiction books of this era that I want to read at some point in time. What I liked about this book was that it followed the life of Elizabeth Tudor (Queen Elizabeth I) from about 3 years old until about 25 years old, when her sister Queen Mary died and Elizabeth became queen. The book picks up on the rumor that Elizabeth may have become pregnant…
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The Late Winter Yard & Garden
Justicia spicigera, Mexican honeysuckle Gladiolus dalenii A creeping violet thing that we’ve long lost the tag for. Prunus mexicana, Mexican plum blooms. Tomatoes in the vegetable garden. Bolting Chinese cabbage. Peach blossoms Sophora tomentosa, necklacepod The last of the cauliflower Sugar snap peas Carrots Our strawberries are finally looking like they will do well this year! ‘Bali’ tomato seedlings Variegated hydrangea Mexican flame vine Foxglove Budding brugmansia Budding azalea Crawfish burrow Bolting mustard greens Collard greens Red Russian kale Parsley Bolting cilantro Dill Nun orchid flower spike Woodland painted petals flower spike Scilla sp., Leopard lily spike
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Current Fermentation Projects
Kombucha If you’ve been reading here for any length of time you may remember when I got into kombucha. I let my SCOBY go into the compost when I was pregnant and for much of the year after Forest was born but, I think it was last summer, my SIL gave me her SCOBY because she wasn’t doing much with kombucha at the time. Well, it molded quickly and I had to chunk it. I ended up ordering another SCOBY from Kombucha Kamp and had success with it for 6-8 months. There were some down times when I wouldn’t be interested in brewing and would let the SCOBY just hang…
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Right-Of-Way Blooms
It’s been a very long time since I’ve dedicated a lot of time to writing about gardening here. For some reason I’ve felt like because the garden has been so messy and umkempt over the last year or so, that showing it to you in its messy state wasn’t the best idea. In retrospect I should have shared all of that messiness anyway. One part of blogging for me is the ability to go back and see how things were growing or what animals (birds) might have been coming through at any particular time period. The last year has been a lot lighter on that information. I recently tried to…
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Forest Friday | Yard Wandering Edition
If you’ve been around a toddler for any length of time you know that they are hilarious and silly but also extremely exhausting! Forest is no different and pair that with his insatiable appetite for being outside (I wonder where he got that from??) chasing him around the yard will get anyone 10,000 Fitbit steps! His favorite things outside include looking up at birds and airplanes flying overhead, dinging the wind chimes, and pulling flowers! I recently identified a weed that is prolific here, Japanese hawkweed, and it is blooming right now. Forest wants to have a handful of its flowers if he sees any blooming. I’ve been pulling the…
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Exploring the Roy E. Larsen Sandyland Sanctuary
If there’s one place in Texas that might have tinges of Florida in it, it would be the Roy E. Larsen Sandyland Sanctuary. For starters, this is a very well managed tract of land protected by The Nature Conservancy. When we arrived at the park we saw that there had recently been a burn throughout many areas of the pinelands. It was hard not to imagine thickets of saw palmetto in the understory but of course this is where habitats diverge and reality hits that this is Texas, not Florida. Chris had been to the sanctuary several years ago but it was my first time. He knew where a few…
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Camping at Village Creek State Park
So, I went back through my blog trying to find a post about Village Creek State Park. I only found this one but that post isn’t even specifically about the park itself. The first time Chris and I visited the park was sometime in the fall/winter of 2010. We drove down from San Augustine, Texas on a few days off from field work in Sabine National Forest. I think we visited in conjunction with a visit to the Big Thicket units down near VCSP, but either I didn’t take photos or I didn’t bother to blog about it. Kind of weird for me not to have written about that trip,…
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Valentine’s Day Camping | A Movie