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Returning to Fitness
Getting back into shape postpartum has been eye opening. The last time I did any hard workouts was last December before I knew I was pregnant. Since all the months prior hadn’t resulted in a positive pregnancy test I had decided to bust my butt and start working out hardcore with some YouTube videos to try to lose about 10 lbs. I was feeling it, doing good and enjoying it. And then I got pregnant. Out went the hard workouts and in came the walking and general hiking. I missed rollerblading and even the 1-2 mile jogs I would take. I didn’t lift weights much and after a certain point…
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First of November at Kleb Woods | Nature In The City
I’ve written about Kleb Woods twice before but last weekend was the first time Forest had been there. We didn’t have a ton of time to do a longer hike and I wanted to stay relatively near the house so we chose this small park to do a little outside rambling. This time we explored the north section of the park, taking the stroller and a sleeping Forest along. I spotted a Passiflora incarnata fairly quickly but found no fruit or flowers. The downside to this park is that it is overrun with yaupon holly, Ilex vomitoria. Ideally they would burn this park on occassion but I think they come…
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W.G. Jones State Forest | Nature In The City
Last weekend we took Forest out for his first ‘hike—he strolled, we hiked—at our local state forest, WG Jones State Forest. Chris and I have been there a few times and thought it would be a great outing for us to stretch our legs and to get away from the house for awhile. The forest is split in two by a road, FM 1488, with the larger tract being on the south side of the road. This tract also has the most trails. We set off from the western most parking area on 1488 and Forest managed to stay asleep during his transfer from truck to stroller. I had debated…
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Backyard Leopard Frog
About a week ago I was coming in from hanging up diapers and noticed a leopard frog on our back porch. It hung around for a few days and let me get a photo of it before finally disappearing into the garden. We have a healthy frog population around our house but this was the first time I had noticed a leopard frog. Southern Leopard Frog information from TPWD
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Harvesting and Saving Roselle
I was thrilled that this year the roselle plants (Hibiscus sabdariffa) grew enthusiastically, almost too much so. Frankly, and I knew it at the time, they were planted too close to a few other plants and ended up shading those plants out. Next year I’m thinking that maybe they deserve to be in the perennial herb beds instead, just to give them more room and sun. Last weekend I decided to trim back the branches that had fallen over and were heavily shading out our variegated hydrangea. I clipped off most of the calyces, the red pods on the stalks, and they lingered there for several days until I could…
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Random Garden Bits
The area where the brug’s are has turned into a complete jungle. The brug’s themselves were over 10′ tall at one point this summer, but the weight of the stems has caused them to lean over to the ground. I really need to clean up this area of the garden—and forget looking near the bees, it is absolutely overgrown with weeds. I avoided going over there while pregnant and Chris was too busy working on the guest room and Forest’s room this summer to get over there and weed. Perhaps it is time to dig out the bee suit and clean up over there! The bottle gourd in the vegetable…
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Giant Swallowtail Caterpillars
Over the weekend Chris was out in the yard and came inside to tell me that I had to go out and check something that was on the citrus with him. It didn’t take me but a few seconds to decide he was probably showing me a caterpillar that was munching on the citrus. At the time I couldn’t remember which caterpillar used citrus as its host plant and I had to look it up later. Sure enough my hunch was correct! There were several small caterpillar nibbling on our citrus trees. I’m sure that in a citrus grove this would be considered a pest, but considering that the caterpillar…
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Garden Cleanup
My parents were down for the weekend which meant that Forest had two people who wanted to give him attention so yesterday I was able to spend almost two hours piddling in the garden. I first took some time to trim up the roselle bush that had fallen over and started shading out our variegated hydrangea. I clipped off all of the red calyxes from the branches I trimmed back so I could make hibiscus tea from them—more on that later this week. Then I began weeding and trimming the flower bed directly in front of the house, which was/is still quite overgrown. I’ll try to get out more this…
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Dancing Daturas
The daturas have really grown well out on the side garden this year. We purchased several small containers of them from a nursery just outside of Nacogdoches back in February. The plants have already set seed this year and I suspect we’ll have a lot of volunteer daturas next year. Chris wants to get some more varieties as I think these were the double or triple purple variety. The plants themselves are probably 4′ tall and have survived being barreled over by the armadillos earlier this summer. I love seeing them when I take something to the compost bin.
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October in the Vegetable Garden
Chris has been working hard the last few weeks getting the vegtable garden up and going for fall and winter. You may remember, if you read Sprout Dispatch, that we spent some time this spring building the perimeter herb beds but stopped when we needed to switch to work on Forest’s room. Chris was amped up to finish those beds these last few weeks and he’s done just that! He’s even hooked up the water to work out there, albeit on the hose and not through the trench that we’ll have to dig sometime later, but the plumbing in the garden is set up and he has it working through…