Outdoors
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Finding All the Plants
It’s spring and so I am in my happy space–there are PLANTS BLOOMING AND MORE TO COME! I’ve been out hiking a lot recently, trying to wrap up what remains of trails for my Big Thicket region hiking guidebook, and so I have been seeing a lot of interesting plants and sights recently. I’ve essentially given up on trying to keep this blog to the detail I used to be able to and so this is what you are going to get from me now (this is a note for future me when I get mad at past me for not writing about such and such thing.). My favorite place…
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Snow Day
After a week of forecasts for snow, late Monday evening finally arrived and the first inklings of the proposed 2-5″ of snow in our region arrived. The forecast went up and down for days, but mostly stayed in the 2-4″ range for us, though some areas closer to the coast said they would have 6″+. That never really materialized in Texas but it sure did in parts of Louisiana! There were some veritable snow drifts from an internet acquaintance in New Orleans and her kids even managed to have a decent sledding experience on the side of an overpass hill near their house! For us, Forest finally got to use…
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Spiranthes vernalis | Wildflower Wednesday
Years ago, when our front yard was frequently flooding after heavy rain events we had a random Spiranthes orchid show up in the lawn. We hadn’t mown in that area in weeks, maybe months, due to the persistent wet weather that had left ponding in the front yard. Chris managed to clear some of the drains that go under our driveway and our neighbor’s driveway one year and the yard now dries out much better after these events. However, about two years ago we started converting this low lying area in the yard into a more natural swale area, planting bottomland species to diversify and attract wildlife. I hadn’t seen…
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Gus Engeling WMA in August
Another old draft here, this one from August 2023 and a trip to Gus Engeling WMA. It was one of our trips up towards Dallas when we were picking up or dropping Forest of with grandparents before school started. I can feel the heat from this post just reading through and looking at the photos. We didn’t get a really good trip into GEWMA this last summer due to the spring floods, which damaged access to the sandhill section on the north end of the WMA. We didn’t know it was closed when we were going to drop by and visit and so we ended up exploring the southern section…
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Bogging in Angelina National Forest
These photos are from October 2022, though they feel like they are from much more recently — no, now they feel ancient. I started drafting this a year or so ago and never published it, so I’m making an effort to launch some of my older drafts on here. So much has changed since 2022! This is from a bog near Boykin Springs in Angelina National Forest, a really cool area that I’d like to get back out to this spring, between Big Thicket hiking trips. Ribbed Mock Bishopweed (Ptilimnium costatum) with a green lynx spider and her egg case. Black swallowtail caterpillar on the ribbed mock bishopweed Pitcher plant…
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Scenes from the Field – July/August 2024
Long-tailed skipper caterpillar (Urbanus proteus) Viceroy caterpillar (Limenitis archippus) Banded sphinx (Eumorpha fasciatus) – 3rd instar Banded sphinx (Eumorpha fasciatus) – 5th instar Red-headed Willow Leaf Beetle (Chrysomela texana) larvae Red-headed Willow Leaf Beetle (Chrysomela texana) larvae Invasive apple snail eggs (Pomacea maculata) – becoming more prevalent around here. Little yellows puddling on the soil (Pyrisitia lisa) Trying to keep the sun off me! I came back from Ecuador this summer with Covid. I pretty much took a test a few minutes after arriving home from the airport, having felt poorly for the several days prior. We’d had field work lined up for the following week after our return for…
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Comet C/2023 A3 aka Tsuchinshan-ATLAS
In mid-October we did what many folks around the world were doing, looking up into the night sky to search for Comet C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. I saw a few people in the Houston area say they were able to find it and so we trekked out to a more open area of the county one mid-week evening to search for it but never found it. I looked around for more information on how to spot it in the sky and approximately what time around sunset, and so we trekked out another evening to try once more. It was visible much later after sunset than what some people…
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Thanksgiving at Guadalupe River State Park
Gladicosa pulchra It’s been a hot minute since we went to the Hill Country. Well, it’s been a hot minute since Forest and I have been to the Hill Country. Chris goes almost quarterly either to Austin, or more recently, to San Antonio, for work projects. But it has been since late winter or maybe spring of 2023 since I’ve ventured to the Hill Country for recreational purposes. We made plans for Thanksgiving camping at Guadalupe River State Park, which the last time we’d been there was four years ago in 2020 for Thanksgiving. We also paired that trip with South Llano River State Park. I don’t think I ever…
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Hickory Horned Devil | Wildlife Wednesday
Back in late October we went camping at Huntsville State Park. It had been several years since we’d been and I needed to tackle some trails there for the hiking guidebook I’m writing. Which, now that I look at my archives, I can’t find that I wrote about that here….??? Oh, wait, I found it, hiding in a life update post from June. Yes, still plugging away on hikes for that and I probably should post an update soon of how that is going! It was rather warm for October at the state park but we carried on and sweated it out. On Saturday of that trip, we had one…
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Southern Twayblade Orchid (Neottia bifolia)
I have finally given up any pretense of writing in a timely manner here. Or sticking to a frequency schedule. Life is busy, writing time is scarce. Let’s roll back to February of this year when we hiked the Four Notch Loop of the Lone Star Trail up in Sam Houston National Forest, where we did a quick overnight hike to see the southern twayblade orchids. Unfortunately I don’t know when we will be back on the LST or anywhere in Sam Houston because the Forest Supervisor just issued a major closure order for a significant portion of roads and trails in the NF due to historic flooding events in…
