Continuing…….

Ladies tresses, a native orchid that sprang up in a  pasture. How do these things persist and come up like magic after not having  been seen for years?

 After a bit of an absence ……..I’m back.

Looking for a place to talk about plants, birds, annimals, and not much else.

a visit to Texas hill country

 During this never ending  COVID lockdown we can’t go many places, but we did spend a few days in the hill country of Texas where we kept to ourselves, but took a few rides down country roads. Drought is evident everywhere. Empty ponds and dried up creeks beg for rain.

The flame leaf sumac was striking in the brown landscape.

The little pioneer cabin that’s sits beside the dusty road offered a pumpkin for spicy pie and a rocking chair for rest and perhaps a wave to travelers as they admire the view.

November roses

It’s been a strange year in so many ways, and for some reason the roses have resurrected after a long summer’s sulk and gifted me a bouquet. Once I had a hundred bushes, all antiques that I collected like stamps and placed in wandering beds around my garden. After many battles with wildlife, disease and weather I surrendered and just accepted those that survived.

I’m down to about 10 bushes now, which I tend in a more casual way, accepting whatever nature sends.

Gathering whatever was at hand, I plunked them into my mother’s precious deep blue pitcher and was pleased with my gift.

More changes

Things are changing around me so quickly now that it getting difficult to rant about them all.

The farm that surrounded me on all sides has been divided and sold.
The larger part is combined with the existing hunting club and now approaches my back door bringing the hunts and target practicing even closer. It's not hunting season now, but the target practice never ends. The club did generously offer me the continued use of the land for my birding walks, but I wonder which birds will stick around after all the shots are fired.
The hunts are controlled with birds being released from traps for the shooters. So there's always a fresh supply, and the seasons are long.

The other piece of land is being scraped clear of most trees and vegetation to make pasture for cattle.
The clearing has been ongoing for 3 weeks and has not finished.

It was difficult to watch the brush tangles that the common yellow throats and chats had nested in this summer piled up to be burned, knowing I won't have their songs next year.

Change is constant, but it certainly seems to come larger and faster lately.

Beaches

You know you've seen a lot of changes when the beach in the first photo now looks like the second  photo.

Many, many years ago my dad phoned us to say he had found the most beautiful beach with crystal white sand and emerald waters, and he couldn't wait to take us there. He did. And for many years we spent a heavenly week each summer on uncrowded pristine beaches.

The water is still blue and the sand is white after the machine drives down the beach and sifts the debris out from the day before. 

I do miss the solitude of the vast empty spaces.

dark of winter

Truly it has been a dark winter, not extremely cold, though there have been some frigid days predicted that never came to pass. 

Dark, overcast, gloomy, foggy, rainy misty, damp—all those adjectives that define an uncomfortable state of being, especially if they seem never ending.

I haven’t managed a lot of walks and have a good case of cabin fever.

I’ve had 2 outings this week and was able to pull a bright hopeful photo out of the starkness around me.

Sweet narcissus blooming this year in a spot where they refused to in the past.

visiting with ancestors

Forty years ago when my parents died I inherited a box filled with many  unlabeled photos, newspaper clippings, and scraps of paper with handwritten notes. At that time I was a busy working mother and after a few half hearted attempts to unravel it all I tucked it away for later.

My children are grown, I'm retired and we have incredible tools and resources to use in our quest for ancestry.

I've made family trees, photos albums on line of various family members with notes about their lives that I've shared with cousins, and I feel like I really know many of my ancestors well. Of course, one branch in particular kept very good records and photos.

My great, great grandparent on my mother's side had some poignant and interesting tales to tell since he was a doctor in the plantation south during the Civil War and after.

After the war he lost 2 of his children and a grandchild to diphtheria. He kept journals of patients and their treatments and a narrative about the loss of his children. I could feel his despair at not being able to save them.

My great, great, grandfather Dr. David Raymond Fox ( from a tin type)

Great, great grandmother, Tryphena Holder Fox

I have spent so much time with them uploading photos, reading and copying letters and sharing their stories that I feel that I actually knew them.

I also learned that Tryphena's letters to her mother were made into a book by someone researching southern history.

Their home was on the lower Mississippi River . We visited it often when I was a child. It was where my great aunt still lived. A hurricane destroyed it in 1965.

The challenge to get as much of it saved and documented goes on. I joined ancestry.com recently and am trying to put as much as I can there for others to use.

a last rose of summer

Where did autumn go? A sudden and severe cold front sent the thermometer plummeting to freezing.

I struggled to get tender plants in the house while the wind and rain swirled about me. No bright autumn days this year.

I stopped to pick this cluster of roses to sniff and admire, a last rose of summer.

something pink

Always scanning as I ride in the car...,ponds, fencerows, fly overs ..and Sunday I was rewarded as I passed the neighbors overgrown and almost invisible pond,

Wait! I saw pink!!

So I backed up and struggled to peer across the weedy field at a glimpse of a wading bird that could be/ maybe pink!

I drove back to the house for binoculars and camera and up to the old milk barn that rises above the pond. Hoping it was still there I raised the binoculars and, yes!!! THEY still were!  3 of them!!

I got a few photos for eBird and then stood and savored the moment.

These beautiful tropical, exotic birds were on a weedy pond in hilly pine land on an overcast   cold day in November.

And the best part is that at least one was back the next day. I only managed one quick in flight shot. 

One of the joys of birding is that you never know what’s coming your way. 

Halloween

A pleasant evening spent trick or treating with my grandson.

The weather was overcast and breezy, and the temperature mild. We walked the usually quiet streets of an older neighborhood in the town where my son lives.

Everyone was pleasant and the kids were having a great time. Residents had their yards decorated with witches and cemeteries set amongst the old oaks.

sunset fire

After many weeks of nonstop rain and flooding in central Texas the sun reminded us that it’s still there 

the boggart in the hollow

The tree which sheltered baby raccoons and

opossums has been reduced to a ghost of itself. 

I think it makes a great Halloween scary as it raises it arms and twists its mouth in a frozen scream.

butterfly visitors

Though no cooler weather has come and the temperature stays in the 90s each day, the creatures know...autumn is here and they are flowing through in a river to the south.

Swarms of hummingbirds crowd the nectar feeders and tantalizing snippets of unrecognized birdsong taunt me from the trees.

Butterflies migrate too and everyday brings new ones to the last flowers of the season.

Variegated fritillary, monarch, gulf fritillary, checkered skipper 

pink and green

Checking on my latest bromeliad and found it has the perfect companion

Did he somehow adapt to fit in that bright colored home?

He’s perfect! 

walking at sunrise

a beautiful sunrise

wispy grasses coated with dew glowing in the dawn

a drive in the Texas hill country

A short drive and and heart attack inducing lunch in the Texas hill country—-

Hoping to find great carpets of wildflowers we took an unscheduled drive down a few back roads, and stopped for a “famous” hamburger at a fun rural cafe deep in the hills.

I found some nice prairie verbena and beautiful fields of flowers at a wild seed farm.

a visit to the botanical gardens in New Orleans

Finally I managed a trip to the New Orleans botanical gardens. It was something I used to do regularly when I lived there in my youth, but just can’t seem to do now.

All was great! The rose garden was a bit reduced, but there were great specimens of ferns, succulents, and tropicals. The orchids are always colorful, and  inspired me to do better with mine.