80AcresOnline

At the end an hour slogging around a very wet, running-water-wet field as the sun gets low, you might wonder why you didn’t go back before now.  Then you look down and there it is…the first one this spring.  The sheer audacity of it–that determined stem, those leaves reaching for sunlight, and then that fragile, pale pink flower.

Read the rest of this entry »

A little rain, after the hard freeze…a week of warmer weather and some sun…and more plants have burst into bloom or begun to pop buds.   Here a rusty blackhaw viburnum’s buds have lengthened and changed color and texture, reaching out for another year’s growth:

Read the rest of this entry »

Every year we have to file an annual report with our county tax appraisal district.    We have to use the TPWD form, which–being written for much larger properties mostly focused on game animals–doesn’t really fit us.   So every year, in addition to filling out the state’s 9 page form, I write “Please see attached supplemental pages” many times and then devise a supplement that goes through the same required activities from our perspective, with pictures.    In detail sufficient to prove that yes, we are doing everything we say we’re doing, and yes, what we’re doing does fit the requirements.   Read the rest of this entry »

We’d had some sprinkles, but the first real rain came Thursday & Friday, about two inches, and set the secondary drainage flowing across the near meadow again.  Creek was up and a little turbid, but the flow in the grass was crystal clear.   Today, I finally photographed a common (supposedly) species of butterfly around here, which I’d never been able to catch in the lens.

Read the rest of this entry »

The cold front that hit central Texas between midnight and dawn Thursday certainly did change things…yeah, we’d had that 15 degree down-spike back in December, and some other overnights in the 20s (good for knocking the ticks back) but this was a serious Arctic blast like we used to get every winter 30 years ago and haven’t had for the past decade.  Of course we wrapped pipes in advance, put on the hose bib foam-thingies, blocked the air vents under the house, all the usual things you do.

Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn’t….yup, that’s a pipe that burst–not where it’s sawed off, but at an elbow just underground. Read the rest of this entry »

When we first got the place, an SCA friend asked if any of the cactus had cochineal bugs on it.  At that time, I didn’t find any.  But Monday, January 4, I found this prickly pear thickly covered with the scale insects:

Read the rest of this entry »

During migration and winter we have a lot of birds in the grass–birds that fly up and dive down a little distance away, birds that fly up and perch in bushes, birds that fly up and away and dive down over there. Most of them are sparrows of some kind.    Today one of the “divers” posed long enough for me to note salient characteristics and even get some slightly blurry pictures–good enough for an ID:

Read the rest of this entry »

We had clear dry weather today to get some work done, and no choir duties.   Our first chore was moving water iris taken from the lily pond (which had overgrown with them) out onto the land, to see if they’ll naturalize in some of the temporary pools.  We were successful with a few transplants a few years back.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Richard and Michael were up in the dry woods today to cut down our Christmas trees (we use Ashe junipers we’d want to get rid of anyway), and while they were looking for the right tree, they found a swarm of bees.   I wasn’t able to go out right away to photograph them, and by the time I did get out, mid-late afternoon, the bees were very, very, very active.    As in, those bees did not want anyone to come closer to where the swarm had been seen.

I’ve had bees (nice gentle Italian bees) and know that Africanized bees are in this county…so when a bee starts that “vrooom-vrooom” kind of humming/buzzing, I’m not inclined to argue with her.   I went on up the trail to Fox Pavilion.   The stonecrop is getting large enough to see; I love the delicate colors it has before its flowers open.

Read the rest of this entry »