I’m not sure there is anything a book lover enjoys more than free books and certainly a bag of books for 50 cents is a close second! My friends and I made a few shopping stops in Mexia during our trip to Fort Parker last month and one of them was to the Caritas thrift shop in Mexia. The retail shop is open for limited hours throughout the week and we managed to show up at the right time. Like many thrifting adventures, I don’t usually go in with anything in mind. Of course, I beelined it for the books once I saw what appeared to be a rather eclectic collection and some older books on the shelf. And, I definitely do not need books but it is pretty difficult to resist a bag of books for 50 cents!

I laid out the books that had made their way into my bag when we returned back to the trailer at the state park. Only one is missing from the photo above, which my friend Michelle was looking at when I snapped the photo; it was called Flight from Natchez by Frank G. Slaughter. I also threw in four or five other books that my friend Stephanie picked up—there was no reason to start a second bag, might as well pack as many into one bag as possible. I also came home with two slightly dinged up Pokémon lunch boxes sans cards (they did have stickers and one of the toy coins), one for Forest and one he gave to a friend, a VHS set of Anne of Green Gables, and an electric wax melt warmer. I’ve been wanting a wax melt warmer, mostly so I can continue to use the remnant wax after my candles have been completely burned up, and I reached for this one initially thinking it was going to be a toothbrush holder which I’ve been looking for to use in Forest’s bathroom. I feel like I bought something else on this trip but I can’t recall. Just as I was about to publish this I recalled—I bought two more craft/pencil organizers for some items we have at home to organize. I only spent like $7 or $8 and it was great!

Books for those who cannot make out the titles in the photograph:

• In Search of a Sandhill Crane by Keith Robertson
• The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
• Yarborough of Texas by William G. Phillips
• Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
• Deep South by Erskine Caldwell
• Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
• Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
• Animal Farm by Georgia Orwell
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Flight from Natchez by Frank G. Slaughter

There were quite a bit of the Animal Farm and Catcher in the Rye books on the shelves and Michelle astutely pointed out they were likely purged from the schools during recent books bans.

Jack’s Creek, which feeds into the Navasota River around the bend to the left of the photo.

Virginia Springbeauty, Claytonia virginica

A very chilly plain-bellied Watersnake, Nerodia erythrogaster.

The Navasota River

Hemisphaeric Liverwort, Reboulia hemisphaerica, with both male and female reproductive parts visible. I don’t usually see this species like this, usually it is in its non-reproductive phase.

Close up of the female archegonium, the globular structures, and the darker, male antheridiums above.

Leather Lichen, Dermatocarpon miniatum

Effervescent Tarpaper Lichen, Collema furfuraceum

A remnant fireplace, there were a couple of these around the grounds, if I recall correctly.

Pennsylvania Pellitory, Parietaria pensylvanica, growing out of the fireplace.

Rabdotus sp.

I’m fairly certain this is an old monarch chrysalis.

In one of my afternoon excursions away from my friends during our time at Fort Parker SP, I drove over to the nearby Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site. I didn’t even know this place existed until an Instagram acquaintance shared it a few months ago when she took a trip down to Fort Parker SP. Mid-afternoon seemed like a good time to go over and poke around the place and I found it empty. A car was leaving just as I pulled in but other than what appeared to be a groundskeeper who lived in an RV at the back of the property, it was quiet except for me and the wildlife. And as you can see, the wildlife weren’t all that enticed to do much moving!

I will say, there is a bit of an eeriness to this place. Probably because of the Confederate aspect of it all, which is a bit hard to reckon with even considering that some lines of my family tree have Confederate soldiers in them. Throw in the current deeply unsettling political times, it is probably easy to spook oneself in a place like this. Alas, the solitude was lovely and I was glad to have it. I would love to return here when plants are blooming just to see what else can be found here. I also wonder if you could put a canoe or kayak in here and paddle the river south to the state park? I wonder if there are any hazards on the river that would prevent anyone from doing so. Must research!

Entry is free. Worth stopping by if you are visiting the state park!

An interesting limestone creek wall with black maidenhair ferns, Adiantum capillus-veneris.

Sound on for lovely creek sounds.

Golden-eye Lichen, Teloschistes chrysophthalmus with a sunburst lichen, Xanthomendoza weberi.

Winter Grapefern, Holubiella lunarioides

White Avens, Geum canadense

Common Script Lichen, Graphis scripta, with an unidentified liverwort.

Orthotrichum pusillum moss with a rosette lichen, Physcia sp.

Bare-bottom Sunburst Lichen, Xanthomendoza weberi

Roundleaf Scurfpea, Pediomelum rhombifolium

Alabama Lipfern, Myriopteris alabamensis

Overlook of the Navasota River

Bulbous Adder’s-Tongue, Ophioglossum crotalophoroides

Cutgrass (Zizaniopsis miliacea) & creek

A stately bur oak, Quercus macrocarpa

Blunt Woodsia, Woodsia obtusa

Small spring at the east end of the lake/Navasota River

Ranunculus sp. at the spring

In mid-January I went up to Fort Parker State Park to “camp” with two friends for a long weekend. For two of us, it was our third trip to this state park for such an adventure. Located between Waco and Fairfield (aka: I-35 & I-45) near Mexia and Groesbeck, it occupies an area of the state that is mostly devoid of public land. Without Fairfield Lake State Park nearby, the park really is on its own right now. TPWD has been slowly adding additional park land from 2023’s Centennial Parks Fund. However, most of those parcels have been in the Hill Country and a lot of them have been just to add additional adjacent land to current parks. Which is great to hear but doesn’t really fix the void in some areas of the state.

The weekend ended up being pretty chilly and so we were all thankful to be inside a trailer instead of inside a tent at night! I did end up going on several solo hikes in the afternoon when everyone wanted to have some quiet time (this is what happens when a bunch of introverts get together) so I meandered down a few trails to explore. I’ve been turning to the smaller lifeforms during the winter season and it has actually been very rewarding. Without blooming plants, I find myself drawn to lichens, mosses, liverworts, and ferns instead and I was richly rewarded on this trip.

All of the ferns were a big surprise. I had looked at iNat a week or so before I left to get an idea of what might be blooming but didn’t really pay attention to some of the ferns, though a few of them hadn’t been identified in the park before I found them (at least on iNaturalist). The trail with the maidenhair fern wall was a trail I had not explored in my two prior trips to the park and so I was thrilled to come across it. The Baines Creek Trail is 5 miles round trip and I didn’t have the time to hike the entire trail this time. I probably hiked maybe 1.25 miles round trip because I was puttering along to look for things to photograph. On some future trip I’ll have to hike the entire trail and I also want to paddle up the Navasota River sometime as there are also limestone bluffs on it.

Don’t sleep on this state park! It has a lot of great trails and interesting things to see and the campgrounds aren’t so large to be overwhelming and crowded, either. This was my second January trip and the first trip here was in May.

One of the two 110 film cameras I have (the Diana Baby being the other one) is a Concord 110 EF, much like the Neon Lites one in this link. It’s the first camera I had as a kid and was a Christmas present from my grandmother, I believe. Someday I will flip through my photo albums to see what kind of photos I took with it back in the day, though I have an inkling of what some of them look like based on memory. While this camera does not shoot great photos, as evidenced above, at least my technique has improved over the years!

Shooting on film, and especially on a toy camera, is much more about the vibe and emotion of a moment on film than of getting any kind of high quality image. It’s the artistry of it that matters and well, my personal view on enjoying the photos vs caring so much what anyone else thinks about the photos. Moments from the images above were collected at Honey Creek State Natural Area (adjacent to Guadalupe River State Park), along the Pecos River in New Mexico, Cades Cove & GSMNP, and the last image is our well house in the garden. I just realized that last image is actually reversed and I should have flipped it when I scanned it. Oops!

As someone prone to a lot of daydreaming and zoning out when I see good light to focus on, these images draw me back into why I thought to pause and capture them in the first place: reflections on water, light and shadows cast on trees, slightly out of focus moments, and the bonus physical artifacts left on the film.

Camera: Concord 110 EF
Film: Lomography Color Tiger 110 ISO 200

All photos above were shot on a Minolta XG-1 on expired Kodak Gold 200 35mm film.

All photos above were shot on a Minolta XG-1 on expired Kodak GC 400-8 35mm film.

To continue from my last post, here are photos from other rolls of film I recently had developed. These two are from expired 35mm film and I really love the outcome for both. It’s giving “looks like 1975” but in reality it was 2024.

The Montezuma cypress along the river as well as the rock wall on the river provide excellent backdrops for photography, whether on film or digital. Since we have typically gone to this state park during Thanksgiving break all of my photos have that late fall/early winter vibe. Some day I would like to go in spring to see how different the light is and especially to see different plants blooming.

I don’t have a lot more to share about these but I may end up blowing up one or two to 8×10 to frame. I really like the ones of Forest, too.

I recently had some film developed that I’d had sitting around for the last year and a half. I had forgotten I had shot an entire roll of 110 film on my Diana Baby toy camera when we were in the Galapagos in July 2024 so these were a fun treat to see when I scanned the negatives. The film was Color Tiger 110 ISO 200 from Lomography.

Getting the film developed has renewed my interest to shoot more film so I’ll be trying to do more of that this year. I also need to see if I can find a local developer to develop my film instead of shipping it out. I’ve been using The Darkroom via mail order to do this but would like to find somewhere in north Houston instead. All I need is someone to process the film and I can scan it myself.

Ozark Milkvetch, Astragalus distortus

Aquatic Pygmyweed, Crassula aquatica

Rose Bluet, Houstonia rosea

After more than a decade of wanting to see Texas prairie dawn (Hymenoxys texana), Chris and I were finally able to see a population of the plants in western Harris County last spring. They’ve been on our survey lists for years when we work in certain areas of the state, primarily the Houston region, but no one in our office had seen them yet. I’d been looking during my cemetery botanizing the last few years in SW Montgomery county and NW Harris county but never came up with anything. Thankfully, someone pointed us in the right direction to see some and now I have an idea of what to look for this spring when I go out searching again.

This is a G2S2 plant: Globally Imperiled and State Imperiled. Texas prairie dawn is endemic to Texas and is quite tiny. It’s very easy to miss if you don’t know what to look for and I guarantee 99.9% of the population would walk by this plant and consider it to be a worthless weed. To really see this plant you need to be on your knees or stomach, careful not to crush any other nearby plants, of course. It was listed as federally endangered by USFWS in 1986. Once you see the plant and its habitat (barrens/slightly saline soils), you quickly realize why it is endangered. It lives where people love to develop! And what suitable habitat remains, primarily the Katy Prairie, it is rapidly being built upon now.

In NE Texas there’s also pygmy prairie dawn, Hymenoxys perpygmaea, which seems to be even more rare.

In the vicinity of this small population we also found a few other cool plants I included above. Seeing the astragalus and bluet really made me miss spring and those early ephemerals. If the weather keeps up this warmth, we’ll be seeing them much sooner than usual I think.

A few links for more information:
Nature Serve
TPWD
USFWS
BONAP Ranges of other Hymenoxys species

I didn’t meant to ghost you since the last post in August but it was a necessity. I spent that time finishing my book and turned it in last week. I mean, it’s done but of course it will need some editing and there are some accessory documents I need to work on in the next few weeks to keep the publishing process moving along. I’m not here to write about all of that but will at some point in time.

This is mostly an “I”m alive” post. And still unsure what to do with the blog. I feel a lot lighter now that the book is submitted, that I can actually work on some other projects (writing, art, gardening, random creative pursuits) once more. My thoughts from sometime in the summer are still the same: overhaul the website, archive a lot of writing, and target this differently. Over at On Texas Nature I have been writing more long form content pertaining to the Texas environment. Obviously, the blog is something different but I have been contemplating cross-posting those here as well, mostly because the Substack platform is not something I own and websites change.

I may return to more trail reports as I once wrote so frequently here. Gardening? Haven’t done much or cared about it in two years. As much as it pains me, because I loved writing about him, definitely less kid writing as he’s now 11 (I KNOW!) and I doubt he wants that internet footprint before he even gets a social media account of his own (a long time from now, crossing fingers). I have a lot to update “you” on—who is even reading this anymore? My blog has always been beneficial for me and I still dig into it from time to time. But the wide open scope it used to hold, well, I think that time has passed.

Expect more in the next few weeks as I work to update the layout and archive some writing here. I would love a comment or email if you are still reading so I can get an idea of audience. Pretty sure it is just a handful of you at this point, mostly friends and family.

Alas.

Happy New Year!

Gaillardia aestivalis winkleri, white firewheel

White firewheel with a nectaring little yellow, Eurema lisa

This is a locally uncommon to rare grass, Gymnopogon ambiguus, bearded skeletongrass. I’ve only ever seen it over on the Big Sandy Creek Unit of the Big Thicket. I suspect it may be more common in some of these areas but people generally ignore grasses.

Oenothera rhombipetala, fourpoint evening primrose

A few weekends ago, Chris took a random dirt road that his GPS said to take to get to the Beaver Slide Trail in the Big Thicket. It was a pleasant drive, lots of interesting plants to look at outside the window. Then we entered a cleared area with different soils and I first noticed the primrose and then Chris busts out with excitement when he saw the white firewheel! He parked and turned off the car and we hop out to botanize along the roadside. The property around had been cutover in the last year or two and so everything was scrubby. I have no doubt there are other cool plants back on that property but since we didn’t want to trespass we didn’t stray far from the road. The white firewheel is definitely a county record and we’ll have to go back at some point to get a plant to press and voucher.

Lesson: take the back roads!

Geraldine’s cabin, steady through the seasons.

Hibiscus aceuleatus, pineland hibiscus

Marshallia graminifolia, Grass-leaved Barbara’s buttons

A few of some of the Platanthera chapmanii, Chapman’s fringed orchids along the boardwalk

Two of the Chapman’s in bloom.

Ascelpias rubra

The boardwalk down near the pond. When it cools off I’d like to sit down here and read or paint at some point.

The beginning of liatris season.

Some scenes from a quick trip to the Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve back in July. It was a quick trip but there was quite a bit blooming as you can see. I wrote a different post over on Substack with about similar things that day, but focused on the two Platanthera orchids we saw that day: The Heat is Thick but Orchids are Blooming.

Note: I think I can schedule two posts a week, so I’m opting for Sunday and Wednesday going forward. I know it gets to be too much nowadays for everyone to read really any more than that so I’ll keep it at that for now.