Savoring 2017 – Anticipating 2018

2017 was a busy year. Here are some highlights.

January

My daughter and I drove from Maryland down to Dallas to visit family and then spent a week in Grapevine TX for a AAS conference before driving on to Tucson. It was the trek between Tucson and the east coast for the year.

Not long after I returned – I bought a new car: a Prius Prime.

February

February was the trough of the year in terms of activity but we did buy another car – a Honda CR-V for my husband.

March

In March a flew round trip to Dallas to do the chauffeuring for a trip to Oklahoma for my parents to visit other family members.

When I got back, we made a short visit to Pittsburgh – and enjoyed the Phipps Conservatory and the Aviary.

April

April was the start of field trips: Delmarva Birding with my husband and then the field trip volunteering I do with Howard County Conservancy.

May

In May there was another family visit in Texas and then moving my daughter from Tucson to State College. The packing up was some of the hardest physical work I’ve ever done…and then driving cross country with very sore and stiff muscles. Now that time has passed, I can see it as quite an adventure.

June

In June I started volunteering at the Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy exhibit. That continued into early September.

July

I made my first road trip in my Prius in July – to State College to help my daughter move into her apartment.

August

In August we drove to Nebraska for the Solar Eclipse.

September

September was full of Howard County Conservancy field trips. The stream and school yard assessments with the high schools were the more numerous for the season.

October

Staunton River Star Party is becoming an annual event or us. This was our third trek down to southern Virginia’s dark sky site.

My sister visited later in the month and we toured two places I had not been in more than 5 years: Fort McHenry and Nemours Mansion and Gardens.

November

I was back in Texas in November for a family birthday celebration and then

Down to Harlingen for the Rio Grande Birding Festival.

December

This December was by first time to volunteer as a conservatory docent at the Brookside Gardens Model Trains Exhibit. What a joy!

Then we went to Pittsburgh…I’ll post about that trip in the new year.

Anticipating 2018

There are already some things on my calendar for 2018: getting the eBotanicalPrints section of my website up and running in January, an 8-week class that will fill one day a week in February and March, a family visit in Texas for birthdays in April, Howard County Conservancy volunteering for school field trips in the spring and fall, and Brookside volunteering for the butterfly exhibit (April-September) and probably the model trains in December. I’m sure there will be a lot more that will fill the year.

Happy New Year to us all!

Some last images of South Texas

As I finished up the post yesterday about the San Antonio Botanical Garden – I realized there were a few more miscellaneous pictures I wanted to share from our South Texas adventure. Every day near sunset hundreds, maybe thousands of birds gathered on the roofs and electrical lines around our hotel in Harlingen. The last night I managed photograph some with some sunset color behind them. Many of them are grackles.

The next morning we headed to the National Butterfly Center first but decided it was too cold and wet for butterflies to be out and about when we got there. I photographed a male and female Boat-tailed grackle on the lawn and

The water lily in the little pool.

Then I noticed a red-eared slider in the water too. It is native in southern Texas…but invasive in Maryland. It’s included in the list of the world’s most invasive species!

We headed out for a state park in lieu of the Butterfly Center and then heading toward San Antonio. The one rest stop we made along the way had this forest mosaic.

As we drove into San Antonio, I managed a picture of the Tower of the Americas through the car window. It was built for the HemisFair in 1968 and I remember making the trip to the event with my Camp Fire Girls group; I was in the 8th grade.

One last bird picture: a cold White-winged Dove taken from our hotel window.

Las Estrellas

Our first field trip of the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival was to Las Estellas – a Nature Conservancy preserve near Rio Grande City. The vans left at 5:30 AM…normal for birding festivals. The day was cool and gray…thankfully not wet. We had a rest stop along the way and spotted a Cooper’s Hawk on a light fixture in the parking lot. Not a bad way to start a birding week!

The preserve is not one that is open to the public. It protects some endangers Star Cactus. The previous weeks had been dry, so they were hard to spot – flush with the ground and blending in with the pebbles and sand. Once we spotted one, our eyes became more trained and more were spotted.

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This will tree was in an area that is sometimes full of water. There was still a little water in the lowest part of the area – often enough to keep other plants from growing.

Walking around the preserve gave us a preview of many of the south Texas plants.

We could see the wind turbines through the mists. South Texas is evidently as much a part of wind energy in Texas as West Texas.

There were migrating butterflies that we saw in the air – but they weren’t settling anywhere (no photos). There two types of small butterflies that I managed to photograph: Reakirt’s Blue

And American Snouts – with very unusual mouthparts!

We didn’t see a lot of birds; the weather was cool and damp so they were not very active. A Northern Cardinal and a Green Jay were about all we saw; at least they were colorful.

On the way to our next destination, we saw a Harris’s Hawk. I managed to get a blurry picture through the van window…but it is good enough to identify it!

Next stop was Rancho Lomitas. I’ll post about our experience there on Sunday.

Home Again

I am glad to be home again after 2 weeks in Texas! During the first week in North Texas, there was a birthday to celebrate along with day to day activities like walks to Josey Ranch and the plantings still blooming, a trip to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge…a lunch at an upscale Mexican food restaurant (some large baskets decorated the walls of the entrance)

And some wire art in the atrium of a medical building (noticed when a was chauffeuring to doctor’s appointments). I’ve posted about that first week.

Over the next weeks I’ll post about week 2 in Texas – near Harlingen, Texas in the far south where we made the most of the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival…. lots and lots of birds. The Harlingen Municipal Auditorium was the headquarters for the festival with lots of buses and vans heading out to birding spots around Harlingen between 5:30 and 7 in the morning: birders are always anxious to get out in the field early!

We flew in and out of San Antonio so the last day, I spend the morning at the San Antonio Botanical Garden…well worth the visit.

As we took off just before 6 PM CDT, I took one last picture from Texas from the plane: a sunset just as the plane climbed above the cloud layer. We were headed home.

Yesterday I was challenged with a lot of catch up activities: groceries, laundry, verifying my 2018 medical plan selection, signing up for training for my December volunteer gig (it involves a model train exhibit) …and trying to get back to the east coast time zone. I put off the raking of leaves until today. They are a thick carpet in the backyard --- all the leaves from the maple and tulip poplar and sycamore are on the ground and the majority fell while I was in Texas!