Welcome to my nature blog! I love sharing my photos of North Texas! I will keep looking out and hope you do too.
Comments welcome. Thank you, Mary
Several of you have told me you couldn’t read the inscription on the house yesterday. It read “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” The quote is attributed to Jimi Hendrix. So now we continue yesterday’s driving tour starting with the Becker Prairie. Shooting Star rosettes are making…
What a beautiful day! Gracie said she needed a short hike on the grasslands so let’s go! Well, semi-short…only two hours. Gracie thought it was perfect. I liked it too 🙂 This scat was so black and then it looked like an insect decided to dig there. You take a photo of something, then you…
Forgot to mention yesterday, I had another American Woodcock in our woods. Exciting, but alas no photo ;-( I have seen more of them this year (three total) then I have ever seen before. Also had a Fox Sparrow and Northern Harrier. Neither seen very often anymore at home. Script lichen (Alyxoria varia). It was…
This is the second part of our prairie scouting trip on Saturday. This is the Three Sisters farm. David told us he acquired the land in 1991. He named it Three Sisters for his three daughters. Nice name! The land was not in very good shape. David has been trying to restore it. He has…
So happy it is warming up today and all sunshine! To change it up it up a bit, here is the iron oxidizing bacteria sample I collected… This is from the Feb 8th outing at the grasslands. It took me several days of looking under the microscope to go thru the whole sample. And the…
A old yucca root. Insect tunneling in the sandstone. We found this in the seepy area. Not sure what kind of plant it is. I will have to go back and check for a bloom another day. A curious looking root. I thought it was poop at first glance. Bristlegrass. I love it. I never…
I don’t think anyone has anything on north Texas’ sunrises. Spring Beauty colors! The variation of color ranges from almost white… To these deeper shades. And the yellow at the base of the petals vary too. What lies beneath the bark on this dead Hackberry tree? This is the bark moved back to the…
The sky had a lot of contrails today. It was cold this morning with a low of 23. However there was not much frost on the ground. Glad there was no wind and plenty of sunshine at noon! By the afternoon it was not so blue. At sunset the sky was full of many different…
Turban Lichen (Cladonia peziziformis) was still hanging on. It was there when we were there back in the summer. Purple Cliff-brake (Pellaea atropurpurea), mosses, and Turban lichens. Hanging roots and a hole in the side of the ditch. This nostoc was laying on the ground. It was partial dry and wet. The black part is…
That’s how far Gracie went on the grasslands yesterday. Humans went only 2+ miles in the three and half hours. A good part of the day was in the gullies and the creek bed. The side of some of the gullies were this red sandy/clay loam. Roots and red sandy/clay loam were beautiful! From the…