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
The thistles are some of my favorite plants. In fact the genus Cirsiums were the first plants that I tried by hand at keying. So I am fond of them. Additionally it is a magnet for insects! FYI, most of these photos were taken in just a fifteen minute time span in our yard. 🙂…
Nectaries are small glands that secrete nectar in plants. However to complicate things there is an additional place where these glands are located. When the glands are located outside the flower they are referred to extra-floral nectaries. Some scientists think the extra-floral nectaries provide an enticement to insects to help protect against other insects. The…
Well, it was dang hot so of course we planned our afternoon mostly in the car. And we were going to visit old friends of Shirley’s. Certainly it is always great to visit Shirley’s old plant friends. And I like to think of them as my old friends now as well. 🙂 Every 17 Years,…
So I actually had a purpose that morning. I was conducting a small survey in area where I had not searched before for the Narrow-leaf Morning-glory (Ipomoea shumardiana). However no new patches was found. It was 11 o’clock and we had made the circle for the survey. So now we were done at the grasslands….
In case you missed it, today (Wednesday, June 21, 2023) was the summer solstice at 9:57 am CDT (in Fort Worth, Texas). And perhaps we need to invest in a row boat…we got .04″ of rain. If you can still call that rain. LOL Now on with the walk from Monday morning! As you probably…
So do you agree that the hot weather is here? Yesterday the heat index at our house was 120 degrees. Yikes! Furthermore Jeanne agreed with me that it would best to get our exploring by foot early. So we opted for both walking and a driving tour. So there were many special critters and plants…
Good advice is to always try to be aware of your surroundings. Most critters will avoid you if they can of course. Indeed lucky for me I have mostly been lucky except for a bee or wasp sting a few times. So I was able to capture a movie of it with its loud buzz….
This morning I read this article, 400-Million-Year-Old Fossil Upends Our Understanding of Fibonacci Spirals in Nature. With the article fresh on my mind, of course I had to go look outside. The Clear Lake Chapter Native Plant Society of Texas recently had a presentation (June 12th) on “The Fibonacci Sequence in Nature and Native Plants”….
A few of my favorite things at home today. Definitely always fun to watch the locomotion of a caterpillar’s walk! Here the Hackberry Emperor most likely was hunting for a place to pupate. It was on an Post Oak. Hope y’all saw some good nature today as well! 🙂 Bright white lights are a buzzkill…
Before I forget (again) Kathy and Jerry shared some photos with me. And now I am sharing with you. 🙂 Now back to the title of this post, catenary. This was a new term for me this morning. A physicist, an architect, an engineer or a mathematician (to mention a few) would know the term….