subtropic climate=green

-
don't armadillos look like giant pill bugs?
That big shiny armadillo grabbed my attention when I was downtown, so I figured it would grab yours. We can now dispense with the preliminaries, and move on to the meat of this mini-Texas tour.
Not all of Texas is desert. There are actually several different environments in Texas (although all of them include heat): desert and plateaus in the west, hills and scrubby trees in the center, and a flat green expanse of oaks/pines/cypress/etc. on the coast in the east (which is where I live).
hey, there are horses!

Texas is in a drought right now--the worse we've had in about 50 years--but the southeast is still pretty green. Mostly. The grass is dying. The trees might die. Hopefully not, though, because Texas has some nice trees.
SHADE=the other reason trees aren't cut down

It seems that a lot of the old trees in Texas were hanging trees at one point or another. Such a history, apparently, saves the tree from being cut down. Weird commemoration.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dogsledding: Guest Post

-
Image
 Happy Birthday to Mark, and he wrote this post.  One of the benefits of traveling to snowy northern Norway is that there are a plethora of winter activities to do.   Besides the usual skiing/snowboarding, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling, there are also things more unique to Tromsø, such as reindeer sleigh rides and dogsledding.   We went dogsledding twice during our Norway travels.   This is the story of the first of those adventures.   The dogsledding company of our first experience is located at the Tromsø Golf Club, the northernmost 18-hole golf course in the world.  Buried in snow in the winter, it becomes the perfect place for an amazing dogsledding experience.  The dogsledding company runs shuttle busses from Tromsø city center to the dogsledding camp.  It takes about an hour to get there and the views along the way are spectacular. The noise on arrival was also spectacular.   They have well over 100 dogs there and they all want to talk to each other at full volume. The dogs
Read more

RATS! A Guest Column

-
Image
  On May 10, we began the move into our new apartment.  It is in the same building as our old apartment.  In fact, it is just down the hall on the same floor.  Our lease renewal was coming up on our old apartment and the rent on our old apartment was going up significantly.  If we were going to pay a bunch more for our old apartment, why not get a bigger and refurbished apartment for slightly more than what our new rent was going to be?  The new apartment would still be a one-bedroom, but would have a study and would also have a half-bath by the front door.  The big draw for us is the study, which is too small to be considered a second bedroom but will be big enough to have a crib [because SPOILER! pregnant].  The half-bath is unnecessary (except for if we have guests over who want to use the bathroom without going through our bedroom, but we almost never have guests) and is actually a hindrance as it takes away from kitchen space. Our lease on the old apartment did not run out until t
Read more

Thoughts on Pregnancy

-
Image
 I have hit the 6-month mark in gestation. I'd like to say that means I'm two-thirds of the way done, but actually, * psych! * pregnancy is 10 months, not 9. I don't know why we say pregnancy is 9 months; maybe it averages in all the preemies. So far, I have to say first trimester is the worst. Constant nausea, and too early to tell people why you feel terrible. Mark likes to point out that I never threw up, but nausea is terrible all on its own, so I didn't find that comforting. Second trimester has less nausea, but also less energy. Like, I was running 2-3 miles a day up until 2nd trimester. Now I'm running 1 mile a couple times a week, but as of this week I think even that is going to stop because the 2 times I ran this week left me with such pain in my pelvic area--and that's even with a belly band thing to try to support the extra tummy weight--that changing positions hurt all day. Also, I'm not a fan of the nighttime leg cramps. These are charley-horse
Read more