The person behind The Hermits' Rest blog and many others. I'm a certified Texas Master Naturalist and love the nature of Milam County. I manage technical writers in Austin, help with Hearts Homes and Hands, a personal assistance service, in Cameron, and serve on three nonprofit boards. You may know me from La Leche League, knitting, iNaturalist, or Facebook. I'm interested in ALL of you!
In my previous post, I talked about going on a walk with Kathleen (who will be here for the next year or so, getting our Hearts Homes and Hands business going) around the ranch for a long time and getting no “exercise credit” for it on my watch. While annoying, there are darned good reasons we didn’t just trek briskly around the property. Plus the dogs got stinky.
Kathleen is ready for checking out the nature!
It finally cooled off enough to go for a nice exploration of the woods, which is just not easy to do in the summer. The dogs were pretty thrilled at the prospect, and engaged all their sniffers.
We’re ready to sniff!
I hadn’t had a chance to show Kathleen what’s in the woods (mainly a lot of cedar elm and coral berry), so she had fun discovering the little stream (or where it would be if it rained more), then as we moved on, we saw the gate to nowhere, and other bottomland landmarks.
Some days I get quite annoyed with the exercise tracker on my Apple Watch. There are days when I KNOW I have gotten a lot of exercise but the watch stubbornly displays the “fact” that I just got a few minutes. Take last weekend as an example. On Friday I went on a long hike and my legs could feel it. Then I walked all over the Hilton. The watch did not agree.
Yep, looks like on Friday I got about 8 minutes.
Every morning, it gleefully informs me that I get two minutes walking the dog. And it does believe I’m exercising when I walk up and down the parking garage. But, when I walk around the pasture? When I take the dogs on a longer walk? Not so much.
How come?
GOOOOOOAL.
It’s because of Nature, that’s why. These days I am completely incapable of going on a nice brisk walk, arms swinging merrily (because that’s how the watch knows I’m moving, as I’ve probably mentioned before), for numerous consecutive minutes. I was proud to do it yesterday for enough minutes to reach my goal, but that’s because we didn’t let ourselves or the dogs be distracted.
Usually, though, something distracts me, and not just the dog needing to sniff or do his business. I just see things or hear things that I have to investigate. There seems to be a bird, a bug, or a flower every few feet, and this nature gal just has to check them out, and most likely take a picture. I mean, heck, iNaturalist is always there, wanting me to add stuff and make my number larger.
Howdy. I hope you didn’t miss me too much yesterday, but I was too zonked once I got home from the Master Naturalist Conference to write anything, and I did want to spend some bonding time with Lee, since I won’t see him again until November.
Our merry band, plus a guy I don’t know, but must have been one of us once. Mike, in the back with the hat, is going to re-join us once he retires as a game warden. Apparently he was the only one who brought his gun with him. Yee-haw, Texas.
The blog title tells you two big things that made me happy yesterday, learning about bumblebees and our Chapter’s brochure winning the best brochure award at the conference. Everyone worked SO hard on it (yes, including me) that it just felt great.
Most of the folks showing off our certificate participated in the brochure project.
Of course, I was busy loading my stuff in the car when the announcement was made, but my colleagues valiantly handled it themselves.
I was so thrilled my eyeballs went crazy. Also note my fancy nails. They do glow!
As for Bumblebees
My main session yesterday morning was about bumblebees, which will be the Texas creature featured on next year’s re-certification pin (by the way, we FINALLY got our golden-cheeked warblers for this year). It turns out I didn’t know much about bumblebees. Now, I do!
I’m still at the annual Master Naturalist conference, and enjoyed getting recognized for achieving 250 volunteer hours so far. That does pale in comparison to the dude who achieved 10,000 hours. But I’m proud I got so much done in just two years.
I did this. So did a lot of other people!
I’m also proud of myself for signing up for a few of the more administrative sessions today. I did one on doing social media for your group and another on leading effective meetings. The networking in both was great, and much of what I learned will help with my other jobs, since they also involve social media and leading meetings.
This book was my door prize. It’s much smaller than it appears to be. There is loads of info in it, though.
The tidbits on dealing with folks who disrupt meetings and in how to actually get things done in meetings were invaluable.
Naturally I got books. I’m me. One is on things that are invading Texas and the other is on things that are in danger of disappearing.
Happy day. I am enjoying my second Texas Master Naturalist conference very much. It’s so nice to just enjoy learning with no pressure at all.
The prairie area
This morning I went on a field trip to the Spring Creek Forest Preserve. Wow, the people presenting me so much about the area. My head is full of little tidbits about prairies, forests, and riparian areas.
I also saw so many beautiful seed pods and fall plants. Lots of photos were taken by everyone.
I’m here in Rockwall at our Master Naturalist conference (starts tomorrow). We are enjoying the unnatural beauty of where we are. The place we are at is called Rodeo Goat. Here’s Jackie holding my beer.
It’s pretty amazing. It has a little lime in it and some herbs. Wow.
Because I’m here with the Master Naturalists, I want to get all my cultivated plants out of my system. I promise I took more native photos.
I must share the monarch and queen butterflies too. So pretty.
Queen
I’ll write more later, but I assure you it is quite pleasant at the Hilton in Rockwall.
Here’s the latest book I read for the neighborhood book club. I had to read through it as quickly as I could (meaning with all my other stuff, it still took a week), because my queue is full of good stuff (Elton John memoir arrived yesterday!). It’s another first novel, this time by Yaa Gyasi, daughter an immigrant from Ghana and quite a gifted storyteller. See, folks, some of those immigrants do indeed contribute to society. Ahem.
Homegoing (2016) is one of those epic novels (it says so, right on the cover!) that span many years of one family. Each chapter is from the perspective of a different family member, starting from a maternal ancestor in Ghana and ending up at the present day. Luckily, there is a family tree at the beginning of the book.
Hint: Bookmark the family tree. Even though there is a pattern to the chapters, you’ll probably want to remind yourself of who’s who and how they’re related.
Most of you know that I’ve been playing with hair color for the past few years. It has been blue, maroon, pink, purple, and white. Why?
Purple.
Who knows? It was fun. Especially since I started using this Overtime stuff. It doesn’t hurt my hair and fades fast enough that I don’t get sick of any color. And they are also excellent conditioners with ingredients you recognize. They smell like mint and rosemary, too. Nice.
Blue!
Today I tried one of their intense colors made for dark hair. These have a lot of pigment. I bought the intense rose gold and red. I let Anita decide which one to try, and she picked the red.
The Overtone for dark hair!
I’m glad I had gloves. My hands turned really red when I rinsed, too. I had an old towel and plan to sleep on an old pillowcase.
Cooking for 20 minutes.
I’m happy, though, that even my brown hair shows the color. It will be fun to see how it fades!
Red. Not orange. Not pink.
One day I’ll let my hair be normal. It looks fine that way, too. I just like having fun with impermanent color. I’m scared of permanent things like tattoos or piercings.
We’ve been coming to the Cameron area since 2011, when we first visited the land that would eventually become the Hermits’ Rest. At first, the town didn’t appeal to me much. It was really run-down and there was very little to do, which was fine, since we were spending all our time in the woods and hanging out with the ranch neighbors.
Lee and I like it here.
Now, in addition to the ranch neighbors, we have Mandi’s family across the road. Then we have my sister living in the town where we do our business, Martha and Mike, our UU church friends, have moved up here, Kathleen has joined us to set up the new business (plus her husband now visits), and I’ve been meeting more and more people who have been here just a couple of years. On top of that, the town is blossoming. Yow!
Now when I look around, I see new restaurants, spiffed up businesses, and even new homes. Yeah, parts of the town are still a mess, but they’ve actually begun improving the infrastructure, like the water lines. Yay!
She’s still dubious
Even my Austin housemate, Anita, who does her best to avoid the ranch (she has her reasons) is going to buy a house in town and fix it up (a really cute house in a pleasant tree-lined part of town).
At dinner last night, we were talking about how much we enjoy small town living. Literally NONE of us would have ever thought we’d say that. Even my sister seems to like some aspects of the place, though we know it isn’t ideal for her. What is it about the small-town life that has made us feel good?
Kathleen and Chris like it, too!
Well, we meet new people easily, and since you are always seeing everyone in town, it’s easy to become friends, or at least pleasant acquaintances. The lack of traffic means you can get anywhere in fewer than 15 minutes. Even the limited shopping and dining choices mean you really get to know the shop-keepers and restaurant folks.
My favorite part is that people take care of each other and make sure they are okay. Even people who aren’t all that fond of each other have some kind of “town loyalty.” It makes me happy to spend time in our little town that’s trying to become its very best possible.
I said I wouldn’t do anything strenuous today. I think I succeeded. We just had a nice family day followed by an equally nice Sunday dinner for 7.
Autumnal bovine
The weather was so nice that we started outside a lot. I put up some fall decorations I’d found, walked with various dogs, and tried to catch up with writing. That’s why this is so late. Lots to write.
Unnatural spider
We even had a visit from Mandi, who brought her son by to talk to Chris about welding. Chris got to show him all the stuff on his truck, which is interesting to welders.
Walks are fun. Kathleen found a snakeskin. Nature.
Dinners
Our Sunday night dinners have taken on a life of their own. Whoever is in town and not sick shows up. Actually a sick lesson even sent their food. That was sweet.
I had to get this beautiful sky. It seems so big out here.
Tonight Kathleen wanted me to take pictures of her with Martha and Mike, while we were out walking, since we are all dinner buddies. Then we sat on the porch. My sister made lovely home-made lasagna, Kathleen made dessert, and we all laughed as usual.
Wine makes a walk fun.
Oh yes. We spent much time looking at the moon. Group activities for the nature living set!
The moon behind clouds. The two white dots are Mandi’s house.
The Hermits' Rest 