Weather Report – Page 7 – The Hermits' Rest

Thankful for Diversion

It’s a good thing my new consulting position cropped up. Getting immersed in creating quality documentation this week has been very helpful in keeping me from dwelling on how the natural disasters keep coming more and more often.

I’ve been able to concentrate so hard on enjoying my work that time seems to speed by. I’m really feeling like a part of the team, plus my input is solicited and seems appreciated. I’ll enjoy this as long as it lasts!

I think you can tell that all the vegetation was sparkling this morning. Cheerful.

I do want to be there to listen to folks who need to talk through their sadness and feelings, though, and I feel more able to empathize and provide support (and receive it) having given my mind a break.

Our creek spilled its banks overnight, though we’ve not had as much rain as most areas nearby.

We’re in for a lot of weird nature stuff, I’m afraid. It does serve as a reminder to live well and love hard. Speaking of love, here’s a salute to my many friends working right now to kick some medical challenges away from their lives. Your healing vibes are on their way!

Penney wanted to tell you that Lee strung lights in the porch.

Tough Times Together

I’m just not able to say much right now. The loss of lives and livelihoods near me in Texas is heart wrenching and has affected nearly everyone I know directly or indirectly. The whole state is in shock, because the campers and other visitors were from all over the state. It’s really too hard to talk about right now.

This is Alfred informing me that the weather is bad.

I’m grateful for the first responders and trained volunteers from our county and nearby who went to help with flooding that wasn’t on the news, but was still bad. It always impresses me how these highly trained folks just go wherever they’re needed, even to other states or countries. They’re needed with so much bad weather here and in North Carolina, not to mention the fires in the Navajo Nation.

Here we just had a reasonable amount of rain, though lightning hit a tree near the horse pasture. Horses are ok. I immersed myself in work today, which was helpful. I guess I’m also grateful for having a good challenge to occupy my mind.

I’m also grateful for pets, even skittish ones.

Take care of yourselves. Hugs to all of you dealing with challenges. I haven’t forgotten you. We are in this together.

What’s with All the Insect Bites?

Argh. I know it’s normal for a damp time in summer, but gee whiz, I’ve had ENOUGH already with mosquitoes, fire ants, and biting flies. It’s hard to enjoy myself outdoors right now!

And it was a nice, if humid, day in between showers.

First, house flies are having one of their periodic invasions. They follow me everywhere, indoors and out, and either bite or leave a weird feeling where they land. They are just so buzzy.

Then there are the mosquitoes that make me unable to stand still or sit outside unless I’m in the swimming pool. I saw 6 at once this afternoon. And they come get me in my sleep, too. Mosquito nets seem like a smart idea. Since I’m slightly allergic, I’ve been mighty uncomfortable from itching.

I don’t let them sit on me long enough to photograph, so this is from Pexels.

We cannot forget fire ants. I wish we could. They seem to be on the move, because no matter where I stopped today, ants would be on my feet instantly. I paid a price for any photo I took today! There are way too many to treat chemically, but I know of a few beds I’ll go after.

One more! I think there are no -see-ums or some tiny biting insect out right now, too. My arms and neck will start hurting and I don’t see any cause. Wah.

Pretend there are bugs in these mushrooms.

No wonder I walked in the rain a lot today. If I stay on the road, not much will bite in the rain. Also yay rain.

And yay. Half the year done in my temperature blanket calendar style.

Romantic Thoughts

What’s your definition of romantic?

Eh. I don’t dwell much on romanticism at the medium-old age of 67. Still, I do know what my caring spouse does that makes me feel loved and appreciated. He hits most of the love languages, too.

He notices little things I do and tells me what a good job I’ve done.
He picks up little things when he’s out that he knows I like—flowers, a book, a tasty treat, etc.
He shows interest in my interests. I can’t tell you how much it touches me that he spots birds and tells me about them or takes an insect photo to upload on iNaturalist.
He does many things to make my life easier or more pleasant, without me asking.

Yeah, Lee may be grumpy sometimes, but he’s a good guy, and quietly romantic.

Tawny Emperor butterfly he photographed for me this morning.

I hope I do something he finds romantic!

This is our engagement photo. I hardly recognize him without facial hair!

PS: it rained a good bit today. In July! That led us to romantically sit on the new porch and listen to rain.

Rainy Rainy Floody Floody

Gee whiz. Last night 8.5” of rain fell at the Hermits’ Rest. That’s the second most since we’ve been keeping records (2011). It was wet this morning.

It’s rare for water to flow over our driveway, which is the dam that created the front pond. It did last night, though, and much of our road base washed away.

This is worse than it looks. The ruts are deep.

The pond got the highest I’ve ever seen it, but with the water flowing quickly through our big culvert, it quickly lowered once rain stopped.

At left you can see how high the water got. The little trees in the water show the normal “full” line.

I walked down the road to see how Walker’s Creek looked. I’m used to it being out of its banks, but it was way over the road and there was a large dead tree in the middle of the bridge. That’s some strong water.

Looking at the fence on the right you can see how much higher the water was!

I talked to the guys who put the sign out. They said they’d move the tree when the water receded, but we think the neighbor down the road did it.

I thought about all the birds and turtles and hoped they were okay. I knew the frogs were happy, because I could hear at least four kinds.

The creek is usually at the far tree line.

I’m always fascinated by how the water drains from the property next to ours down an arroyo, to be joined by runoff from the cultivated field across the road, which becomes our mighty stream that joins the creek eventually.

Our back pond also has runoff feeding into it. When it’s full, the water goes to the pond behind our woods, then helps flood the floodplain field. No wonder it looks like we live on a lake when it rains a lot. All this drainage will start after receiving two inches of rain. Eight inches creates huge masses of water heading along until it reaches the Little River, which is also joined by Big Elm and Little Elm Creek. I’m guessing all their water has made the Brazos River pretty impressive right now.

Here you can see Walker’s Creek, which goes by my house. Above it is Pond Creek, which is a different watershed. Our creek is joined by Terry Branch just before going into Big Elm Creek. The creek that joins Big Elm is Little Elm. Big Elm joins the Brazos quite a ways east of this map.

It was interesting that the talk at tonight’s Master Naturalist meeting was watersheds. How water flows is mysterious but it works! Soon the creeks will all be back to normal, and at some point, Walker’s Creek will go through another dry period. I hope not too soon.

Outflow from the pond. The new concrete did its job.

Ooh, in other excitement, I finally finished May on the temperature blanket. I sure was glad to receive new black yarn!

May. Mostly warm with just a few days over 95° (the wine color).

Resting Truly Helps

The people who tell you to get rest and drink a lot of fluids when you’re feeling sick know what they’re talking about. After a couple of days of a sore throat and congestion I gave in to the fact that not only Lee is under the weather. I caught the latest mystery virus.

We spent all day under the beautiful storm clouds.

Once I accepted the situation I decided to be kind to myself and rest today. Tarrin fit me in for my riding lesson later in the week, so I didn’t push myself to do all the prep work and riding that entails. My only scheduled activity was a Zoom meeting for Annual Meeting field trip planning, which was easy to do sitting down.

This Hackberry Emperor was on the porch, so I didn’t exert myself to photograph it.

It helped that it rained a while, so I just wrote stuff and drank hot beverages. That was most of the day.

I did spy on the Barn Swallow nest. Still just eggs. Wonder where a Guinea fowl feather came from?

Admittedly, I’m still not as good at loafing as I was when younger, so I did take two long walks to enjoy the pleasant weather after the rain.

I thought I was taking it easy, but I got 39 minutes of exercise and 10,000 or so steps in. Plus, I cooked dinner, an easy one, but still…

These views helped me forget feeling sick.

I’m not very good at resting. And I’m nowhere near as sick as Lee, who’s still having chills and congestion and all that. Thank you, immune system, for being so hardy! Combined with my somewhat restful day, I may already be feeling better.

I saw this while convalescing on the new porch watching the sparrows flying in and out.

All in all, it was a perfect day to watch clouds and a perfect evening to watch the Strawberry Moon. Days like this make living in the moment easier.

Another Post about Gratitude for Rain

You can tell I live in a semi-arid environment by how often I mention that I’m grateful for rain. Our land is so prone to drought that we always fear it will never rain again. Of course, that’s not true. Usually, we have a very dry period followed by a flood. We’re used to it.

This year we have had some dry spells, but also some nicely spaced rain episodes, just nothing huge, until last night. We had over 2.5″ of rain here yesterday, and since 2″ is usually enough to get runoff happening, that means our ponds/tanks all filled.

It also means that the creek is overflowing, which is always fun, as long as it doesn’t cover the road, which it did not. It only got to the top of the fence that keeps the cattle in. No giant logs banged into the fence, either, which means the new owners won’t have to fix it.

You can see the fence posts almost underwater.

The rain was scary, and there were tornadoes in the area. Some folks got damage, but nothing like what we see in the news in other places, so we’re lucky. One of my friends even got up to 6″ of rain over the past few days! We’ve had at least 3 in total. Now all the animals will be happy.

Something did die, though. The vultures right next to my birding chair told me, along with the large number of flies. Ick. I may have to move my chair!

I enjoyed many clean and shiny birds on my morning walk, though, which is the best bonus. I’m still seeing a Tricolored Heron here, so who needs to travel to see interesting birds?

I went into town to have lunch with a new Master Naturalist and help her get her Merlin and iNaturalist set up for ease of use. Driving around I saw lots of hail damage and trees with lost limbs. The storm was a lot worse southeast of the ranch!

Our Merlin lesson was a bust, because the birds decided to stop making noise at our Cameron renovation project, where we tried to practice. But I did give my student some hints, and we had more success with iNaturalist. A lesson that I learned (relearned) is that everyone’s cell phone and service are set up differently, which always adds to the challenge of assisting people. We had fun anyway, and found some plants we want to transplant before the old landscaping gets obliterated.

I want some of this Turk’s Cap to plant next to our woods.

Today remains sunny, though more rain is in the forecast. Other than how muddy the horse pens get, I’ll welcome all we get!

Victorious in Victoria, Texas

It’s a victory, all right. Figuring out how to have some fun when our day wasn’t what we expected was hard, but we did it. And we two hermits who aren’t good in crowds or loud places made it just fine, and were able to share in the happiness of Kathleen as her daughter got married. Yay!

Lee came up with the idea to go to the local zoo today, and I found a birding spot nearby. That gave us a nice way to fill the early part of the day. The Texas Zoo is in a large park next to a very large cemetery complex. It’s not very big and is a bit of a mess with many empty exhibits, but the animals all seemed well cared for and healthy.

Many animals there are rescues or natives. I always enjoy the natives, especially the river otters, javelinas, and birds.

We had the best time watching the water birds being fed, while a young boy asked the zookeeper many excellent questions about the birds. What an educational experience! And the pelican and spoonbill were hilarious with their fish. (Lee crops his photos to be short but wide, which explains the look.)

The spoonbill is about to catch a fish. It’s just to the right of the tree

I’m glad Lee brought the good camera with him, because he got some great shots of a fox, coyote, red wolf, and jaguar.

We didn’t have as much luck at the birding place, as it was midday and brutally hot. There were Couch’s Kingbirds and Great Kiskadees, though, so I knew I was in south Texas.

We got dressed for the wedding and headed back to the venue. It was still stifling hot, but just the ceremony was outdoors, so no one got sick or anything. We enjoyed talking to a few family members we knew…well, pretty much the only ones we knew that will talk to us.

Yes, I was there. No Lee photos since he took them all.

It was a beautiful wedding and the decorations they worked so hard on came out great! Now, remember I’m old and don’t attend many weddings, but I was surprised to see that there were “beer boys” in the wedding party, passing out beers as they came down the aisle.

They played it up very well, and many attendees took beers from them. Apparently I’d have known all about this if I went on Tik Tok (or went to more Texas Western-themed weddings).

The “doorway “ the wedding party walked through.

Everyone else was lovely and I got all teary-eyed as the bride walked down the aisle escorted by her stepdad. That was my highlight.

Since I can’t share that photo, here’s Kathleen looking fantastic watching her daughter.

Afterward, Lee spent some time in the car relaxing and I went out to look at birds a couple of times, because we’re hermits and a little weird. It was fun enjoying the young kids playing, young adults acting their age (so much beer), and older folks beaming at each other with pride. I’m so glad it went well, at least up until we left. Who knows…

That was another victory for us. We wanted our family who live with us to have a great “parents of the bride” experience, and it looks like they did.

Now we can go to Goliad State Park tomorrow, at least briefly!

Farewell to the Migrants

Get your mind off politics, I’m talking about avian migrants! For a few days my bird species counts here at the Hermits’ Rest were incredibly high, much higher than I’d ever seen before. One day I observed (with Merlin Bird ID, sight, or my own ears) 74 species, as I mentioned earlier I think. I’d rarely hit 50 before.

It was the migrating warblers and friends who added so much to my totals. It seemed like there were many more kinds of warblers this year, along with vireos I hadn’t seen, nuthatches, and the seagulls I wrote about last time. I know there were a lot of birds coming through here on the central migration corridor, because there were news articles about them showing up on radar. That’s impressive, isn’t it? You can even see the migration live on the excellent BirdCast website. What fun!

The moon has been full for the past few days, and I think that may have been a big incentive for the warblers to head to more pleasant climes. Or maybe they knew that the temperature forecast for this week was grim – we’re in for our first near-100-degree days of the year this week, after a very pleasant spring so far.

This is the Weather Underground forecast for the next ten days. I miss last week already.

I was really enjoying the bird variety since I got back from Hilton Head. Here’s a list of all the warblers and vireos I’ve identified here in Texas in the past week:

American Redstart
Bay-breasted Warber
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Hooded Warbler
Pine Warbler
Tennessee Warbler
Red-eyed Vireo
Warbling Vireo (both warbles and is a vireo!)
White-eyed Vireo
Wilson’s Warbler
Yellow Warbler (lots)
Yellow-rumped Warbler

I saw many more warblers in South Carolina, but this is a lot! Even without warblers, though, there are still a lot of birds here now. A Green Heron family is living in the tree in our back pond/tank, there are buntings and grosbeaks popping in and out (Painted Buntings are omnipresent, and I even saw a pair mating yesterday).

I was too entertained to reach for my phone, so enjoy my new portulaca.

I wonder if the heat will affect my observations. I know the heat affected me yesterday. I was trying to work with Apache and my legs turned all wobbly and I had to hose myself off and drink a lot of water to keep going. He’s probably thinking he’ll get out of all the riding and exercise we’ve been doing, but no such luck. I’ll stick it out!

By the way, I’m moving a lot of my content that’s philosophical or personal musings over to my Substack site, so feel free to go over there and read or subscribe. You’ll get the posts via email if you subscribe. I even have special content for my paid subscribers (yes, there are a few, and it really helps now that I have a tiny Social Security income).

May Ranch Update

I’ve been home a few days and haven’t updated on what’s going on here. May is always a fun month in central Texas, because it’s not too hot or cold, rain falls every so often, wildflowers are in bloom, and bird migration is in full swing.

Texas Striped Sweat Bee with a lot of thistle pollen.

I’ve been enjoying the birds especially. I thought I’d seen a lot on my trip, but whoa, I’ve seen a lot in the last few days. Yesterday? I identified 74 birds between my house and Tarrin’s. That’s way more than my previous one-day high total!

Here’s an Eastern Kingbird, which I’ve seen in both locations.

I was sorta giddy when I saw the list I ended up with. There was even a new lifer, the Magnolia Warbler, one I’d always wanted to encounter.

I do use a lot of abbreviations. It’s hard to fit that many birds on a page, you know?

In other areas, the horses seem good, except that Apache’s expensive boots got lost while I was gone. All my fault. I didn’t remember to take them off before I left.

Spice is all settled in, too. She has taken over as Head Honcho of the herd. Drew and Mabel follow her everywhere.

Your boss mate doesn’t have to have perfect confirmation or perfect feet. She has to be firm and smart. That’s Spice.

With a swish of her tail, she gets things done.

Apache and Dusty just hang out with Fiona and eat. I guess they’re the second tier. They all seem happy.

Everybody but Dusty, who’s at left, eating.

Apache really is doing well, even though it’s been raining, which makes grass grow, which isn’t good for his metabolism. We had a lesson yesterday, and he was just fine, health wise. He did forget how to trot all straight and soft, but it was fun to work on it.

Funny story/segue: I had a very pleasant morning yesterday. I woke up plenty early to make coffee, get Apache ready, and drive serenely to my 9am lesson. I had a nice chat with a friend who was also at Tarrin’s and was about to saddle Apache when Tarrin yelled at me, “You do realize your lesson is at ten, right?”

I heard the Mockingbird mockingly laughing right then.

Of course it was. I wrote it down in the wrong time zone. But did I let that intrude upon my serenity? Nope! It was a beautiful, cool morning, and there were all those birds! So, I got out my portable chair, drank coffee, and listened to birds, even Tarrin’s ducks. I was completely happy, except when Apache pooped upwind from me.

Yow, it’s taken a long time to get to where I can at least occasionally stay unfrazzled. This is good!

Also good: my first zinnia blossom from seed.

Today has also been fun, though with not quite so many birds. I’ve been logging them all on eBird, because it’s the Global Big Day. But while I was out, I checked out the wildflowers and their pollinators. Let’s take a look. I’ve got more coming later, I hope!