Author: Anita Westervelt
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Anita’s Blog — A Walk in the Arroyo Brush
On April 12, Christina Mild led a small group of Ramsey Park’s Ebony Loop Thursday morning volunteers along narrow, man-made trails through Old Growth Arroyo Brush in the acreage belonging to McAllen’s Dr. Glatz. This tour is not an exclusive opportunity for a select few. Fellow Texas Master Naturalist chapter member Dr. Glatz has…
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Anita’s Blog — What a Sight!
When opportunity lands, I’m always happy to zip off for a new and awesome adventure. Remember Stephanie Bilodeau? She spoke at our general meeting last year when she first hired on as the Coastal Bird Conservation Biologist in the Lower Laguna Madre. And what an enviable job she has — weekly cruises on a…
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Anita’s Blog — The Universe Aligns
Venus didn’t rise, Mars wasn’t in retrograde, the universe aligned with Karmic benevolence, nightfall brought the rains, the sun rose, the winds stilled and I captured a perfectly attuned shot for the first time in weeks. My early morning trek was muddy. I didn’t complain — the shoes will clean. San Benito savored a…
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Anita’s Blog — The Winter of the Birds
This has been an exciting winter on the Resaca. Our little horseshoe lake, as the map calls it, has attracted new visitors. Last year, an Osprey moved in. He’s commandeered a wonderful perch on a dead branch of a huge mesquite tree between the driveway and the Resaca. On sunny days, I see him…
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Anita’s Blog — Harbingers of Spring
If you ask the trees in Ramsey Park which blooms announce a Rio Grande Valley spring, the Texas huisache, Acacia farnesiana, will say they are the traditional harbingers of spring. Pink Mint, Stachys drummondii, also pushing out their tiny pink blooms typically announce spring from the lower realm of native plants. In the real…
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Anita’s Blog — Terminology is a Beautiful Thing
Exact terminology is important when words are defined in regard to specific disciplines. For those logophiles (people who love words) who insist on knowing, without question, what something means in context to what one is learning, here are words commonly encountered when listening to native plant lectures or reading favorite plant books. Native —…