There are many rewarding experiences when gardening with plants native to Deep South Texas but one of the most spectacular for me was this third of August bloom of over 40 heartleaf hibiscus flowers in our front yard in Rancho Viejo.

For those of you not familiar with iNaturalist (iNat), I offer, here, an abbreviated overview of what it is and what it is all about. Briefly, iNaturalist is a nonprofit social network that enables individuals to record and share observations of living things—across the globe—either from iNat’s website on their laptop / desktop or via…

Aah, nothing compares to the soothing, pulsing choirs of frogs, crickets and geckos of an evening! Geckos? Yes, some of those chirps, squeaks and clicks may come from Mediterranean house geckos that hunt along our fences and bricks as they entice mates and defend turf.

Each of these species spends time in both the Denver metro area and the Rio Grande Valley. This summer we are staying with my daughter in Thornton, a suburban area north of Denver. My daughter’s house is at the entrance to a subdivision overlooking an open space. This space borders a long walking trail that…

South Texas Border Chapter Texas Master Naturalist (TMN) Robert “Zeke” Schmidt placed second in his age division during the recently concluded Southern Exposures Youth Photo Contest with his entry of a ribbon snake taken at the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands and World Birding Center. The annual contest sponsored by the Valley Land Fund premiers the work…

Spiders are around us day in and day out. Sometimes I spot them, and sometimes I do not. I have noticed that the number of times I catch sight of spiders is in direct correlation to how big they are. The bigger the spider, the more (and sooner) I notice it.