Category: Anita’s blog

  A couple of weeks ago, I awoke to flashes of light visible even beneath closed eyelids, and a syncopated, steady sound I attributed to our younger cat, annoyingly delighted with one of his toys. I vaguely recall sleep-shouting, “Izzy,” into the darkness as my brain began to rouse itself into cognitive awareness. The pulsing…

  A few weeks before I’d even heard about iNaturalist and the 2018 City Nature Challenge, I spied a peculiar lump of matter on the ground as I was mowing around a sextet of Washingtonian palms on our property. I purposefully did not mow over the weird looking object. Earlier in the year, I’d overheard…

  The results are in. Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief, and also applaud themselves for helping the Lower Valley reach an amazing 10th place for “Most Species” in a steep competition that involved 68 of some of the largest cities in the world! YAY, all the Texas Master Naturalists who took up the…

  This is big! Mark your calendars for April 27 – 30. It’s a City Nature Challenge. Some call it a Bio-Blitz. It’s the great INTERNATIONAL city challenge — worldwide for the first time. And we want to WIN IT! The Valley is entering as its own entity. From Falcon to the Gulf Coast, including…

  When the morning is warm, the winds have calmed and a fine mist of fog shrouds the land, it’s fun to wax poetic and play with words in my mind; nature is waking up and inspiration is everywhere. The distant call of unseen chachalacas and low grunts of a great blue heron at the…

  It’s time to start mowing — but wait! Don’t mow this:   Or this:   Both Texas thistle and red poppy start out as large, flat-to-the-ground, rosettes. Texas thistle can reach to two feet or more in diameter; an individual leaf can be 18 inches long. The rosette of the red poppy is smaller,…