Visit report: Laguna Atascosa NWR

Hello, everyone.

As promised, a few notes about Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.

This fascinating place is in Cameron County, Texas, and is reached by way of Route 100 (the highway that goes to Padre Island) or possibly by cutting off at San Benito from the expressway and winding around cross country. Either way it's a fair bit of tiny farm roads through flat country and you should really use a map. If you have Google Maps on your phone that will do fine. Part of the way is on roads that--well, they're paved, but there are some chuck holes and a bit of road construction is in the area. You should keep going anyway. It is worth it.

The visitor's center has maps which are marked with trails. (Also a nice little gift shop with books and things. They use it to fund research into ocelots.) There are quite a few routes that can be walked. There is also, at some times of the year, a tram tour of the loop around Pelican Lake and along the Laguna Madre, which takes 3 hours. It's 15 miles long, which if you were going to take snacks and water and walk it would make a good day's hike. No shade to speak of, but there is a tiny toilet hut at the halfway point. (Bring hand sanitizer!) We took the tram tour as it was just loading up when we got there.

The Laguna is beautiful and the place is loaded with various birds. We also saw a good amount of deer and more nilgai than I thought I'd ever see. Great and Lesser Blue Herons, Red Egrets (can you tell the tram was largely populated with birders checking off their lists?) and Ospreys and so on and so forth.

Pelican Lake, unusually dry at this time. The tree is a mesquite.

Walk Report: Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Park and South Padre Island Boardwalks (birding center)

Hello, everyone.

As promised, a walk report for today.

The morning was beautifully cool yesterday...by South Texas standards at least. About 70F when we woke up, so we threw clothes on, gave creatures a little bit of fresh air for necessity, and jumped into the truck to go walk.

First stop, the Texas Welcome Center in Harlingen, where we got more detailed driving info for the Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Park. Friends, this is one of the national parks with no entry charge. (Enjoy it while you can!) We picked up pamphlets there, including a map of the Historic Battlefield Trail through Brownsville. Palo Alto is one of the end points of this approximately 10 mile long trail that goes from downtown Brownsville out to the battlefield along the old, abandoned railroad right-of-way.

At the battlefield, on Paredes Line Road (FM 1847), we found a lovely, clean visitors center with a park ranger in attendance, interesting and informative displays about the battle and its context, and a small, but clean, restroom facility. The restroom is accessible from outside--though I'm fairly sure they lock the front gate at the road when the park is closed.

Shaded picnic benches at Palo Alto Battlefield Nat'l Historic Park. The clumps of grass in the foreground grow on all of the higher ground in the area.

View along the Mexican Army's lines--pennants in red, white, and green for the Mexicans. On the other side, pennants in red, white, and blue for the Americans. The Mexican lines were actually on somewhat higher and drier ground--note the yuccas.

19th Century "shock and awe"--US Army large cannon--this view is from the American lines toward the Mexican lines.

 An overlook with shade and interpretive signage has been placed out in what was the "no man's land" of the battle.

Tracks of some of the many animals that live in the park. 

 We saw tracks and scat of various animals--javelinas, nilgai, possibly other deer, and some burrows that might have been homes for snakes or for crayfish. The ground is low and tends toward the swampy.

It's not easy to pick out at first, but the Rio Grande River was adjacent to the US Army lines at the time. (Or possibly it was already a cut off oxbow, called locally a resaca.) Where the old river bed was, there are no yucca plants or large grass clumps. It has defined banks that are concealed in the natural brushy cover, but the plants growing in the old bed are grayish and short. The plants on the former river banks and general area include Spanish Dagger yuccas, large clumps of pokey-leaved grasses, prickly pear cactus, and assorted wildflowers.

After visiting the park (about a mile or so stroll) we drove down to South Padre Island and strolled on the nature-viewing boardwalks at the Convention Center.

A heron looking for his lunch.

 We have heard that there is at least one American Alligator living in the mangroves and grasses and small water channels here, but we didn't see any.

A crab hiding in the roots of the grass. (The boardwalk is on the Laguna Madre estuary side of the island. No waves to speak of, and generally smooth water.

 While I didn't get any photos of them, there were quite a few diving ducks on the water of the Laguna. They were making splashy sounds when they dove under the ripples to fish.

View toward Laguna Madre.

 We didn't cover all of the boardwalks at the Island on this visit. We had gone over some very muddy, unused, rough road between Brownsville and Port Isabel and needed to clean the undercarriage of the mud gathered en route. Old Port Isabel Road is apparently only used within the city of Brownsville. Going toward Port Isabel, it's basically an unused track. Four wheel drive vehicles strongly recommended. Avoid this stretch if the weather has been wet, as the road surface was low-lying and full of ruts and mud pots even in dry weather when we went.

If you visit the battlefield and then want to go toward the beaches of South Padre, we recommend that you return to the expressway to get to Highway 100 to Port Isabel, or ask the park ranger if driving north on Paredes Line Road will give a good surface all the way to 100.

A little springtime crafting

Hello, everyone.

Yesterday the plan was to post pictures of the fabric hens--well, today I found the pictures of one of them.

The first fabric hen

 These little gizmos were on Pinterest. "Easy" the comment said. And they are! No triangles, no bias sewing, and if one were inclined one could finish easily by hand instead of machine. the comb and tail are formed by folding.

I got inspired to try decorating one with embroidery.

 This was so easy that several more color versions were getting ready to hatch. Ahem. The second one was cut from some linen pants fabric--it was just so boring that the embroidery needle came out. After finishing, though, the dread question arose: what on earth would I do with a whole flock of these things? By stopping at two, it's a reasonable gift for a grandchild. So I stopped after the second one. For now.

Springtime in the Rio Grande Valley, and the yucca blossoms are coming out.

The first of the yucca spikes is showing and the second one is visibly on the way.

Ocala National Forest, Florida

Hello, everyone.

The last time I posted I brought our Miami trip up to arriving in the city of Ocala. Near Ocala is a national forest--a hybrid kind of area that isn't a park, because you can fish and collect things in it, but isn't privately owned woodland, because the harvesting contracts for commercial lumber and such go through the government. They seem to be part of the legacy of Muir, who was very fond of unpeopled lands and didn't want their mystical beauty to be mussed up by such things as tour operations, farming, logging, and so on. Mr. Muir had a very great influence on the US national park system. While I don't think he's directly connected to the national forests, the idea that the forests are "patrimony" of the entire nation and should not be let go into private hands was certainly gaining a lot of steam around the time he was active.

Ocala National Forest, according to its web site, is one of the most used forest properties in the entire country. It is convenient not only to the nearby city of Ocala, Florida, but also semi-convenient to Orlando, the Space Coast, and so on. I can well believe that a lot of people go there! It's pretty.

It's also occupied by the most rapacious, stubborn, sneaky, ugly ticks and chiggers we have ever seen in our lives. I am convinced that as soon as the spy-mites saw us pause to focus the camera, they waved a flag to the field officer, who blew his teensy-tiny bug whistle and hollered "CHARGE!" They were running up our shoes. They were parachuting down from trees. And we thought we had them well picked-off before departing, but there were still more that appeared when we sat down to chat with friends. Even after we checked into the hotel that evening and showered, there were still more of the evil things!

But I was saying that the forest is pretty, so it's only fair to post some pretty after that long rant.

Deer moss, a lichen that colonized patches on the forest floor

Pretty sure this is bull nettle, whose sting is legendary

The scrub oak forest was thick and we were the first ones to go through in a while.
Many spider webs across the path!

Lake with spatterdock lilies in the midst of the pines and scrub

Pretty moss cushion

The path here was on leaves. Other places it was mostly on white sugar sand, with the occasional leaf or moss bit. Palmetto shrubs on the left. Pines in the distance, with gray Spanish moss hanging down.

The interpretive signs call the scrub forest a "desert with water" because the sugar sands it is growing in don't retain any moisture at all from the frequent rains. We saw eastern forest yuccas (a succulent family plant, somewhat more shade tolerant than Spanish Dagger yuccas) growing in the ground near trees and fern fronds sprouting from any place the spores had landed on the tree trunks. And lichen, lichen everywhere: white deer moss, red round patches on trunks, gray frilly "leaves" on twigs.

It's a pretty place to walk--we did four miles of easy trail walking and picture taking--but you really, really need to put the bug repellant on your ankles, your shoes, your socks, your arms...you get the picture. There are a few benches along the trails we walked, but I didn't see any picnic tables. There was a facility, with the standard Forest Service pit potty, where we parked the car. Bring your own hand sanitizer. Also, like most Forest Service properties, there is not much in the way of concessionaires in the forest itself, so pack your drinks and your lunch, and get your fishing license before you head off to drown worms in the little patch of wild in the middle of Florida.

Agaves

Hello, everyone.

I was recently lucky enough to hear a talk about Agaves--the plant family, not just the agaves themselves. The speaker was the naturalist Benito Trevino. He has a native plant nursery and much knowledge and experience with yuccas, cacti, and so on. His talks are always full of interesting new things--well, new to me!

I learned that yucca blossoms are more tasty after the buds fully open, and that the yucca stalk can be roasted, but it will be very fibrous like sugar cane stems. (For those readers who find sugar cane available to snack on. For the rest, the method is to chew a chunk of the pith, and then after the tasty sweetness is gone from it, to discard the fiber.) The yucca leaves have usable fibers in them, too, but it's not as strong as the fibers in other plants, like agaves.

Blooming yuccas in springtime, 2003

The petals of the yucca blossoms are good to add into salads, put into sandwiches, cook in scrambled eggs, and--new to me!--use in a dill pickle recipe. Maybe I should try that next year! It can't be any more difficult than making pickled garlic. (Funny how long it takes to get the pickled garlic eaten, though.) I could put out dishes of yucca pickles when my in-laws come to visit.

I also learned things about the agaves we know and love in our gardens.

The standard Blue Agave is the one they make tequila from.

Dec 25, 2004 Agave in Snow

Another kind of agave is the source of the Sisal fiber that we see in so many woven mats these days. He passed around a section of sisal rope and the fibers felt like waxier linen to me.

He told us that all of the agaves are limited to one bloom. Raising the bloom stalk and ripening the seeds consumes all of the stored food in the plant and it shrivels up and dies after that. The pups (baby plants) at the base are the usual way people get new agave plants.

I guess that means I need to adjust to losing my Queen Victoria agave when the seed pods ripen. (As you remember, it is sending up a bloom stalk. I will take a photo when there are flowers--as of this morning, it's a 7 foot tall pole with nothing to show at the top yet.) If anyone knows a way to grow the seeds of the Queen Victoria agave, I'd really like to try and raise the babies of this plant. It's really pretty, and everybody says that when the seed pods ripen the mother plant will die. I have no pups at the base, so if the seeds won't grow that will be it.