I have confidently stated many times that our remaining Hash Brown is too old to lay eggs, but turns out I was wrong! This spring she is miraculously laying again after what seems like forever! I kind of wonder if she was mourning the loss of the other Hash Brown for a long time, and she’s finally recovered and found a new best friend in Zsa Zsa so her peace is restored.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the grocery store no longer is carrying the tortilla chip that was AMAZING and I can’t find any others that come close to it. This actually diminishes my quality of life.

In other news, Raine came to visit! We had a really swell time having nice meals, took a little hike, did some gelli printing, and of course hung out at Jester King! Also she did amazing with the dogs which is a very hard thing to accomplish.

I was hoping to find a fossil here because there’s apparently lots to be found in our area but I failed.

Spring weather has been a mix of warm and cold, which is probably normal but we did attempt to cover our garden plants at one point which was haphazard but kinda did work. And I found a lifeless gecko on the deck one morning and I kept it inside overnight and when I let it go again it seemed active and happy!

I added a bunch of hay and stuff so it could hide and be comfortable.

We’ve had lots of outings and volunteerings for our Master Naturalist Class. We went to Jacob’s Hole which is neat in concept as it is super deep and full of caves, but these days all the waterways are really low from drought so it wasn’t as neat as normal. Similar for Honey Creek field trip, except it still had some really need vegetation and was overall more impressive a setting. I was pretty excited when I learned that our group was being led into areas that weren’t even on the map of the preserve!

People scuba down there and explore caves. Several have died.

We also helped out in the search for Horned Lizards, in an area where a bunch had been released a while back. It was cool that they even employed a dog to sniff them out! While we saw no evidence of the lizards, the dog did succeed. Kind of fun to encounter some horses at the end.

I also sat in a bird blind and tallied up birds at Charro Park. I plan to do more of this to rack up hours as we have to do a lot, but not sure birding is up my alley. In fact, on a recent outing with the group, the focus was birds and my favorite part of the entire trip was seeing a red-eared slider turtle!

I did get an inexpensive pair of binoculars, though, and sometimes look at stuff around the house with them. I saw some hawks tearing up prey up in an oak tree which was pretty cool.

I also helped out at Bamberger Preserve to take 3rd graders on a nature walk. Fortunately, they paired me up with another volunteer who has done it before who had tons of knowledge of all the trees and plants. I guess I could do it again but I’m really more interested in the research and whatnot side of volunteering rather than “education and outreach”. I contacted people at Westcave Preserve and although I indicated I’d be interested in the research I promptly got an email from the outreach person hoping I’d volunteer. So I suppose they just need way more people to help with field trips, man the front desk, etc. so it’s understandable.

Rob spent a long day doing an archeological dig which turned out well. They were finding evidence of human habitation. It is a long day partially because it’s a bit of a drive to get there but anyway it’s a nice way for him to log loads of hours at a time :) Rob also setup a rain gauge so he logs that data daily.

I whipped up a couple of booklets with perforated pages inside for the two of us so that when we complete different parts of the naturalist program, we can TEAR OFF a section! Happy with how they turned out.

I actually own a perforator now which is super fun to use.

The hair salon nearby recently had an art opening (loads of hallways connecting hairdresser rooms that are filled with art) which I attended and it was actually pretty cool. The lady who curates it has only been here like a year and she seems to have gathered all kinds of people to put art up here. The art is quite varied and some looks like amazing (with high prices) and others seem more amateur. So I may try to get a few of my prints or whatever in one of the upcoming rounds. The bar doesn’t appear that high to me :)

I won this door prize at the hair salon gallery. Apparently the artist uses compressed air and alcohol inks.

We got together with the Grahams at Jester King and we played $20,000 pyramid which actually was hilarious.

I ordered some clothes from this retailer that sells STEM-themed clothes. It was hard to pick!

Meanwhile, the parade of wildflowers has begun which was kicked off by Tenpetal Anemones. I love saying Tenpetal Anemones. So now there’s all kinds of flowers coming up including the very very famous bluebonnets! So all this spurred me to try out my dye pot which has been growing mold all winter. I had already prepped some papers early this spring with the mordant and stuff. I used some “false dandelions” and other things on it which had worked last year and…it came out great! That was a big relief because I didn’t know the pot would still work and I didn’t know I had prepped the papers OK either. So now I’m excited to make more this spring. And also I had an idea of how to display them and Rob did it for me on a practice one (my least favorite one) and it looks great! Basically it is glued to a board that is hung on the wall. The board is basically invisible so it kind of looks like it is floating an inch from the wall.

More pics below.