Category Archives: Nature

Rain Rain – Please Find Your Way to Texas

Posted by Santi on September 8, 2011 Comments Off

This has been a horrible summer for Texas and the Western states. I have been reading about fires in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado ever since March. These states have been suffering a long drought and hundreds of wildfires all summer.

The best thing that could happen to Texas is for one of the hurricanes down in the Gulf of Mexico to come ashore and drench the entire state for 2 or 3 days. It is critical now. Over 5,000 people have been evacuated from the Austin area and a record number of homes have been burned – almost 500 homes in just the past 3 days. This is horrific and my heart goes out to the good people of Texas.

Only One Good Day

Posted by Santi on September 3, 2011 Comments Off

This is the big Labor Day weekend when everyone wants to have a last fun weekend outdoors. But unfortunately, the weather forecast is for cooler days and lots of rain. Today is not raining yet, but you can feel it in the air and you know that it is coming, sooner or later. Let’s hope we all get at least one good day out of the weekend to do things at the lake or the beach.

We are going to head out to the river and just let my daughter splash around in the shallow water by our favorite picnic spot. The river bottom is not too mucky and not too rocky at this particular spot. I cannot tell you where this special spot is – it is our family secret and we don’t want a lot of other people to come there and spoil it.

Planning a Getaway Weekend

Posted by Santi on August 22, 2011 Comments Off

My friend Owen is trying to put together a weekend trip for just adults in October. He want to go to a lodge and make it a couples retreat. I’ve never done that before, but it sounds interesting. I might be willing to go if it doesn’t cost too much.

Seems to me there is a good assortment of camping gear in the garage somewhere. I used to have several tents,, a camp stove, sleeping bags, and some basic tools like a hatchet, saw and shovel that were full size but pack-able. I wonder if they are all still in good shape? f not, I think I will start shopping for summer clearance items and restock my gear with newer technology and maybe a few nice things like those very cool new combination tent lanterns and fan that run on batteries and hang from the tent pole or tent ceiling.

Be careful what you wish for

Posted by Santi on January 6, 2011 Comments Off

I was just re-reading some of my older posts and just came across one that I posted last summer when I was complaining about the heat and humidity!  Well, all I can say is what in the world was I thinking?  This winter we have had an unusual amount of snow, which has wreaked havoc on everyone’s lives around here!  Schools are being cancelled a lot – it seems that they are closed more often than they are open!

And I was talking with Joe who tells me that their rescue department is being kept busy responding to calls of people who are being injured because of the snow – heart attacks while shoveling, people falling off of their roofs, and even people who stuck their hands in their snow blower in an attempt to unclog the blades and lost a few fingers!  Can you even imagine looking through the snow for someone’s fingers?  Good grief!

The Battle of the Bugs

Posted by Santi on August 21, 2010 Comments Off

Our yard has been invaded by red wasps, Crash was bitten and had a terrible reaction we had to take him to the vet and get him a shot of benadryl to counter act the sting. So we have declared war on the red wasp in our yard. Two cans of wasp spray and a bug zapper have been put into play, I do not know if it is going to work but we are fighting to get our yard back. The city announced last week that a mosquito with the west nile virus was found very close to us so all of them little blood suckers have to go too. So bugs, be afraid – be very afraid! We are coming after you!