At Little Piney, I hear the wind coming before I feel it on my face. Of course, if I choose not to listen, the wind comes anyway—I just get surprised. It’s the same way with rain. The damp air, the slight drop in temperature, the changing light all signal coming rain. If I ignore theContinue reading
Category: Taking Care of Little Piney
Wildlife management at Little Piney; preserving and enhancing the environment for all the creatures who live here in the Lost Pines of Bastrop, Texas.
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Listen to Nature: What’s Coming and What We Can Do About It
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Warning—Gas Pipeline: Beware of a Blanket Easement
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Warning–Gas Pipeline We didn’t think much about that gas pipeline when we fell in love with Little Piney. Pre-purchase, I researched water quality, pine beetles, floodplain, history of the land, and more. For some reason, the pipeline marked with yellow posts on the land and with little “PL’s” across the survey, didn’t get muchContinue reading
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Living Right with Nature
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Living Right A Facebook friend and wildlife biologist commented on one of my recent posts that I must be “living right” because I see such wonderful things at Little Piney. I don’t know if I’m living right–I think I’m doing okay– but, I feel very, very blessed to have this little place in theContinue reading
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August Heat Wave
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New Trees When the heat index hits 110, it’s tempting to stay indoors, but chores and pleasure draw me outside at Little Piney. For one thing, I have young trees to water. In the early spring, we planted 9 trees or shrubs that produce fruit and berries for the birds. The Mulberry, Fig, Rusty BlackContinue reading
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Creating Garden Borders with Bottles: Eight Tips to Make it Easy
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Creating Garden Borders with Bottles Creating garden borders with bottles is fun. You get to recycle bottles, be creative, and keep the weeds out. The internet offers some good articles (links below) explaining different methods of construction. Read several how-to articles for the basic idea then follow these tips to save time and trouble. CheckContinue reading
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Fall Planting for Butterflies and Hummingbirds
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Fall Seed Planting Fall is a busy season at Little Piney. Fall is the time to plant wildflower seeds, watch bird migration, and work and play outdoors while the weather is as good as it gets. I’ve had my seed packets in hand for October since spring, but now that planting time is here, it is a challengeContinue reading
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Hints of Fall
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Fall visitors Temperatures range in the nineties yet there are hints of fall in the air at Little Piney. Early mornings feel pleasant, and migrating birds stop by for seed and berries. I’ve spied two early ducks, a Black and White Warbler, and a Baltimore Oriole. I hear lots of new calls and songs and seeContinue reading
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Gophers, fire ants, and poison ivy, Part II (But let’s add chiggers and call in reinforcements)
0Gopher, fire ant, and poison ivy offensive foiled by rain The true story follow-up to Part I of this post is that my plan got almost completely rained out. After the rain fell all morning, and I allowed a few hours for drying time, all I managed to do was spray some poison ivy withContinue reading
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Gophers, fire ants, and poison ivy, Part 1
6Back in January, I imagined a peaceful coexistence with the gophers. After all, they were here at Little Piney first, they were cute in a goofy, near-sighted way, and Carl (the previous owner) told me you really couldn’t win, anyway. Now it’s April, and the little tunnelers have run amok. Hills of dirt cover grassContinue reading