Every inch of the Wildscape was explored recently at a Mason Bee program for Milam Home School Co-op. Forty-one people attended, which included twenty-six children and seven Master Naturalists. After the bee houses were assembled, everyone took off to all parts of the garden observing butterflies, hummingbirds, and spiders. The children enjoyed refreshments, hide and seek, and receiving goody bags and nature books.
The parents were interested in building their own Wildscapes and want to return for free native plants. We enjoyed ages from baby to teens and hope to spend more time with them at the Wildscape.
Last Friday we held our December meeting at the Milam Community Theater building in Cameron, and instead of a speaker, we had a party! Members volunteered to decorate tables, and the themes were just beautiful.
Our party team did a great job planning the meal, which was provided by the Thorndale Meat Market (fantastic place to shop or cater your party). Guests enjoyed pork loin and prime rib, along with amazing potatoes and asparagus. Desserts were provided by Master Naturalists. I wanted to steal a couple, especially the amazing chocolate Bundt cake with cream cheese and cherries.
We had some quite good Texas wine donated, too, so it was festive! Of course, there were vegetarian and non-alcoholic options.
I didn’t get a good picture of the wine table but it’s back there.
We all had a great time at dinner with our friends, and had even more fun at the actual meeting, where everyone gave end of year reports. I didn’t know it was happening, so I didn’t give a blog report. I will post one here before the end of the year.
Judging from all the smiles I think fun was had.
Now for the big highlights. We honored some of our members for their service. This warmed all our hearts, I know. Linda Jo Conn was honored for 5,000 hours of volunteer service. Her enthusiasm inspires us all. We are so grateful for her ideas for activities that got us through the pandemic.
Linda Jo and her enthusiasm!
The next recognition was for your faithful blog contributor, Donna Lewis, who has attained the huge milestone of 10,000 volunteer hours! That’s truly a significant event! All those hours helping purple martins and sharing with the community earned her a beautiful pin and certificate. It was great to be there to honor her.
Donna having fun, listening to her accolades and getting her framed certificate!
Next, I’d like to thank Carolyn Henderson for coming up with the idea to acknowledge people in the chapter who make big contributions, our previously unsung heroes. It was especially gratifying to see that the first award didn’t go to a member, but to Patricia Coombs, sister of our blogging friend Catherine! Patricia has been attending meetings to help with the hospitality and anything else she can help with. We are all grateful!
Thanks!
The next well-deserved thanks went out to Lisa Milewski, who has been serving as our volunteer hours coordinator for more years than she’d like to (who wants to learn the job and help out?). That woman, who you always see smiling with the president when achievements are handed out, has done an incredible job keeping track of our hours and making sure they are entered into the Volunteer Management System correctly. Plus, that smile!
It was great to see how surprised Lisa was!
The final award went to another tireless worker, and all-around fun guy, Don Travis. Don has been the group’s communications director for fifteen years and has spent many, many hours building out the chapter website. Besides that, he gets our speaker presentations on the shiny new chapter laptop and presented onscreen. He also helped greatly with our Zoom meetings during the pandemic (it was very helpful to me, while I was trying to hold the group together). Good work, Don. (He would also love a helper or replacement.)
Don can always be counted on to make us laugh.
We are very proud of what our small, isolated chapter has accomplished!
Congratulations!
After the meeting we had our annual white elephant gift exchange, which is always fun. Lots of stealing and action occurred, because there were some great gifts! Enjoy these photos of attendees and action. Sorry I couldn’t get everyone in. I tried! click a photo to see the whole thing.
Look at all those gifts!MinglingAnother beautiful tabkeDelicious food!Gift exchange actionParty fun with members, friends, and family
Progress is being made in the Milam Wildscape in preparation for Nature Days, which will be held every Saturday in November from 9:00-12 noon. Enjoy visiting Master Naturalists and visitors in a beautiful Autumn setting.
Chapter members work on the garden
There will be refreshments, gifts, and native plants. If you participate as a Master Naturalist, hours are available.
The amounts of rain received over the last few days varies, but a stroll around Wilson Ledbetter Park on Sunday shows just how much a little rain can do.
It’s green!
The 0.40 inches I received at my house was enough to elicit excitement because I had none for so long. The 2.5 inches friends a few miles down the road received also inflicted envy. Based on the location of Wilson Ledbetter Park and rain reports, I would estimate 0.50 inches there so far this week has really “greened” up the place.
I was there a month ago and all grass was brown, almost no flowers bloomed, and trees were turning brown, too. Today, grass is green, several types of flowers are blooming and most of the trees look perkier
The bright yellow Rio Grande Copper Lily was popping up in many areas. Also blooming in the yellow category were Bitterweed, Spreading Fanpetals, and Texas Snakeweed. To be honest, Bitterweed never went into hibernation. Drought and 108 degrees didn’t faze it.
Rio Grande Copper Lily
In the pink/purple category, Shaggy Portulaca, Tievine, and Texas Vervain were in bloom. Violet Rueilla and Purple Nightshade were abundant, but they never completely died off. The Whitemouth Dayflower, a vivid blue flower, was in abundant bloom both near and far away from the little lake.
PortulacaTie vineDayflower
Texas Bull Nettle was really starting to put on medium sized white flowers. Try hard not to touch that one because all those nettles will really make your skin itch. Other whites were the Santa Maria Feverfew and Turkey Tangle Frogfruit. I would bet that Turkey Tangle Frogfruit could survive anything. It totally ignored the 8 days of below freezing temperatures and ice and the drought with excessively high temperatures.
FeverfewFrogfruit (photo by SA Kendall)
All that color was popping out at me in a short stroll around the park. If the amount of rain forecast for this week materializes, I hope you’ll go out to Wilson Ledbetter and take it all in, too.
So, I saw the following story online today (see screenshots from Facebook below). Some time ago, I’d likely have blown it off as a pretty farfetched tale. But I couldn’t help but think about an incident I experienced at my house a couple of years ago.
This story brought to mind about me seeing a wasp nest on our RV bumper about sixty feet from our house. I was worried about somebody getting stung, so I told Hubs that we should probably do something about them. So, he takes his handy pliers and pulls it off the bumper, as nothing was on it at the time. Then, he laid it on a little table by our porch swing that was 60 feet away from and out of sight of the RV bumper it came off. After that, we pretty much forgot about it.
Later that evening I happened to look over there and saw about three or four wasps back on it lying on that little table far away from that bumper we pulled it from. I was amazed that they’d looked for it and found it in a totally different place than it was supposed to be.
So, do I think this bee story is farfetched? I think not.
I think insects have way more sense than we realize. After all, we don’t know what we don’t know.
[saw]
To learn more about insects and all the other nature in Milam County, consider signing up for our next class! Contact ElCaminoRealMasterNaturalist@gmail.com and we’ll get you in touch with our new class team.
Nature Along the El Camino Real 