Home Away From Home

The weather was perfect this weekend. We arrived at the trailer on Thursday evening and spent all day Friday playing outside. My cold was finally improved enough that I could go out in the boat. We fished our favorite spot on the diversion channel of the Colorado River and by lunchtime we each had two beautiful speckled trout to brag about.

After lunch I worked in Happy Camper Butterfly Garden while John fished from the riverbank. There were a few weeds to pull, but the main thing was to trim back the lantana and the Mexican sage which can quickly outgrow this small space. Sometimes I think I should have named this garden The Beast.

The yarrow is in full bloom and so pretty that it deserves a closer look.

In this shot of the garden you can see that the milkweed is mostly stripped bare. Monarch activity has been very good this year. We found many empty chrysalis shells around the area and even a few small caterpillars munching away on the remaining milkweed leaves.

A female Monarch butterfly showed up while I was watering the plants. She went to work immediately laying her eggs.

And all the while John was reeling in fish from the river—two big redfish and a large trout. Well, that was all I could take. I had to join him.

This photo (taken one morning a couple of weeks ago) shows where I stood when I caught the best trout of the day—only steps away from our trailer.

And when I returned to the garden...

madame butterfly was still on focused on her mission.

What a blessing to call Matagorda our weekend home!

Biggest and Best

This weekend the weather was just about as perfect as it's ever going to get. We took advantage of this blessing and spent all of Saturday outdoors in Matagorda. There was fishing, of course.

John caught the first fish of the day...and the biggest.

This monster is a 25 pound black drum, also known as a big ugly. I think you can see how it gets that name! Small black drum are tasty, but it's best to throw the big ones back, which we did.

We fished from the riverbank all morning and most of the afternoon, catching lots of little throwbacks with no real hope of catching a keeper, but we persisted just because the weather was so nice.

And eventually it happened. The best fish of the day (and the only keeper), ended up being the one I caught with John's rod while he was putting a new hook on mine.

So, perhaps this nice flounder should have been John's to catch. You can tell I'm feeling bad about it in the picture, right? You can't??? Well, let's just call this one a team effort.

Flounder for supper tonight!