Allie's Nature Blog

Tuesday, March 31, 2026 Another day at the nature center! Today went by even quicker than last week which really surprised me because I thought that the privet was going to be much harder work. It was a bit more difficult to move and not whack someone with, but not much harder to cut like I thought it would. When I heard we were working with privet I was worried that it was going to be bad for my allergies and that I was going to get scratched up. But I was super thankful I wore long sleeves and had taken my allergy meds this morning because I didn’t get any sort of hives or bad nose, mouth, or eye itching.  I got to do some cutting down of the branches today which I didn’t do last week so that was definitely more of a workout then just hauling the branches away. It makes it more fun to switch up roles and not be in the same spot or job the whole time. Seeing the amount of invasive species growth makes me think about how much more there is to taking care of our lands than we usuall...

Tuesday, Mar 24, 2026 Our first day at the Nature Reserve! It was a warm day, but it almost made it more rewarding. Sweating made it feel like we were doing some real hard work. I had a lot more fun than I thought I would. Watching our pile grow taller and taller was satisfying (our first pile pictured below). I was thankful to be cutting bamboo of all plants. Some plants give me quite bad allergies, but bamboo was extremely manageable in the allergy sense. Additionally, it was not super pokey, which made it easier to work with and drag around. I have never seen small, baby bamboos so that was also interesting to see. It was crazy to see how much land they had grown over. Invasive species always spread like wildfire, so I can imagine it is difficult for them to manage in such a large area. I have another level of gratitude for my parents now who take care of our land in Montana. But I also can see how it can be sort of fun and like I mentioned earlier, satisfying. Unfortunately, in Mon...

Sunday, Mar 2, 2026 I got the chance to run the Cowtown half marathon yesterday. It was a lot of time outside, unfortunately not very much of it was in true nature or in area with few people, but it was still much better than running in the rec on a treadmill. I ran the half last year as well, and it is one of the coolest opportunities to run around most of the city. You go through the Cultural District, the Stockyards, and through Downtown Fort Worth, all of which I have attached a picture from. After running it, I feel much more connected to the city.  For a brief section, we get to run along the trinity, and that is one thing I wish the half got more of that the full marathon does. It is a very peaceful feeling to run along the water. In class we have discussed how all of us feel much more at peace when we are near some sort of water. Maybe one day I will run the full marathon and get the change to run longer on the trinity river. Or maybe I’ll just go run down there myself inst...