Spring Continues at Resaca de la Palma State Park, Brownsville, TX
This my last web page from Resaca de la Palma State Park in Brownsville, Texas. It is shaped by our 10-15 degrees above average temperatures which have set new records, one of 101 last week broke a record set in 1884. This has caused spring to go more quickly here. We are also in a severe drought. Since I came in December, we have had less than one inch of rain. My husband also asked what it was like here when Texas State Parks, all 96 of them, were closed to the public.
While we were closed there still was work to do. We cleaned storerooms, refrigerators, and pantries. We mopped floors, scraping off the hard, dry, caliche mud, and deep cleaned tables and meeting rooms. We brushed trails, cleaned trail signs, painted park signs, swept observation decks, washed park vehicles, and many other tasks that maintained the park. These were easier to do and took less time, so we could do more, because there weren’t tram rides, field trips from schools, and other interpretive programs happening.
Here they grow what I thought was corn, because before it blooms it looks like corn. It is feed sorghum, used in cattle feed. Texas is the second largest producer of feed sorghum in the USA, producing on 1.55 million acres. Only Kansas, at 2.8 million acres grows more. A different sorghum is grown to use the stalks to produce syrup, used as sweetener here in the south. Sorghum is grown here because it is drought tolerant.
At night last week I saw little lights near the tops of the trees. A few nights later little, tiny lights near the ground. Unlike lots of things in Texas that are bigger, their lightning bugs are tiny and impossible for me to photograph.
Sometimes we use the gator to get around. It’s easier to pick up the many bags of trash and carry brooms, loppers, and other equipment needed to clean and brush (trim back the overgrowth) trails. It’s not very quiet.
Walking the trails is, except for noisy chachalacas, usually quiet. On the second video there’s a whip tailed lizard ahead of me on the trail, then it darts into the underbrush.
The third video is on one of our lower observation platforms on the south Resaca which hasn’t had water since January.
It is sad to leave a place where I’ve learned so much and enjoyed greatly. And, because of covid-19, I didn’t get to see everything here in and outside the park. I’ve also grown to think of the staff as my local family. Thank you, Kelly, Mel, Lauren, Cynthia, Margarita, Carlos, Rick, Javier, and Brian for all your teaching, patience, and acceptance.
It is also exciting to be heading home to where evergreen trees have needles, tall trees that have lost their leaves will be budding, blooming, and leafing out when I get home, rain, mud that wipes easily off one’s shoes, wetlands, friends, Lydia our cat, and, of course, my daily phone buddy and hubby, David. I’m not sure how I’ll adjust to the “cold”, ah, just put on some long underwear, of course.