The weather this past weekend was one of January days I live for. A sun and cloud mix, breezy, temperatures in the low 70's...Just the type of days most of the world would call great in spring or summer that we only get in late fall and winter. We were…
Federal scientists confirmed Friday that Texas had its driest year on record in 2011. The statewide average rainfall for the year totaled just 14.88 inches, according to the National Climatic Data Center, beating the previous low of 14.99 inches set in 1917. During the last century, Texas averaged 27.92 inches of rain…
As everyone who lived along the Texas Gulf Coast in December of 2004 will never forget, a white Christmas isn't just a dream for those living north of the Mason-Dixon line...Miracles do happen. And when snow begins to fall on Christmas Eve evening, why you make snowmen...and snowballs...and snow angels.…
This is what I see every time I look up from the keyboard for the past couple of weeks. It's almost enough to have me singing along with the "Boss"... Listen to more Bruce Springsteen at Wolfgang's Vault.
Last week my backyard looked like this as the sun came up... This week, under overcast skies, it looks like this... We are still seeing more green out back than most places around here. In fact, we are seeing more green than we have seen since last year. Related…
In Texas in recent years, the summers have been blazing hot and very dry. We haven’t gotten the usual spring and fall rains. 2011, in particular, was an unprecedented year of drought and wildfires. The Texas Forest Service said earlier this week the recent drought might have killed some 10%…
I was wandering through the kitchen just a bit ago and glanced out the back windows. There in the yard I saw my first flock of Robins of this winter season...On the very first day of winter. Growing up I was always confused by all of the references to Robins and spring.…
I'm not quite sure when it was I first stumbled upon Linda's blog at The Task At Hand where she writes under the name Shoreacres. It must have been about a year ago though because it was a post about the Christmas Snow of 2004 that first led me to…
I am always amazed when I stumble across a Coffee Geek. It makes my muses seem pretty pedestrian. I've been geeking out over coffee since yesterday, which is fun. The coolest thing I've been finding out about is vacuum-brewing or siphon- (also spelled "syphon-") brewing. There are a lot of…
Going through my rss feeds for today I see that Susan Albert has headed off to New Mexico for a winter break from the Texas drought. Her pictures of the NM snow made me jealous but I'll take our light rain any time I can. It was her "Reading note"…
Today the red oak in the backyard is probably at peak color. Never in the years since I planted it has it been quite this vividly fall like. The funny thing about today is that the temperature is already at 76° and rising. It's breezy and partly cloudy. Yesterday it…
Coldplays song The Scientist is performed by country music legend Willie Nelson for the soundtrack of the short film entitled, "Back to the Start" which is a commercial for Chipotle.Produced for Chipotle Mexican Grill by CAA Marketing Group and Nexus Productions, “Back To The Start” features a stop-motion animated trip…
I figured when I saw blooms back at the end of September there was a chance I would see apples yet this year. All it took was for the heat to break and the rains to start falling and here you see what I discovered today...Baby apples. Not a lot.…
When I ordered some seedling trees from Pennsylvania the week of Thanksgiving, I was holding out as late as possible to have them shipped dormant to our SE Texas version of fall. What I didn't expect was for the nursery to ship Pennsylvania fall weather along with the trees. The…
OSAWATOMIE, Kan. — President Obama came to this tiny middle American town Tuesday to invoke the spirit of a long-ago Republican president in a speech that laid out, in his sharpest language yet, the economic and social arguments he will probably use against Republicans in 2012.(1) Osawatomie, Kansas...It's a small…
https://www.youtube.com/embed/fX7Q-0QuID4 It also reinforced the fact that most of this years storms were pushed off out into the Atlantic. Watching Irene work her way up the east coast all the way to Canada had me remembering the pictures of the flooding in New England. I suppose only time will tell if this…
I just spent the last couple of hours reliving the subliminal sounds from my formative years. I know they were't my parents sounds...I can't say where I ever heard them during those years of the '60's. But they are the sounds and songs that resonate more than most for some…
Pledge to the Republicans Print or type your name And your home address All of it Dear former Republican friend: This letter is to let you know that your Party’s tactics of destroying the ability of our government to function by means of your no-tax increase-pledge is too recklessly destructive…
Fraser Fir, Image via Wikipedia Sitting on the front porch, outside my office window (how strange it is to be able to say that), is an artificial pre-lit Christmas tree. It is the one we used in the house a few years back that was replaced last year by a thin tree…
58% - Portion of Americans over age 18 who drank coffee yesterday 3.4 - Number of cups of coffee people identified as “coffee drinkers” drink per day National Coffee Drinking Trends Study, The National Coffee Association of U.S.A. Inc., 2011 via Coffee isn’t always bad for you - The Washington…
"If I should have a daughter, instead of Mom, she's gonna call me Point B ... " began spoken word poet Sarah Kay, in a talk that inspired two standing ovations at TED2011.
This will be the last video in the series on our home building project...Demolishing the old... https://youtu.be/yBklqUTnMs0?si=oFuqKg1aT_xgFyEj Now...It's on with life and settling in. Thanksgiving at my mom's and Christmas here with the kids and grand-kids.
At least everything but the unpacking. After over a year of planning and meetings and dust and dirt the new house is done and the old house has gone away. Here is a view from the road on Monday... And here is the view today... I would have thought I…
We passed a milestone yesterday when we said goodbye to the bright yellow modern equivalent of my grandparents "Quarter Moon". In other words, they picked up the "port-a-potty" that has graced our site since June. The construction portion of this ongoing project is, for all intents and purposes, complete. There…
While my home state has never been at the forefront of environmental consciousness, the news in the electrical generating front is finally turning toward the green. After an initial rush to install wind farms in west Texas that outstripped the ability of the utilities to utilize the capacity, the addition of new…
Just last week
Tipper was talking about "Tater Soup" which brought back all kinds of childhood memories. Reading her post from the southern Appalachians had my nose and taste buds fooling my brain into thinking there really was cornbread in the oven and tater soup on the stove.
That's what food memories are like, total immersion into the recesses of your brain. A smell caught in passing that can trigger the memories of meal long gone and the loved ones who cooked them for you. That food memory of tater soup and cornbread can be laid to my Grandma...My mother's mother. I don't really remember eating it all that often with my grandparents but I ate it enough to know that my mother's recipe came from Grandma.
Tipper's post triggered decades of memories and tastes and smells...The old country kitchen in Orchard where many of my childhood food memories were made...The small kitchen in the home where I grew up... The jars and jars of fig preserves under the counter. Made lovingly by Grandma in the hottest of summer heat and sent home with us every year to heap on buttered toast through the winter. Deer steaks fried in the pressure cooker for lunch along with the fresh vegetables from the garden out back...creamed squash...fried okra...green beans...creamed corn...Memories tumbling down through time.
Heavy rains for drought-stricken Texas A slow-moving low pressure system brought the heaviest rains of the year to large portions of rain-starved Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas over the weekend. Radar-estimated rainfall amounts reached eight inches over portions of Texas between Dallas and Abilene. Houston got 20% of their rain for…
Thanks to John Scalzi for the lead.
One of my favorite music spots on the web is Wolfgang's Vault. I get weekly emails from them as they release new concerts from the archives. Today they sent out a link to this concert from 1972. After listening to the music as I read email and scanned the news…
