Spring Sitting here with my first cup of coffee, looking out my office window, my morning muse turns to the predominance of spring green. Even the scar left with the demolition of the old house is showing mostly green. It's weeds of course, but, from here with a good mowing just two…
Why we celebrate Texas Independence Day I grew up here in Texas. I have never thought much about the why's of Texas Independence Day. I was surrounded by the Texas myth from birth. Some of my ancestors were here at the time of the Declaration signing. Many others arrived with-in a decade of the event…
https://youtu.be/KSkF2wGAVdA Ever since I heard her for the first time...There is some thing in Mary Gauthier's voice that I just can't get enough of. Tania Elizabeth adds another dimension. I have loved her playing since Paste first covered the Duhks way back whenever... I see they'll be in the Woodlands next…
It's been a bit over a week since the Great Backyard Bird Count came to an end. This was my first ever participation in the nationwide (continent-wide) event. I have to wonder though...Who told the birds to spend four days hiding. It was almost like they heard a rumor that…
Set up a Google alerton your own name and have it emailed to yourself each day. Then you'll see how you make the news each day. You'll see arrest reports, obituaries, retirement notices, political reports...In other words, if your name is at all common, you'll see the full gamut of life…
Thinking creatively has been a goal in my life for as long as I can remember. Now I've run across this article...Who would've thought it could be this easy? Want to boost your creativity? Tomorrow morning, pour some milk into an empty bowl, and then add the cereal. That may sound,…
Image via Wikipedia I was sitting out on the backporch this afternoon having my last cup of coffee for the day. I had walked out to let my eyes enjoy focusing on something further away than my computer screen. Sitting there, enjoying the relative quiet of the afternoon I noticed a very…
The one thing that really hit me hard on this trip was how green everything is this winter. After last summer's seared color scheme, the winter's green and brown scheme is a bit disconcerting.
Suomi NPP's VIIRS instrument returned this hi-resolution full-disc image of the Earth from several passes made Jan. 4, 2012.
Image via Wikipedia It's funny what a change of a hundred feet can do to a view. For almost 20 years we have lived on this property. For all but the last few months though, we were living up under the oaks with open field between the front "woods" and…
I was scanning through this months Southern Living yesterday and happened to read Rick Bragg's Southern Journal on the last page...I was captured with the first two paragraphs... The obituary made me smile. Ellis Ray of Moundville passed away Saturday...he was a loving husband, father, and grandfather, who loved to fish…
For the last week it has seemed more like spring than the middle of January. But, the screen capture above says it all...70° at 9am on January 22 just isn't right. If this holds for another week, there will be no doubt that this January will be one for the record…
What? You missed it? Quite a lot of the internet was blacked out yesterday to give you a hint of what would be in store for all of us if these two laws get implemented. Do you want a better explanation? Try this one from Clay Shirky (Thanks to Seth Godin…
My wife and I were having a conversation about the weather/climate of our youth. What brought the conversation up was the fact that I was mowing grass in our yard on January 11 as the temperature approach 70°. I commented on the fact that when I was a teenager in…
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…
