It’s simply amazing how much rain we’ve had in the past three weeks. Luckily, it dried out enough yesterday so that I could mow the lawn, but the skies just opened up again – 1.3 inches in about 30 minutes.
Category: Nature/Outdoors
Greetings from Houston, Texas!
Last weekend was our annual ‘double performance’ weekend at Houston Grand Opera. Friday night was ‘Sweeney Todd‘ (they’ve started including one musical in the season) and Saturday was ‘Die Walküre‘ I have a thing about knives and straight razors, so I was nauseous after Sweeney. This was the second time I’d seen, Walküre. I’d forgotten…
Winter in West Texas
So I was back in Abilene this weekend. Hopefully the end is in sight for that – and it’s not a freight train. The drive from Austin can be pretty bleak at this time of year, but I kept my eyes open (and had to take a detour), so I found some interesting sights. This…
Greetings from Austin, Texas!
So I normally do posts about places that I’m visiting, but yesterday was such a spectacular Autumn day, I decided to play tourist in my own back yard. I’m not sure why, but it seems to me that the fall colour in Austin this year is particularly vibrant – and a tad early. The sumacs…
Greetings from Denver, Colorado!
So I just returned from a Department of Labor conference in Denver, Colorado. I tacked on a day at the end to do some hiking. All-in-all it was quite successful. After arriving, I took a stroll over to the state capitol. It’s blue. That was a bit surprising to me until I remembered that ours…
Ramblin’ Man
So I should have been in Abilene this weekend, but decided to stay home to attend to other things, but took time out to wander around the green belt yesterday. We’ve had reasonable rain these past couple of months, so things didn’t look too terribly dire. More dead cedar and other scrub, and fading wild…
Gratuitous Post about Birds, Plants, and Wine
This has been a pretty good year for bird watching. I’ve got a couple of painted buntings that visit fairly regularly. These are generally one-time-a-year birds here – at least that’s my experience. I also have a fairly substantial flock of European starlings. Theirs is an interesting tale and instructive on the cautionary side. The…
Odds and Ends
I know I’ve been posting pretty erratically. I’m still schlepping up to Abilene each week; sometimes twice. I’ll be so glad when I can finally put that venerable city in my rear-view mirror permanently. Ah well – that’s probably a while off for now. Unfortunately, these Abilene sojourns are putting me way behind schedule…
Now is the Month of Maying
Still haven’t had much leisure time lately, but May is here and finally had a free day to work in the garden. The end of April-beginning of May is the wrap up of the opera season in Houston. Last weekend was ‘Das Rheingold,’ the start of HGO’s four-year Ring Cycle. I’ve never seen ‘Rheingold’ and…
Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah
Not much to update… was able to be in town this weekend so got lots of garden stuff taken care of. Took down the portable green house two days before a strong Norther is expected to blow in. My sister who lives in Colorado Springs said they were expecting 7-9 inches of snow. Hopefully here, all…
The Runcible Existentialist 