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| Do you see the very hungry caterpillar on our tomato plant? And Zephyr's legs? |
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| In our ongoing quest for baskets full of homegrown tomatoes, we patrol for caterpillars and usually find them every morning. Sigh. One caterpillar can strip so many leaves from a tomato plant in one night! |
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| Happy 37, Micah! |
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| The house where Micah and Otis live, as drawn and painted by Micah. |
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| Happy 11, Otis! Remember how the rest of us were bundled up and freezing whereas you couldn't get enough of the icy air and the ocean? (Photo at Haystack Rock in December 2018). |
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| So many lightning flashes! Papa Tom thought he might photograph one. |
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| First power outage and it's dark inside at high noon. Caught up on reading for the next couple of hours by leaning into the window light in the kitchen. |
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| Second power outage could have meant dinner by candlelight if only we could have used the microwave or lit the gas stove burners with very short paper matches. Candlelight casts large shadows. See the glass and straw shadow? |
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| I love this picture of you from our trip to Haystack Rock in December. You look so deep in thought. Makes me think of you walking away from your childhood toward all the adventure Life yet holds for you. Love you! |
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| Dale does what some call "real" country music, you know, Merle Haggard, George Jones covers and his own compositions in that style. |
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| Two-steppers |
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| We said "hi" to Dale after the show. |
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| We had time before Dale Watson's show at the Devil's Backbone Tavern to drive the ridge for which the tavern is named. Love this beautiful old barn with the rooster weather vane. |
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| Can any of you identify this Texas wildflower? Very close to black-eyed Susan, but not quite. I couldn't find a matching photo on the internet. Anyway, whatever they are, they were everywhere. |
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| View from Devil's Backbone ridge. The hill seems to be spewing a cloud. |
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| One of our favorite country & western artists, Dale Watson, was playing at the Devil's Backbone Tavern, a bona fide Texas dance hall. |
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| Texas is about more than pick up trucks and longhorns. Maybe this is the Backbone's version of the Cadillac Ranch? |
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| Reassuring to see this sign at the front door. No metal detector necessary. |
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| Box fan at the open window created a cool Spring breeze. See the board games next to the chair? Tom and I pulled out Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be a Redneck If" game to play until Dale Watson's show began. |
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| Those are dollar bills stapled to the ceiling and a table shuffleboard game next to the wall. |
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| Black cat on the bar. Wish the photo was clear. Sigh. |
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| We had to stop to talk to Bevo's laughing cousin on our way from Austin to Wimberly, via back roads rather than I-35. |
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| Love this oak tree in Wimberly. Especially love the guy standing in the U. |
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| Hill country creek cascading over limestone. |
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| This was one of our many roads not taken. |
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| We ate dinner at the Leaning Pear in Wimberly. See the rain barrels next to the restaurant? They were filled to overflowing by a heavy rainstorm that fell during dinner. |
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| I've finally semi-organized character sketch, outline, research, rough draft, and writer's craft binders for my novel. The hard copies represent a compilation of about 100 separate files on my laptop. It was too difficult to toggle between files and keep track of what was where. Also, I like to highlight information on hard copies for easy reference. Now, to read through the pages, trash some, keep some, move some around. I like what Robert Rodriguez advises in "Rebel Without a Clue:" make two or three bad films as learning projects toward the good films. At a minimum, I'm writing the less-than-perfect first novel as a learning project toward better novels later. |
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Want to make sure you recognize me next time we see each other. I'm still going lighter, hoping the silver will blend better.
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For several years I've been searching for rose bushes for the grandgirls' rose garden. I found roses for Emma, Mya, and Lulu right away. Took several years to find "Black Jade" for Jade Fox. Piper, I'm still looking for the perfect rose bush for you.
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| For Emma, "Lady Emma Hamilton," named for Admiral Horatio Nelson's love. The photo doesn't depict the tangerine-orange on the inside of the petals. Orange is, of course, Emma's favorite color. |
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| For Lulu Grace, "Grace," apricot blossoms with a delicious, warm and sensuous fragrance. |
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| For Jade Fox, "Black Jade," a deep red tea rose. |
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| For Mya, "Cinco de Mayo," blooming just in time for Mya's birthday. I love the yellow accent in the center. The roses have a sweet apple fragrance. |
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| A promise of peaches. Two of our peach trees are loaded with fruit. Should be ripe at the end of June. |
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| Papa Tom picked pints of blackberries at his secret spot. So many more are ripening. |
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| We see the hawks almost daily now. Will the eyas join their parents soon, creating a cast of hawks? |
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| What is this place in East Austin? The Milonga Room, a throwback to the speakeasies of the 1920s. First, you text Milo to make a reservation, good for only an hour and given up if you're 15 minutes late. Second, Milo sends you a password. Third, when you arrive, you ring the doorbell and a person slides open the little portal behind Papa Tom's shoulder and asks for the password. Ours was "granuja," Spanish for "rogue." Inside, you follow a guy dressed in black down concrete stairs, through thick curtains, into a room lighted with candles and dim globes and furnished with pink or red crushed velvet divans and chairs. |
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| The Milonga Room is hidden beneath the Buenos Aires Cafe. Lucky us! Empanadas are on the menu. |
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| Three of us Sierra Club members spent a couple of hours at the Domain, an upscale residential/office/retail development in north Austin, to give passers-by an opportunity to sign letters to their representatives in Congress, asking for legislation to fight climate change. Most people walking past were on their phones and didn't stop. Several let us know they were tourists from other countries. We didn't get many signatures but did get to talk to a woman who calls herself a "denier." She's the person who kindly took our photo. :-) |
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| In 1979, I was 12 credit hours into an M.A. in Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas. I took newborn Ryder to classes with me and would cover him with a blanket to nurse him in the back of the room. He was a very quiet baby who seemed to listen intently to lectures. At the end of the Spring semester, I took a break from school to be a full-time Mom and never went back. The director Edward Dmytryk taught my screenwriting class. You may have seen his films "The Caine Mutiny," "Raintree County," or "The Carpetbaggers," among others? At any rate, he told me I have "a distinct touch of talent." Was he right? I'd like to find out these 40 years later. |
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| If I step through this door, where will I go? I took Media Policy, the second mandatory class to be eligible to become an Austin Public producer, on April 25, 2019. At the end of May, I'll be taking the PXW-Z280 camcorder class. According to the Station Manager, the camcorder is good for event coverage and "run and gun" type shoots. (No idea what "run and gun" means.) Maybe I could eventually cover some Sierra Club events? |
