Flowers – Sheila365

All moms.

Happy Mother’s Day to the women who made us! I enjoy seeing all the photos posted by those marking the day, whether they are daughter, son, husband, mom, father, or friend.

I miss my own mom immensely. I feel the pain of friends who were denied the blessing of becoming a mom. I see the joy and pain of my friends and family mothers who live the ups and downs of their dear ones. This week I went to lunch with a friend who recently lost her 20-something son. She is strong and full of grace, but I cannot begin to imagine how terribly difficult this is for her.

So today, let us remember all moms — those who are here, passed, mourning, struggling, wishing, or praying — Amen.

Frequent your happy places.

Commons Ford Park is one of my happy places. I haven’t been out here in a while, though. The prairie is breaking out in color and teeming with songbirds.

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A painted bunting singing atop a mesquite shrub: OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

One scissor-tailed flycatcher posing in the foreground, and another flying away in the background: OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

A dickcissel pausing his constant singing to give me the once over: OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Score!

I’m so excited! I have several custom searches saved in my profile on craigslist that I check every few days to see if THAT-ONE-THING ever comes up for sale at a crazy good price. Today something popped up in my gardening & outdoors search that I just couldn’t pass up. I was all over it within minutes of its posting and swooped in for the sale. I picked up all of these ceramic pots & pavers for a song (plus a couple big sago palms and succulents as a bonus). And it ALL fit in the back of my SUV.

I’m one happy girl with dirty fingernails. 🙂

Blue Monday.

A field of bluebonnets in the neighborhood. And they’re only just getting started!

Wedding prep.

It was a treat to get together yesterday with friends to help Ann with the todo list to prepare for her son’s rehearsal dinner. It’s going to be wonderful.

First bluebonnet.

Monte is the Bluebonnet Whisperer. We have several patches in the yard, and they’ve started to bloom. It’s going to be a big year. This is the first one to be brought in to the house.

(photo manipulated with Brushstroke iPhone app)

A neighbor’s gift.

Our neighbors of many years recently sold their home and moved away. They had cultivated irises and planted them in their yard. Over the years, whenever they separated their bulbs each season, they’d hand me several over the fence. I planted them in different places in our yard, and some have reliably bloomed each year.

These are some of the first bulbs given to me, purple irises, that are already in bloom this year. I’m hoping to see some of the others do the same.

2018 happened.

The year was full of the usual fun times spent with Monte, our friends, as much family visits we could squeeze in, and my girl posse. I stopped coloring my hair. I gained too much weight. I missed my mom often. I was continually enchanted by Keeto. People often ask me what I do with my oodles of free time. On the spot, I usually can’t think of what the heck I’ve done to fill the days and weeks of this year of retirement. So, I spent some time today scanning the photos I took this year, to jog my memory for some highlights.

Outside of Lubbock in January

Crossing the Gulf in February

Grand Canyon in March

Tower of Pisa in April

Turnback Canyon Regatta in May

Sailing with Keeto in June

Fireworks over Lake Travis in July

Storms in the Gulf outside of Port Aransas in August

My Pride of Barbados bloomed in September

Flooding in October

Trident getting ready to leave November

Mozart’s lights in December

January brought many birding day trips and a number of lifers. More special were visits with 2 of my high school friends. Pilar was in Austin for business and looked me up. We hadn’t seen each other for … decades, not counting one brief wedding visit that happened many moons ago. We’d reconnected on social media several years back, but it was really wonderful to get a face to face visit in. Another friend from high school, Irene, texted me to see if I could join her in Lubbock, of all places, while she was there for her son’s sports event. And so I took a road trip and saw some interesting things along the way.

February brought a huge leap of faith, a drive to Florida with Lori, Monte & Joe, and then a journey across the Gulf of Mexico by sailboat to bring Lori’s new-to-her sailboat home to the Texas coast. It was an awesome and challenging trip.

March brought a really memorable road trip across Arizona and New Mexico. We celebrated Monte, Gene and Susanne’s birthdays together. I saw a couple dozen lifer bird species. Tucson, with its Catalina Mountains and the Sonoran Desert, is a truly amazing birding destination. And on the way home, we saw some glorious works of nature and man. We spent 2 days on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, staying overnight in a cabin sitting about 50 feet away from the rim. We marveled at a ginormous meteor crater off of I-40 on the drive to Santa Fe. Then we spent 2 days in Santa Fe, staying at the luxurious Spa at Loretto. We saw more new birds there, but the highlight was a visit to the Loretto Chapel, with its spiral staircase that legend says might have been constructed with divine intervention.

April brought a number of trips to the coast; one special one to visit High Island during a Spring fallout, and another girl’s trip to Kemah to officially rename Lori’s boat, S/V Trident. But if that wasn’t enough, I joined Irene again, this time for a week in Italy. I thoroughly enjoyed Florence, Pisa and Cinque Terra and points in between.

May brought more trips to the coast to help Lori with Trident repairs and projects. It also marked the return of warm weather and lots of fun boat outings on Lake Travis with friends and family on Nirvana.

June and July were full of projects at the house, in the shop, and in the yard. We popped down to the coast again, a time or two, and really enjoyed our almost full lake during the peak of the heat of summer. We delivered a beautiful table that Monte made for Doray and Tom in their new home in Wimberly.

August brought another trip to the Texas coast – to crew for Lori and Mike on their first shake-down cruise on Trident since she arrived in Texas. We sailed out to the Gulf of Mexico and down to Port Aransas. We stayed for a couple nights in the municipal marina there, and enjoyed one of our favorite towns on the Texas Gulf Coast, before our return sail to Kemah. Then we popped up to Seattle for a very overdue trip. We stayed two weeks, encased in smoke from the nearby fires, but did enjoy immensely seeing our family, and a bonus of 2 clear days on the Pacific coast of Washington.

September brought a month of non-stop rain to Austin. So we busied ourselves with more projects in the house. I began to dabble with sewing canvas projects for the boat. Monte made sawdust and honed his web site and various GPS apps.

October brought another trip to Kemah. I became a novice diesel engine mechanic. We also experienced historic flooding amongst the Highland Lakes. Monte worked on shop projects for a client or two. Autumn arrived in Texas, which I love only second to Spring in Texas.

And then it was suddenly November! Monte made another trip down to Kemah to help with last-minute projects. Thanksgiving happened. Then we made one final trip to Kemah together at the end of the month to bid bon voyage to Lori and Mike, and their crew, Janet and Will, taking Trident back east to Florida.

December brought the usual whirlwind of decorating, baking, parties, Christmas shopping, visiting with friends, and eating too much. And now, POOF, it’s the last day of the year.

Tomorrow, I will gear up to do it all again – starting a new year with an as-yet-unknown set of trips, projects, visits, fun and (hopefully only occasional) troubles that lay ahead. I am truly blessed.

G’nite y’all.

We had a bit of a Wii frisbee golf-a-thon tonight. As I turned out the kitchen lights at the end of the night, the silhouetted tulips caught my eye. Keeto says, “night night go seepies.” So, off I go… 🙂

Save the little flowers.

We brought our vulnerable outdoor plants in when the weather turned cold last week. Most of them are in the shop. I brought a few small ones into the house. I’m enjoying this one, a pretty pink impatiens.

Boat run.

We are pet sitting this week – our niece, Julie’s, dog, and Doray & Tom’s parrot. Because of that, we have been sticking close to home. But, today we took the opportunity on this beautiful day to take a drive.

We stopped by several vantage points around the lake. With the emergency flooding situation behind us, Lake Travis is dropping about 1.5 feet a day now, currently at 695′ above mean sea level. The butterflies were thick today, which makes me very happy – so much of what humans do have hurt their populations over the years. It’s nice to see them out there despite us.

I believe these are Queen butterflies, on blue mistflower. I think I’ll plant some of this in my yard!

We also stopped by the marina to check on our boat. Our marina’s staff has been doing a wonderful job keeping all the docks floating and clear of obstacles. They are running a shuttle to the docks for boat owners, since the lake is still flooded, and the water level is still about 15 feet above the parking lot. Everything looks fine. Our batteries are doing well (electricity has been off to the docks for 12 days, so far).

I brought my completed propane bag out to the boat and hung it. It works great, and I found the perfect spot for it.

Simple pleasures.

This is a picture of the Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima) shrub in our yard, finally in bloom!

I have nurtured this for several years. Though the brutally cold temperature dips appeared to kill it to the ground every winter, it popped up green shoots each spring. But, this is the first year it has flowered for me. While we were out of town for the month of August, I hoped I could keep it and some of our other flowering plants alive with an automated sprinkler. Upon our return, I was so pleased to see that not only did they all survive, but this plant had 2 flower heads ready to bloom. A happy gardener, here. 🙂

FWIW, I would recommend the low-tech sprinkler controller I picked up at Home Depot, since our underground sprinkler system is out of commission. But I’m also overjoyed by the unending rain we’ve had since we returned at the end of August. I’ll happily take every drop.

Boats, et cetera.

We toured the Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain tall ships with Francine, Rebecca & Aaron. It was fun to learn they would be here during our visit.