My cousin, once removed (i had to look this up…my cousin’s daughter) is visiting Austin this week. Alison and her boyfriend Zac came over for dinner tonight. Monte slung several doughs and we made a bunch of pizzas. My cousin, Devitt, also joined us. We had a really nice visit. What great kids!
Alison and Zac are both amazing musicians. They were playing Rachmaninoff – from memory! Our own house concert. 🙂
One of the 4 red yuccas out back is going to bloom this year. Woot, woot!
Back at the marina, today, we saw Pam & Mark and visited with them for a little while, then packed up and schlepped our stuff back up to the car. We popped into Shades for lunch. They are finally open for the season, and this was our first time in this year.
Ok, back home now and getting ready for Monday. *sigh*
But what a fun weekend!
It’s hard to believe the lake was once at about 701′ (about 62′ higher than it is now!). But just to jog memories… here’s a pic from the July 6th flood of 2007… the old Aunt Tilly’s sitting in the same spot as Shades.
Now you know why the new restaurant has its kitchen, bathroom and office in trailers that can be driven away before the next deluge.
It’s that time of the year. This weekend was the first raft-up of 2012. And it was a doozie! We had 14 boats, 31 people and 2 dogs. I don’t have a picture of all the boats, but I took this one of 12 of them as we were coming in to tie up, and Joe arrived later.
It took quite a while to walk from one end to the other. Some of the boats’ lifelines couldn’t open, so it was a gymnastic feat crossing from boat to boat …with one hand free 🙂
Let me see if I can do roll call….left to right, we had Mark & Sarah on Serenade, Gray & Debbie on the blue hulled First, Bartlett’s parents’ Catalina, John & Claudia & 2 others on the brand new Solace, Tasha & Robert and Tony & Michelle (visiting for the weekend!) on Voodoo, Danny & Casey on the Beneteau 31, Rory & Greg on Sapphire, Camden & Terry on MoonRock, Kurt, Wally & Kevin on Dancer, John & Deanna on Caribbean Run, Mike on Allegro, Lori & Dave on Camelot, Monte & me on Cupholder, and last but not least, Joe on Prelude. Whew!
As much fun as these are, we did have a rare, bad experience on our way to the cove. Some <expletive> motorhead nearly crashed into us as we were under sail. Coming within about 5 feet of us, and going about 30 miles an hour. As they passed, they turned their boat, pushing up a wall of water that dumped into our cockpit, drenching both of us, and pouring water into the cabin, v-berth and lockers below.
Monte immediately got on the cell phone and called LCRA dispatch, gave them a description of the boat and their heading and … they pulled them over. Goobers. It could have been very bad. I guess it’s good that we only got wet.
Anyway, we didn’t let that spoil our evening.
In true B-dock fashion, the party went on into the wee hours. A good time was had by all.
It’s truly wonderful to have this bunch of people to play with. Everyone really enjoys being out on the lake together. We are very lucky.
I picked up this orchid at the store a couple of weeks ago. I’ve never had one before. It has about 8 blooms on it, and this is a new one that opened since I brought it home.
May the blessing of the rain be on you—
the soft sweet rain.
May it fall upon your spirit
so that all the little flowers may spring up,
and shed their sweetness on the air.
May the blessing of the great rains be on you,
may they beat upon your spirit
and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there many a shining pool
where the blue of heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.
— Irish blessing
I have several large pots filled with dirt in various spots in the back yard. They are leftovers from plants that have either died or been replanted, and I haven’t gotten around to planting something new in them yet. Two years ago (or maybe 3?) I noticed a shoot growing in one of these pots. Another volunteer. I let it go for a while and realized it was a crepe myrtle. The first year it grew a bit and leafed out. The second year, it had a few more shoots and it even had a few flowers. This year I want to start to shape it into a taller tree, rather than a bushy shrub. So, a couple of weeks ago, I pruned it back to two bare, woody stalks about 3 feet high.
In the shot above, you can see some of the big buds that have popped out along the main branches. Glad to see that I didn’t kill it. 🙂
First day of spring! It rained buckets overnight. The front passed through here about 1:30AM this morning. It dumped a ton of rain in the Hill Country, so the lakes are on the rise! As of right now, Lake Travis has risen 4′ since this time yesterday (@ 636.7′), and is expected to rise another couple of feet, as they have the flood gates open on Lake LBJ and Lake Marble Falls, to let their overflow pass through.
After work tonight I took a walk out back to see what I could see. One of the birdbaths caught my eye. The water was so calm, like glass. There were leaves in the bottom of it, but I didn’t want to disturb the surface of the water, so I just took it as is. I like how the cedar elm tree above it is reflected in the surface.
The shot above is after I changed it to black & white. The original is below. I like the B&W better. It seems to show much more detail of the reflection. How about you?
We met Doray & Tom at BB Rover’s tonight for dinner and to play a few rounds of pinochle. The ladies won a tightly contested best-of-three match.
Today is the last day of winter. Spring will officially be upon us at 12:14 AM local time tomorrow morning.
I have a couple of unrelated other shots I wanted to post… one is of a deer that has taken to laying outside the guest bedroom window. He’s got an injured foreleg, and has been back here a couple of times. This shot is from the bedroom window. He’s only inches away. Forgive the crummy shot through the solar screen on the window. You get the idea.
And this is a shot of a bunch of Texas Mountain Laurel seeds that I harvested from a bush growing in the greenbelt when we were there on Saturday afternoon. I looked online to learn how to prepare the seeds for germination. These seeds are from last season, they are hard and red and have shrunk a bit. Conventional wisdom says to knick them and then soak them till they swell a bit, and then plant them about an inch deep. The little dimples on the seeds in the picture below are where I cut through the shell of the seed. The seeds soaked for about 8 hours, so they are plumped up a bit from when I knicked them. I’ve got these guys in pots in the back room now so that I can tend them. I hope they take! We want to plant a bunch of mountain laurels along the back fence line. I’ll let you know how they turn out… FYI these are supposed to be poisonous, so if you try this at home… don’t eat them 🙂
There is rain in the forecast…it’s been slow getting here. But as I type this post, there’s a big red line just moving into our area. I’ll have to sign off now to watch the weather channel (my favorite).
Good night!
It’s hard to believe we will ever have a nice lawn again. The weeds rule this spring.
Oh well, you know what they say:
If you can’t beat ’em….
Take a picture of ’em!
🙂
I’m enjoying this last weekend of winter. It’s in the 70’s… very humid, though, with rain in the forecast (yay!).
Yesterday afternoon we ran to the lake for a sail in nice winds for a couple of hours. Saw Kurt, Wally & Kevin as we were leaving the marina. We decided to head in early, and topped off a lovely St Patrick’s day with a beer and corned beef and cabbage at BB Rover’s. Slainte!
I made it home last night at 11:45, so I was able to give Monte a birthday hug before it was over, after all.
We’re having a lovely Saturday, so far. I love being home.
I enjoyed walking around the yard this morning to see what had changed in the last week. Just 7 days ago monte planted some rows of lettuce seed. As you can see in the shot above, by this morning they’ve formed little green lines of lettuce seedlings.
We took a walk through the park at the end of our street this morning and ended up looking for one geocache there that has eluded us several times. We couldn’t find it again today. (darnit!) When we got home I looked it up again to read recent comments from people who had found it. It bugged me so much that we decided to go back to try to find it again. We also checked the magnetic declination (the difference between magnetic and true north) for our area and updated the GPS. And this time we took our bikes. We ended up finding it… FINALLY… and then went on to look for (and found) two others in another park nearby. Whew. What a relief.
Now we’re plotting how to spend the rest of St Patrick’s Day.
I hope you have a great one, too!
Today is my sweetie’s birthday. It’s bad enough that I’ve been out of town all week, but my itinerary today got me home by about 4:30pm. So we had made plans to celebrate this evening.
But, here I sit, in the Raleigh Airport. My flight was delayed, delayed, delayed… and then cancelled, due to problems with the plane. They’ve re-booked me several times, and now I won’t get home until about 11:30pm. Maybe I can make it to the house before midnight.
Happy Birthday, Monte! I’ll be there as soon as I can 🙂
While working my way through one of the hundreds of new emails in my inbox today, I noticed this at the bottom of a long note.
It made me pause.
Then it made me smile.
I have been coming to Raleigh on business for many years. I’m staying in the same hotel that I usually do, right around the corner from the office. In all that time this hotel property has changed ownership at least 3 times. This time it’s a newly refurbished Hilton Garden Inn. It has that “new hotel” smell, even though it’s the same old building. They are doing their best to offer perks to make the stay more pleasant… a brand new hairdryer to replace the one that died on me yesterday…warm cookies in the lobby…a little store downstairs where you can buy drinks and snacks… a lovely breakfast buffet….and a great view of this morning’s sunrise from my room. 🙂
Sheila365 