Tag: central texas

Leaf me alone!

I truly enjoy the trees in our yard.  But, there are many of them, and they collectively drop billions and gazillions of leaves every year. Over the last day or two, we raked and scooped up 5 or more trailer-loads of those bad boys – a good workout. Our new pile-o-leaves (and future garden soil):

I can’t complain though. It has been lovely outside. Today the temps were close to 70 degrees F. Thankfully, cedar pollen levels are below the threshold that triggers my allergies. As I sit here, sore and tired, I’m sipping a glass of wine listening to the news guys report on the cold and snowy weather up north. Yeah, I’ll take yard work in the winter in Austin over that any day.

Septemberfest.

Monte and I rang in our anniversary with a trip through the Texas Hill Country.   We had our own mini-Oktoberfest exploring Altstadt Brewery and spent the weekend in Fredericksburg.

We enjoyed the wine and brews of the region and some local good-eats.  We also did our share of antiquing and mantiquing and each brought home a little sumpin-sumpin.

The Longhorns have an off-week, but we caught them chilling in the shade near the Pedernales River:

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We did a number of laps down Main Street in Fredericksburg.  Next week is Oktoberfest in F-burg, so GET DOWN THERE! IMG_9329

You gotta love the Texas wine trail… grape vines and live oaks.IMG_9333

And zinnias as far as you can see…IMG_9336

Happy Anny to us!

A day in the ATX.

I joined Rachel and Becky on their second day in Austin.

Monte made crepes for breakfast. Then we headed out.

Spelunking at Inner Space Caverns:

Boot shopping at Allen’s Boots:Zilker Botanical Garden:

Chillin’ at Barton Springs Pool:

Mural tour:

Boot scootin at the Broken Spoke:

Mr. Dale Watson:

Good night Austin!

Nightfall.

Rachel and her friend Becky are visiting this weekend. We didn’t think we could keep up with a couple of vivacious 30-something’s in downtown Austin on a Friday night, so I dropped them downtown tonight for an evening of fun. I was treated to a view of tonight’s lovely sunset on the way home.

Momma’s got a brand new bag.

My boat sewing projects continue. This week I made a pair of new halyard bags for Nirvana. These replace the tattered ones that originally came with the boat.

They sit on the bulkhead in the cockpit and stow all lines coming from the rope clutches on the top of the house.

Nice!

They are made from vinyl-coated polyester mesh, Phifertex Plus, which has a slightly tighter weave than the original material. I added grommets in the bottom of each pouch to help water drain.

Hot fun in the summertime.

Fran and Aaron came down to Austin for a visit. They just returned home yesterday. Whoooo, it was HOT while they were here. But they were troopers and hung in there, as we spent most of their time here outdoors.

We spent a couple of days and a night playing on the lake on Nirvana. We spent another morning sailing the newly relaunched Cupholder around as well.

We played multiple tournaments of corn-hole and pool and mario karts. And we sampled a good bit of Tex-Méx, BBQ, and backyard grill-fare.

We spent a day down at Barton Springs Pool, hitting Sno-Beach on the way home for the best sno-cone evah.

We walked 9 holes of golf. And then topped it all off with a few rounds of Rummikub and some beer at Live Oak Brewery, which is thoughtfully placed just across the street from the Austin airport.

They braved it all. We had a blast. Keeto can’t wait until they come back again. 🙂

Coop-dominium.

I drove out to Doray’s house yesterday to bring Keeto home. She is a couple months into raising five egg-laying hens from chicks. These lucky birds moved into a beautiful chicken coop that Tom and Doray designed and built for them.

Cute!

Fun in the sun.

We enjoyed floating and fishing with Lori and Mike and four of his grandkids today on Nirvana, anchored in our favorite cove on Lake Travis. It was a fun time. The kids were great, and they caught 4 fish between them!

We checked out Brick Oven’s Jazz night for dinner. The patio was full, though, so we had to sit inside.

Another good day!

Nice.

It was a good day on the lake. No wind. But lots of sun, it almost reached 100 degrees. Lake water temps are perfect right now, 83 degrees. We floated all day to beat the heat. Air conditioning at the slip sure helps, too.

Just peachy.

Monte and I took a drive out the Highway 290 wine trail on this windy day in May.  Our mission was to pick up our wine club quarterly selection at Becker Vineyards.

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Future wine on the vine!OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

We made a few stops.  In Johnson City, we took a pass through some of the antique stores, and found vintage cowboy/cowgirl boots, of course.  Take your pick…IMG_7916 (1)

It’s peach season!  We stopped at an orchard in Fredericksburg, to bring a few home.IMG_7924 (1)

 

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

Bikes and birds.

This is the weekend of the MS-150 bike ride from Houston to Austin. I served as sherpa again with Doray and drove Laura and her friend Patty to Houston on Friday night.

This morning we helped her get to the start and then we drove east, instead of west, so we could do some birding on the coast.

We had a great day, logging over 80 species, and turned in at the hotel late and a tad tired. Tomorrow is another day!

Migrants.

Over the weekend I made a trip to the coast.  The Spring migration is underway, and I wanted to see some colorful birds arriving after their Gulf crossing.  I thought the cold front headed for the coast might make for favorable chances of a fallout.  As it turned out, the front passed north of where I was, so weather conditions were not exceptional.  I did end up seeing lots of birds – almost 70 species.  But, I had to work at it.

Scarlet tanager eating a juicy mulberry…

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Painted bunting and common yellowthroat…OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Black-necked stilt, standing daringly close to an alligator…OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

Racing in the rain.

This was the weekend of the Governor’s Cup Regatta on Lake Travis – a two-day set of races for all classes of sailboats, including Sunfish, J-boats, centerboards, and PHRF-handicapped multi-hulls and monohulls. We showed up early at Austin Yacht Club on Saturday morning; overcast, foggy and with storms in the forecast. Our class had five Catalina 30s registered. It would have been a fun weekend of racing.

But instead of racing, we sat through lightning-laced back-to-back postponements until all races were eventually abandoned for the day at 1PM.  In the picture above you can just barely see the red & white striped AP flag ()  flying on the far right halyard of the flag pole – indicating that we were operating under a postponement at the time.

The same thing happened on Day 2, yesterday, except the N over A flags (https://i0.wp.com/www.sarasotabayyachting.org/images/N-A.gif),  indicating abandonement of all races for the regatta, were hoisted before 9AM.

It would have been nice to race, but I’ll take the rain!  The picture above is a shot of the low clouds and rain over Arkansas Bend on Saturday.  Even if there had been no rain, there was no wind.