We spent much of yesterday in the yard – weeding, whacking and watering. Our lawn is in bad shape (unless you count the johnson grass). But the shrubs and flowers are starting to pop.
I love this time of year.
More signs of spring.
Tag: photoblog
Baby red oak leaves.
Spring has sprung in Austin! Every year the red oak tree leafs out with the tiniest of leaves. They sure grow fast.
They’re pretty when they are full size, but after they fall to the ground and cover the entire front lawn, I wish they were this small again.
Fringe benefits.
Being married to a talented woodworker has its benefits. Monte just finished this beautiful (huge) maple cutting board and brought it into the house today. Niiiiice.
Bathtime.
Yes, another gratuitous Keeto pic. We are enjoying our little birdy after having been away for a week and a half.
Hot scones.
Hot blueberry scones for breakfast. Not from scratch….but Sticky Fingers Scone Mix. Easy and fast!
Keeto @ 6 months (or thereabouts)
I didn’t get a chance to sort through my photos from the trip yet, so, today you get another Keeto shot 🙂
Doray and Tom bird-sat for us while we were out of town. We got home too late to get him last night. So, as soon as my last meeting was over today, i buzzed over there to pick him up. He’s such a sweet bird. Thank you Uncle Tom & Aunt Doray !
We estimate that this week he is about 6 months old. His cere is most definitely blue now. He’s wrapping up his first molt. His flight feathers have grown in enough for him to get some lift. And his eyes are changing a bit… no longer solid black, but have a little ring gray around the outside.
(oh yeah, i almost forgot… Happy Mardi Gras!)
Back to reality.
I have been off-line for 10 glorious days – sailing through the British Virgin Islands. We just got home, and I have hundreds of photos to dig through. In the mean time, I’m posting a map showing each leg of our trip.
We headed to Tortola a week and a half ago: 12 sailors, 3 sailboats, 10 nights, 9 days and a ton of good times…. Our boat was a 51′ sloop called No Horizon. We shared it with Marty & Sue, and Tommy & Bobbie. Lori, Dave & Jake were on Sea Mist, and Wally, Kurt & Rod were on Pinta. The map above shows the route we took on No Horizon. Pinta and Sea Mist joined us for many of the legs, but everyone took their own route through the islands.
While I slept well on the boat every night, it’s going to be nice to sleep on my bed tonight and shower for as long as I want to! If I make it through my first day back at work tomorrow, I will pick several photos to post. More later…
…I go to come back!
A little surprise in the garden.
I walked out back this afternoon and noticed a flowering snapdragon (I think) in one of the flower beds. It’s a volunteer. And the winter has been so mild, it is starting to bloom.
Emergency Pedi.
I’m running out of time to get all the things I need to get done, done. Today I simply had to get a pedicure, so I booked an appointment at the newly opened Milk & Honey Salon in the Arboretum Market. In honor of Valentine’s Day next week I chose a color called “Fall in Love.”
My to-do list overfloweth, but now I’m primped, pampered and ready to go!
Cornhole!
Fran, the kids and my mom leave today. Before heading to the airport we got in a few more games of cornhole. What’s cornhole, you ask? A bean-bag (or corn kernel bag, rather) toss game. Players take turns throwing the bags at the board. If a bag lands on top, you get 1 point. If it goes in the hole, you get 3 points. It is a staple of most mid-western family gatherings and picnics. Monte recently made a pair of boards.
Francine is quite good at the game, even though she’s never played it before. She’s giving Monte a run for his money…
In the shot above, Monte’s toss is dropping into the hole (it’s all in the wrist!).
Planting a cache.
Geo-caching is a real-world outdoor treasure hunting game, where you look for hidden containers, or “geo-caches,” using GPS-enabled devices. People can post the coordinates for caches they have hidden, for others to find. And geo-cachers can share their stories of their finds online.
We enjoy geo-caching in the nearby parks and woodlands. And we especially enjoy taking other people, especially kids, geo-caching with us when they visit.
On my last birthday, Monte bought me an ammo-case, which is the perfect thing to use for a geo-cache because it is durable and has a rubber gasket around the top, which makes it relatively weatherproof.
Today we took Fran, Rebecca and Aaron geo-caching in the greenbelt near our house, and I brought my own geo-cache to hide. Inside my geocache is a disposable camera, so when people find and open the cache, they can take a picture of themselves, and leave the camera inside for the next people. The shot above shows the cache, as we left it.
We found 4 out of 6 caches that we were looking for… not bad. The kids, big and small, had fun.
After we got home I posted the coordinates of my new cache to geocaching.com. Now I can monitor it online for log entries from people that have found it.
Check out geocaching.com for caches near you to look for and find. Happy hunting!
Tulips in the morning.
There was a vase of tulips on the table when I came back home the other day. So pretty! I couldn’t resist posting another obligatory tulip shot this morning.
Family in the hood.
My mom, my sister Francine and her kids Aaron and Rebecca are visiting from Seattle this week. My flight back to Austin yesterday arrived an hour before theirs, so I just hung out in the Admiral’s Club for a while and then met them at their gate.
We paid a visit to the goats down the street.
Where did January go?!
Wow. That was fast. January sure flew by.
I am in New York this week for some meetings. It is unseasonably warm here, as it is in other parts of the country this winter. It was in the 50’s and 60’s today. No snow on the ground. This tree, outside of my hotel, is covered with big buds already getting ready to pop.
February has 29 days this year. I’m going to savor each one!
Sheila365 