We were afraid we wouldn’t get to do much today because it was supposed to rain a lot. So I did my nails and relaxed this morning, but I really wanted to do something outdoors since I’m here in such a pretty part of Texas.
I’ve used hand lotion since I finished.
Lee opined that we could at least go for a ride so we traveled along the Devil’s Backbone and looked at lots of scenery and lovely ranches. E stopped for coffee in Wimberley, where of course I was not encouraged to get out and buy any art or boutique items. Hmph.
Not even a piece of driftwood. Boo.
On our way back we really took back roads and hugged the lake. It stopped raining, so we got out and explored one of the boat ramps on Canyon Lake. All the ramps are closed however. The lake is only 60% full, thanks to the dry summer, so the docks end on rocks and shells of evil Mediterranean clams.
All these snags are usually underwater.
I had a great time finding new plants and familiar ones in their winter disguises.
This is apparently Pediomelum latestipulatum or Texas Plains Indian Breadroot
Mostly though, I enjoyed the sounds of many water birds that were on the lake. There were gadwalls, coots, mallards and the wigeons, which make such cool sounds. I saw a kingfisher and a kestrel, too. We had a great time.
Gray lake with ghost trees. There used to be a town under the lake.
I found things blooming and growing amidst the grayness.
Mullein Thistle Green within the gray
The ride home was fun. We found a whole area with houses made of shipping containers, which were very creative. There were many other fun houses along the lake ranging from old to new and small to huge. Plus there was a lot of wildlife. We saw a beautiful fox (no photos, but it had a gorgeous tail) and many lovely deer.
Three!Deer time
After enjoying football we are ready to head back to the animals tomorrow. I look forward to coming back to this area in the fall for the Master Naturalist annual meeting if not sooner.
We are at top left. Renovated room but not very comfy. Great staff, though!
Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?
If they are referring to the winter holidays, like the Solstice or Christmas, then there’s only been one constant since my children were little, and that’s to have cinnamon rolls for breakfast. We used to eat them while opening gifts.
Something cheerful: Vlassic running at sunset.
For many, many reasons I’m not doing much for Christmas this year. It’s going to be a hard one for much of my family, and I’m not feeling very celebratory. I’m just going to go somewhere with Lee, if we can get someone to feed dogs and medicate Apache.
Speaking of horses, I caught Drew and Fiona being friendly today.
If not, I’ll stay home and eat cinnamon rolls then cook a meal for the same people I cooked Thanksgiving for. Maybe I’ll make pork loin and correct cranberry sauce. I think there will be small, handmade gifts for people.
You know, I think I just don’t want to do anything religious. I’m not happy with things being done in the name of religion these days, especially the ones stemming from Moses and his tribes. I’m disappointed in wars, book banning, misogyny, religious intolerance, and fundamentalism. All of it.
For the solstice, which at least predates Christmas, there will be candles and maybe a fire if the place we go has a fireplace. I’ll make decorations out of things from the woods and put intentions of peace into them.
Or we can watch a sunset.
It will be fine to skip materialism and shiny things for one year and concentrate on helping struggling loved ones however I can.
Daily Bird
We had some rain today, but it only rained hard briefly. It did quiet the birds down. The daily birds just have to be the European starlings.
As I went out to slog through the puddles to feed the horses, I heard sounds like tiny bells. It was a huge flock of starlings heading off to some field now that the sun was back out. It always amazes me how many there are.
I learned in a magazine that the flocks often contain the local grackles as well. Blackbirds like each other, I guess. I’m never going to love grackles, those resourceful parking lot scroungers with the incredibly annoying whistles, the great-tailed grackles. I’ll work on it.
Yet, more than once in my life I’ve been called elitist for mentioning some of my peeves. After all, educated folks who know and use standard English are looked at as suspiciously progressive or something.
I won’t put the Latin name for this common buckeye so I’ll seem less snooty.
I’m all for creative use of language, am well aware that language changes constantly. So I am fine with observing new language, even if I never call u bae.
And I don’t even know ow which checkered butterfly this is.
So my peeves are mostly language usage. Not New language, just wrong stuff. Other than number 3 below.
1. Please use the contraction “you’re” when you are shortening “you are.” It’s easy. The word “your” refers to something of yours. Like your ability to spell words even when you’re using autocorrect.
I hope this peevish list doesn’t make me look like one of these.
2. Speaking of apostrophes, (a word with no apostrophes in it, by the way), they aren’t like garnish on top of salads that you sprinkle wherever they look cute. You do not pluralize nouns by adding ‘s. Nope. If there’s more than one item, you add a plain letter “s” unless the word ends in an s or z sound. The. You add “es” with no apostrophe. Even people’s NAMES are pluralized that way! Lee and I are Kendalls and Brunses. Now if we own something? Stick an apostrophe in there! Ms. Kendall’s pet peeves are a great example.
That’s enough, Suna.
3. Ooh, ooh! I have another one to add to my apoplectic elitist frenzy of prescriptivism! There is a recent trend to take perfectly innocent nouns and make them into some kind of cutesy verbs. Like:
What are you gifting this year? It’s the time of year to gift and gift some more!
What’s your favorite way to morning? Coffee, of course.
It’s time to football!
I think it started with things like weekending and breakfasting and has just kept spreading.
Butterfly break! Dainty yellow.
4. It’s versus its. At least this one’s harder. But in this one case, the apostrophe is only for smooshing two words together and not for possession. So I get it that it’s hard to get its nuances.
A good angle on this fiery skipper.
Enough of that. Today was a fine day with much sunshine, pleasant coolness, and many butterflies. As you can see, I got a few photos, but I saw many more, plus a caterpillar I can’t identify.
Daily Bird
Today, since it was sunny and not very windy, there were lots of birds to enjoy. I counted eight types of sparrows! But the bird I enjoyed the most was the hermit thrush. It’s hard to resist a bird who shares a name with your ranch.
I like that it skulks
Today’s thrush was skulking in the big brush pile that was created last year in the woods, and it was chupping up a storm. it even drowned out a very vocal wren. I saw it a couple of times, but like the pipits, it looks a lot like a little brown bird that’s hard to distinguish without binoculars. I’m glad I know what it sounds like.
I have to admit that once again I heard a cool “bird,” then sheepishly remembered we do have a few squirrels out here.
It really was a great day today. I don’t think the weather could have been better, all the animals were happy, and people were nice, too. This was the kind of day I’d hoped to have when I was a kid thinking about when I grew up.
Plus I saw this Queen butterfly on a vitex bush at the local coffee shop.
All my meetings were pleasant today, with good conversation and productivity. I finished a tedious task so now I can look forward to more fun work next week. I even sort of enjoyed a lot of tedious copying and pasting to make a list of every tag ever used in my Master Naturalist blog. Dang.
Fiery skipper on a dandelion
Lunch break was at the coffee shop with Anita, where I had a great coffee and huge salad. We listened to Chris the owner’s spouse talk about music and our mutual love of Ruidoso, New Mexico. Then we got all our talking in. We get to hang out again tomorrow, because I’m going Thanksgiving shopping with her tomorrow (Lee won’t grocery shop on weekends). What a nice break!
Birds flying to their roost at sunset. Cries I think. Or vultures.
After finishing work I enjoyed working with the horses. Drew even let me get some burs off the front of his head! the key was doing it while he ate. Tomorrow I’ll work on it more. But being out with them in the perfect weather was just ideal.
All this, and there were still more burs on him.
Finally, I went to a “hat bar” thing that my friend Courtney held at her store. I enjoyed watching the young woman who decorated the hats and had fun designing one for myself. She put a pansy on it for me.
She burned the image on.
The snacks were unique. They featured a huge armadillo sculpted out of cream cheese and filled with ham dip. It was ultra realistic and took folks a while to get up the courage to break into it. Whoever made it is talented!
Most interesting dip sculpture I ever saw
Anyhow, the hat thing was fun, though I felt sort of old and in the wrong social group (it was mostly the fashionable young women of town). But there were a couple women over 50, plus two people I knew.
Courtney did some hat burning, too, and was really proud of her leopard spots. She has to be good at it, since half the items in the store are leopard print (note shoes on customer in photo).
I had lots of fun with my friend Jenecia, who was in my Master Naturalist class with me. I hardly ever see her when she isn’t working one of her many entrepreneurial ventures, so getting to just laugh and catch up was nice.
We didn’t have THAT much wine!
I had more fun helping her find materials for her hat than mine, and it came out so cute!
So darling!
My hat had a theme of matching Drew’s tack, as if I’ll wear a hat when working with him. But it’s going to go with lots of my clothing.
And as if the day couldn’t end any better, I walked outside to see all the pretty lights in the town square. Every day Cameron gets a little better.
Holiday lights
There. Just wanted to share a good, full day of friends and fun.
Daily Bird
Today’s bird is the belted kingfisher, because I got to enjoy our winter resident as it flew around the front pond today. It seems to make the rounds of the three tanks/ponds near our house, judging from when I hear it. I see it often, too. Kingfishers have such a distinctive shape that they’re easy to spot.
The only other kingfisher I’ve seen is the ringed kingfisher I saw at the National Butterfly Center, which is in the northernmost part of its range.
I like to watch these birds. I can remember the first time I saw one, which was on some river. It must have been in Illinois at the little park by a large creek. I saw it catch a fish! I’ve seen that a few times.
We’re lucky to have one here at the Hermits’ Rest. I think I annoy it by trying to take a photo of it, but it’s because I love it!
Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).
Since I have had a poor mental health day, I’ll just answer by telling you that horses are expensive to maintain. I’d say the three most expensive things I’ve ever bought that weren’t buildings or vehicles have been the three horse saddles I’ve bought.
That’s the most costly one. Cost 5X as much as the horse (before expensive training).
However, they are comfortable for the horses and beautiful, too. A lot of saving was involved for each. I can also lift them. That’s important for older riders.
The second costliest. This horse was “free.” Now his meds cost more than mine.
No riding today. It’s too muddy. So I walked the horses and pondered a bur removal campaign. At least Apache likes his medicine and asks for me to take burs out (sticks his head in the right position).
This splotchy cow resembles Apache with no burs.
Otherwise, today I heard seven kinds of sparrows and even photographed one, along with turkey vultures and great egrets.
Lark sparrow Amusing head-on viewBonus cardinal Heron 1Heron 2Vultures on a mission
The birds seem to like the damp, cool weather judging by how many were out this morning.
That’s a lot of birds
I’m just feeling really weird. Is it anxiety? Too much salty food? Dehydration? Medication side effect? Being an empath? I may get checked tomorrow in case it’s blood pressure or something. I’m not having an emergency, just feeling unbalanced.
It rained and rained and I worked and worked today, so I didn’t have any “adventures” to write about. I was glad to see the blog prompt for today, since it fit in with my day’s activities.
Still rainy
Have you guessed my favorite subject in school? It’s pretty obvious, though after sixth grade there were really two.
Since I have the condition where I’m just driven to write (hypergraphia, self diagnosed), it’s no surprise that I loved English grammar and composition. I still do, though I’ve cut out all the convoluted sentences and polysyllabic vocabulary of my youth, at least in public.
I don’t have any photos from today, so consider these old collages as writing prompts.
There’s nothing I liked better than to be assigned to diagram me some sentences or write a nice, juicy composition. Term papers with lots o’ footnotes were also my idea of fun. In high school the only way I got a boyfriend was to find the guy who liked fancy sentences as much as I did (he’s an English/film studies professor now).
How do you see yourself as a writer?
But I did have another passion, which, probably not coincidentally, involved arranging words in certain ways. It was my second love, choral music. I loved how chords worked, harmonies intertwined, and crescendos followed decrescendos. While writing was a solo activity, chorus involved working with others, blending and matching in tone.
I’m the red dress in the tenor section.
I learned a lot about discipline, learning rules so you can later break them, cooperation, and vulnerability through these activities. Sharing your writing and performing in public are not easy until you get a lot of practice and learn to take feedback constructively. (My high school chorus teacher and grad school advisor are still alive and could tell you how much I had to learn in that area.) (Note that there’s still work to be done.)
I feel like the kid in this one.
Thanks for being an audience for my blog. It’s a nice break from job aids and meeting minutes, which I wrote all day today. I’m lucky to have a place to be a “real,” person, not an influencer or manufactured celebrity.
These SoulCollage cards can make you think.
Go out and read some other great blogs by real people! I love learning what I have in common with others, as well as our differences. I learn a lot, and you can, too.
We learn more if we look. Right now looking can be hard.
It’s not often that your hard work gets tangibly rewarded. For my paying work, knowing I’ve done my best and that what I’ve done may help someone is enough. This week I’ve been quite satisfied to get a lot of that kind of work done.
My rewards are always nature walks.
Some hard work feels very unrewarding, but must be done. I’ve suffered through a lot of financial work this week, which may explain while I’m still having anxiety chest pains. But I’ve trimmed some expenses and added money to my 401K. That’s the direction where I want to go!
On the road to financial peace.
But tonight I did get a reward. Last week I attained 1,000 volunteer hours with Texas Master Naturalists, which was not easy while working full time and owning horses. My friend who also got the achievement took two fewer years than me! I’m proud of Eric, though. He does great work.
I look like a Boy Scout in my vest.
My reward was a gold dragonfly pin. I got bronze for 250 hours and silver for 500. It will be years before I get another one!
So many pins. The colored dragonfly is for initial certification. The enamel pins are for at least 40 volunteer hours and 8 training hours each year. The bottom pins we got for sticking with the program through COVID.
It was nice seeing a full house at tonight’s meeting, with three visitors, even. We enjoyed a great presentation on lichen, where I learned a LOT. I apparently knew very little about lichen. Did you know they are a symbiotic combo of a fungus and algae? And they have a fascinating structure. Now I want to buy a black light flashlight and go out and see which ones glow.
Interesting! Pamela’s toenail polish reacted to the black light.
We are getting good rain again tonight. That’s so good for the ponds. It will probably knock those few autumnal orange leaves I found today down. It’s ok. I see birds better that way.
The weather should be glorious for the next few days, so we’ve decided to spend longer than usual out in the motorhome. That’s made possible by the fact that we also brought my car so Lee can attend a meeting back home and we both can explore this area a bit.
We barely fit both vehicles in, but we did it!
This shady woodland is in Buescher State Park, which is a weirdly shaped area full of trails and scenery. It connects to Bastrop State Park vía a scenic road that I hope to go down tomorrow.
There’s a new dam at the lake, too.
I had fun because I arrived first and got to be the only person in the camping area for a while. It let me really hear the pileated woodpecker singing and pecking away. They are quite noisy birds!
They really can peck, too.
I did a preliminary survey of the plants around the campground. Lots of yaupon and oak, but there are some famous Bastrop County pine trees and others. Not much is blooming after the light frost we had, but I was delighted to find a couple of interesting plants.
This shiny vine is lanceleaf greenbrier, which I’ve looked for often. (Smilax smallii)
After my walk, I helped my friend Jen get her trailer unhooked, because her site was too short to fit her camper and her car in without unhooking. We got it done in a fit of woman power and grit. When Lee arrived, I hooked the water up with no dripping, so I’m feeling like a mighty camper.
But I’m not sure if I should go in the restroom. Am I both a woman AND a lady?
Jen and I had nice times chatting and trying to plan a potluck location (none of the cute cabins were available). Then Lee and I spent time with my other favorite co-camper, Mike, with whom I intend to do some good hiking. I earned a lot about AI from him as a bonus.
Nice empty park road.
I’ll enjoy working tomorrow with a view of trees (and no barking dogs to interrupt my recording of myself talking), then get in some exploring. in the meantime, back to knitting by the fake fireplace.
What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?
Here’s a prompt I was interested in. I was really stuck on a career path until I was about 26 and realized I didn’t want to write about little syllables at the ends of Japanese words the rest of my life. But I loved the teaching of linguistics. I love teaching anything.
Todays illustrations are cool cloud formations from today.
The first path I should have considered was getting a degree in music education so I could teach choral music and sing in choruses. That seems more likely than making a living in folk-rock.
Another path would have been to switch my college major to biology once I realized how good I was at it. I could have gotten to do field research and written marginally more interesting scientific papers…or taught biology. Still, I’d get to hang out in nature for a living. But I’d have ended up specializing in maggots or something, knowing my luck.
I could have done forestry and become a park ranger? Right now that’s my vote, especially if I could ride horses in the forest.
I seriously considered a career change in mid life to work in a yarn shop and teach knitting and design patterns. I enjoy doing that still, but I’m not creative or driven enough to actually make a living at it. I sure admire my friends who do it, though.
Someday I’d like to write a book that’s got a plot. Obviously I have a lot of words in me. They just need more structure than a blog! I do write for my job, but honestly, I’d be writing every day no matter what. Maybe I’d write letters. Maybe I’d write poems or songs. Who knows? I just enjoy making sentences. That’s not a different me; the writer is the real me.
I don’t think photography is a potential career path.
Yessir. These days we tend to have a few months of drought, a couple of dribbles, then WHOOSH! A big ole flood comes along. Today was Flood Day. We got four inches or more, three of them very fast.
Even the backup culvert was called into use.
It was about time that our poor ponds (tanks in Texan) got refilled, because the drizzles we’ve had earlier in the month didn’t stop them from continuing to dry up.
Really full.
Still, it is probably too much to ask of Mother Nature, but a few days of an inch or two a day would be a lot better for our plants and trees, because this much water just runs off into the creek, into the Little Elm, then into the Little River, then into the Brazos, and on to the sea. Or something like that.
Our little natural spring came back!
For a while there around noon today it looked like we were in a lake, because it was raining so hard nothing could absorb. It was fun to watch, as it was fun to see the creek slowly fill up as more rain went into Walker’s Creek up north from here.
You normally can’t see water from our back yard.
After the rain, I had a lot of fun in my rubber boots looking at the aftermath. Drew was enjoying the water running in from the arroyo and across the road. I hope there wasn’t too much fertilizer runoff, because now it’s all in our front pond.
Apache tried it, tooI like how he just dips his toes in Dusty wasn’t interested
Mabel, on the other hand, changed colors from rolling in the mud. That gal likes her dirt.
Mmmmmmmud
The minute the sun came out, out came all the birds, butterflies, and bugs. The birds had a feast, I’m sure. And I finally got a picture of one of the beautiful blue butterflies with its wings open! That was a personal goal.
You can see how high the water got during the hard rainLove the flowMama rabid wolf spider didn’t lose her egg sacSpotted orb weaver, not usually seen by me These were popping up all overPearl crescentCeraunus blue drying offCardinal drying off
I also made all my work goals, even publishing my training video successfully after it breaking repeatedly. For the first time ever, I found the answer in one of those ancient user forums on the software’s site. Turns out you can’t have any of that fancy chart stuff from PowerPoint in your presentation for it to work with my add-on software. I converted the charts to images and everything was fine. I tell you what, it makes me feel smart.
And we had a pretty sunset
More rain is in store for a few days. There goes my plan to ride my horses every single day. Ya can’t have everything.
The Hermits' Rest 