…le Tour DAY France, baby! WOO HOO!!!!!
To help you get in the mood, you gotta check out Fatty’s blog.
I’m thinking of posting about it every day to get back in the swing of blogging. I won’t be as good as Fatty, Phil, Paul, Bob and all of course. But it will be fun! And I’ll have funny anecdotes about how I’m always at CHA during the good bits. Okay, I think I will!
Add comment July 2nd, 2008
I’m back from a trip out to Hero Arts!
Walking through the Austin airport I saw a billboard advertising flights to Canada — the big line was “Howdy, eh?” — and I had to laugh, because I’ve been known to say that a time or two myself.
Thought I’d share a few pictures — wish I’d have taken more, but it was busy busy. These were all taken with my cell phone.
First up, some pictures from when I went for a run/walk Monday morning around 6:30 am — this Texas gal was in for a shock as it was in the low 50’s…brr!
San Francisco Bay
California poppies
Habitat in the middle of the city
Back at the hotel, sipping on a Peet’s coffee — mmmm
Dinner at Cafe Gratitude — YUM! What are you grateful for?
Obligatory dirty Fiesta plate picture for my friend Scott (Hi Scott!)
Sunset from the hotel on the last night there — funky, eh?
The Grand Canyon on the way home
What a fun trip. It was so good seeing everyone! Wish I could share more with you, but it’s top secret for now…
1 comment June 28th, 2008
Hi all! I’ve posted about my inspiration journal here off and on, but never a video!
Thought you might like to see some of my favorite older posts, too:
2 comments June 11th, 2008
Every year this prairie rose just outside the kitchen window blooms it’s head off. And every year a big hailstorm, thunderstorm, windstorm, or some-other-storm comes along and knocks off all the petals before I get a single photo. Well, not this year!
Aaaaaaaaaa, the sweet smell of triumph.
Happy Friday, everyone! Hope you gather some roses, too.
OH and check this out to see what I’ve been stamping…!
2 comments May 30th, 2008
Howdy! Just uploaded some pictures to flickr I took on a field trip/easement inspection of Simpson Prairie on May 3rd. It’s a truly beautiful place. J — who’s in some of the pictures, ha ha — would want me to write more about prairies and how special they are, but it says it all if you click the link.
I tried to capture all the colors of paintbrushes that were there, but it was hard! For one thing, it was WINDY. I mean, really windy. For another, it was cold. My fingers were getting numb. (Actually it was 48 F, which really isn’t too bad, unless you’re a Texan who’s used to 100 F weather and you show up wearing a flimsy short sleeved t-shirt and it’s windy. Did I mention it was windy? I ended up running into the gift shop in Crawford and buying a spiffy long sleeved western style shirt for 50% off, ha!) And lastly, after awhile the colors all ran together in my mind and I couldn’t remember what ones I’d taken and what ones I hadn’t, and ended up with like 200 pictures of paintbrushes…ah well, what a problem to have.
I ran out of good names for these colors, so if you have any please leave a comment. They kinda remind me of sorbet, make me hungry.
8 comments May 15th, 2008
This post probably won’t be very exciting for you unless you are either a plant nerd or want to see a tiny picture of J. 
First off, the tiny picture of J — this is from when he, Scott and I went hiking at Bull Creek earlier in the spring — that’s him in the blue shirt. Scott is taking a picture of me while I was taking a picture of them, ha ha!
That is a pretty cool overhang — lots of neat crystals and stalactites.
Here’s a picture of Scott crossing the creek — so you can see what it looks like
And now for the plant nerd pics! Here’s a yaupon holly in bloom — never saw the blooms before
And a weird euphoribia — Scott, what did you say this was again? (Click on the image for a larger one for the USDA plant db):
And then there was this — I never did figure out what it was, wish I had gotten a picture of the leaves
That’s it for the Bull Creek trip. I have one more set of prairie pics to post tomorrow, and one of another day hiking, and then I should be all caught up on that front. Well, at least until this weekend…
2 comments May 14th, 2008
Hope you all had a happy Mother’s Day! I got to spend mine with two of my favorite people — Agnes and Scott!
Agnes is one of my heroes — she is a truly special and one of the people who got me into prairies. Hi Agnes!
Scott is pretty okay too — that is, when he’s not throwing rocks at the camera
Ha!
Agnes gave us a grand tour of her awesome prairie remnant. There’s always lots to see in a prairie, like this ratany — I think it looks like an orchid!
Various shades of Indiangrass — like this pretty blue one
Engelmann daisy
Prairie bishop, a larval food plant for swallowtail butterflies
Winecups
About halfway through the tour two more friends joined us — they stayed the rest of the day
Purr purr purr…purr-rarie?
Okay, back to the tour! There was a flock of phlox
A fiesta of Mexican hats
Texas thistles — another great butterfly plant, this time for the nectar
Beetles rumaging around in Barbara’s buttons — this flower smells so good, too bad we don’t have scratch n’ sniff screens yet
Mealy blue sage — hummingbirds and butterflies both love this one
And you gotta love green lilies — this plant is just too cool
After the tour we had a little picnic lunch, then we did some weeding and Scott planted a huisache tree. Then we did a little rock hounding. Temps were in the low 70’s and there was a nice breeze, too.
What a great day.
Happy Mother’s Day again Agnes! And Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms reading this.
7 comments May 13th, 2008
It’s been so crazy around here lately that I haven’t had time to go through my photos for awhile — hate that! Decided to put an end to it today, starting with a hiking trip to Enchanted Rock with my friend Scott on April 11th.
Enchanted Rock (or E-Rock as we call it) is the second largest granite batholith in the world, behind Ayers Rock in Australia.
Here we are taking a breather on the way to the top
The white dot at the top is a fellow hiker — click the image to view it larger.
Looking back to where we’d been
It was a little crowded at the top, so we didn’t linger long — instead we found some shade and had our first lunch…mmmmm, strawberries, blueberries, crackers…more on that later!
After lunch we headed over to the second batholith in the park — it’s behind Scott.
But first we had to stop and admire this poison ivy for J — one of his favorite plants, ha ha ha. It was blooming and loaded with neat bees.
There’s tons of cool plants growing in cracks in the granite. We kept finding claret cup cacti — one with a nectaring hummingbird!
At one point Scott managed to take a picture of me, but not before I dropped into the “hunker down and hide under your big brimmed Texas hat” position — ha!
We did pretty much all the trails in the park — so relaxing and pretty. We got back to the parking lot after around 7 hours of hiking — but I just didn’t want to leave. So I convinced Scott that we could make the summit again before dark.
me: Let’s go back up to the top!
Scott (looking at the time): No way, it will get dark!
me: Nah, we can get there in 20 minutes or so. You’ll regret it if you don’t, you may never get here again!
Scott: Hmmm. Where’s that Strawberry C? (gulp gulp gulp ahhhh…) okay.
me: Woo hoo!
Here’s one of the vernal pools up at the top — there’s little shrimp in them during the spring. Oh and the dark green patch is onions — mmmmm. The tawny grass is little bluestem — it’s a prairie grass.
Speaking of food, here’s where we had lunch
And — just for the record — we made it to the top in 18 minutes. Ha!
What a great day.
8 comments May 10th, 2008
Hi there from Austin, TX. I'm Lisa Spangler and I blog about many things: prairies -- hence the "sideoats" -- photography, nature, art, stamping, cycling, hiking -- the list goes on -- hence the "scribbles". Enjoy!
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Jun | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
