celebrating a treasure...

today she is five.

every day she brightens my life.

she greets each day with excitement and joy.

she refuses to eat a sandwich without dismantling

it first.

she skips rather than walks.

she always has pockets full of acorns and glass. 

she slept in a santa hat for an entire year.

she kicks my seat in the car relentlessly.

her face is the first thing i see each morning.

and i wouldn't change one. single. thing. 

about her.

happy birthday to our treasure.

flag pole repair...

see the small ball at the top of the pole?

it's a toilet float.  and it's spray-painted gold.

and it's crooked. 

and later we....

easter camping...

the weather has been sending us invitations 

to camp that we would have been foolish to ignore. 

we pulled the kids out of school early, hooked up

the pop up, and headed south to the llano river.

after the brutal summer last year it was wonderful

to see it up and crystal clear. we swam for days, watched

the kids ride the rapids again and again,

cooked, read books and magazines, hiked, and laid

around in the shade and sun. 

i'll take an easter smelling like river and sun

over an itchy 'ol dress any day.

  

  

1)old sesquicentennial flag chris found at an antique store.

2)cutest folks i've ever met.

3)roxie showing off her chillin' skills.

4)morning dishes by the well.

5)all. you. need.

6)one of the spots on earth where the ground feels most solid beneath me.

7)the moon and river at midnight.

8)pure d love.

what a difference a season makes...

we recently went back here.  

there's not another human as far as you can see.

phones don't work.  internet nope. tv nowhere in sight.

it poured while we were there.  hurricane style.  

we kept a fire in the fireplace, played boardgames,

ate, drank, ate.  when the rain would slow in between

downpours, we would run to the hot tub and soak in 

the steamy quiet.  the kids were even more quiet

than normal. at times. we watched the river rise

at least 10 feet overnight.  sitting in the

hot tub we heard a giant sound moving towards us.

ripping, grating, cracking, splashing.

we held our breath and hoped whatever it was

wasn't hungry. 

an entire tree had let go of it's hold on the bank

and was slowly and with great effort on the river's

part, making it's way downriver.  we watched and

listened to it's unlikely journey until it was

gone from sight.

the rain finally ended our last day and in time

for a final sunset salute. 

ahoy....

last summer we sat on rocks in the middle of this..

house and tub perched up on the mountainside.  the river is down below. 

roxie eye view

a four year old's perspective in a dressing room.
discovered these on my phone today.  

fish hero...

when i was a kid and the lake would overflow from rain, it was

like going feral (with snacks).  my brothers and i 

would disappear from dusk to dawn, returning home

disguised by muck and mire. 

 an overnight waterfall manifestation

in texas is like a triple rainbow sunset. when it

happens, you put anything and everything else to 

the side and drink it up.  metaphorically.  lake water

is gross to drink. promise.

i live in texas for several reasons.  numero uno being:

it's texas. duh.

a close second: my kids getting to go out to where 

i grew up and go feral for the day. last weekend we hiked

around behind the dam and at the bottom of the

miracle waterfall was a sad, gasping carp.  

things were not going his way and probably had been 

heading south for quite a while.  there were

glittery scales all over the rocks and he 

had a definite resigned look in his eye.

i pushed him into a deeper pool...

 while the board of directors considered his fate.

 down swooped his/my hero!

 he wrote his gratitude in ripples and wakes....

sigh. sunday.

it rained and rained this weekend.  this morning

we woke to another cold, dreary day. the idea of another

day indoors had us herding kids out the door

to head to my folks' for a day we were determined

would end warm and sunny. actually, i 

was convinced, but no one else shared my positive

weather attitude.  ha! 

hope springs eternal

yes, it was muddy, soggy, mucky, and soaked..

but it was sunshiny and warm out of the shade.

sunshine carrot..

i have dill coming up everywhere..

in between every other plant.  i let it go

to seed this past summer, with the idea to attract 

butterfly eggs.  whoops.  roxie and i were 

trying to thin some of it out of the beds yesterday

and realized how well the carrots are doing!

i did notice the white ones aren't as crisp,

but she didn't give it a thought and ate

every bit. when the boys came home from school, hank

acted put out that roxie had eaten them all so

he went and picked and ate his own while his

brother ate chocolate/oat granola.  

i'm a firm believer that if you have a picky

eater...get them in the kitchen or the garden.

even if they don't go for the greens

(like one of mine who is a meat and potatoes man), at least

they'll be getting some natural antidepressants, right?...

graciousness...

my brother's wife's great aunt left her place in texas

in a public trust when she died rather than keeping 

it in private hands.  it's still in the care of the 

family as the board of directors.

when my uncle died this year, my twin brothers and i met

for the funeral and stopped by the land on our

drive home. it's so quiet and isolated it feels

like a pioneer time warp.

 1.the cabin looking over the lake

2. fireplace from outside

3.from the lake

4.sweet split rail zig zag fence

january spring...

texas can be brutal in the summer. true.

but, for much of the year we have windows thrown

open on tuesday and fireplaces aflame on wednesday.

yesterday was 74.  today 48.  tomorrow forecast to be 68.

this schizophrenic weather suits me. easily distracted.

consistently inconsistent. embodiment of change out 

each window. texas is surely a gemini.

(ps. best not to ask me about this during a texas august.) 

(roxie rockin' the hopscotch)

(homemade 'stink bomb' from magnets and gathered junk)

indian blessing birthday...

two beautiful things collided last week:

roxie's birthday and three straight days of spring-

like weather.

spending that time indoors would have been

criminal so we loaded up the camper (the nights

were cold and we were thankful to have heat) and

went to mother neff, texas' very first state park.

maybe you know this already, but if you visit a sacred

place on your actual birthday there is a very good

chance you will leave with a blessing.

this cave still has blackened ceilings from  

tonkawa fires hundreds and hundreds of years ago. 

the morning of roxie's birthday we packed a lunch and 

hiked to the cave. she found a necklace made

from seeds and leather in a small woven basket.

the birthday blessing legend is clearly real(wink).

a chilly first night called for supper in the camper. 

 

sweet joe, taking in the sun and quiet.

brother + sister

hand in hand. a blessing to each other

and to me.

oklahoma, take two...

i would imagine it's the rare occasion that you hear

someone say, 'want to see my oklahoma vacation photos?'

all the same, here i am doing it for the second time in as

many months. i rented this cabin back during the oven

blast days of summer in anticipation of fall color and

the tease of frost in the mornings.

(we found a swing set tucked in the forest)

(handsome pops taking it in)

(hike to the river at dusk)

we were less than an hour from the arkansas border

in the ouachita mountains, which go against the norm

in north america by running east/west rather than north/south,

wrinkling the land through arkansas and oklahoma.

a combination of the drought and lack of cold snaps

had us missing any real autumn color.

all the more reason to go back soon.

each cabin is secreted in so that from the hot tub,

deck, bathroom window, you-name-it, there is not another

human sign in sight as far as the eye can see.

we hiked to the river after breakfast and lunch

and again at dusk to bid farewell to the day and

never saw another soul.

sweets for the bees..

my mom and dad feed their bees each day.

she puts eight cups of sweetened well water out and

within 20 minutes they are buzzing

and swarming and thankful. each day they come from

the same direction and after guzzling their

fill return back to the south of the upper garden.

the hive is someplace in the woods below the house

but the exact spot is still a mystery. my imagination puts

it in a tall, grey, hollow trunk of of a long-dead tree.

we fed the bees and while we waited for them to come we

cheered on the tiny seedling of carrots, spinach, dwarf kale,

beets, and freckled romaine. for supper we had late

summer squash and a soup we made with rainbow

chard from my raised beds here in the city.

the brutal summer had made it a bit bitter but it

will start to sweeten now that the weather is turning cooler.

you can see they had more faith in their tomato plants after

our summer (i ripped mine out) and they are starting to

produce one last time.

grandpa's...

i miss mine.

roxie loves hers.

community garden..

i love my neighborhood. it earns that

title, neighborhood. most of the houses are

turn of the century to 30's. the houses

wear porches wide enough to be considered a

room. large enough to gather unexpectedly

when you spy neighbors with their coffee

in the morning or wine in the evening.

windows and transoms that can grab a fall

breeze and pull it inside like deep, slow

breath, whipping curtains around like batting eyelashes.

it only makes sense that a neighborhood

filled with homes built back when mother nature

set the thermostat would be

filled with folks of a like mind.

throwing open windows, dining on lawns,

napping on sleeping porches.

even though i have raised beds (i worry

about lead in the soil from 100 years

of paint scraping and sanding)in the back

yard, i decided to be a part of our

community garden. i grew up on a farm

where we grew a lot of what we ate

and it felt really new and novel to me

to ride our bikes to a city lot to grow

broccoli! the kids were more entranced

than they are here at our home garden.

i like looking around at other families

working their plot. i love feeling a part

of something..especially something that

helps make my neighborhood a community and

my community a part of my family.