That headline is a little misleading.  The photos offered tonight were made on not one, but  three visits to a barn just north of Bartlett, Texas.  When mentioning to a friend my affection for barns, he replied, “you need to take a look at the big one just up the road.”  So I did just that.  The barn is overseen by Jordan Cato and his family.   Although a really large space, you don’t see that from the highway.  Among the things I saw there:  a carefully-covered sailboat, brought over to this country from England in 1921;  two barn cats, Fluffy and Brawley, plus Woody, a mighty nice German Shepherd.  And there are horses, of course.  A view from the back pasture introduces us to a dormant 1997 Volvo, a project car for Jordan’s son.  And one more sailboat, a small one that rests out back.   Just one of the bits of life to see on the prairie, friends.

This unpaved road on the Blackland Prairie is among my favorites.  In the ten years we’ve been back home in Texas, not much has changed.   The road is still unpaved.   The old farmhouse is still there. And the traffic is minimal.   When we moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 1980 I was able to find a dirt road or two.  By 2009, when we left, they were rare finds.  I love these Texas back roads, even when big trucks are stirring up a storm of dust.   

Not finding what I was looking for last night,  I found myself driving across the dam road at Granger Lake.   There’s this love-hate relationship with man-made lakes.   They are born when a natural body of water, this time the San Gabriel River, is dammed.   There are various reasons for this, ones not presented here.    The notion of stopping the eastern flow of the river began in the mid-1930s.   By the 70s,  the matter was settled.   A new lake would come to Central Texas.  Work began in 1973, with completion in 1980.   Along the way, a community, Friendship, Texas, was swallowed by water.  Enough of the backstory.  These photos were taken last night near sunset.  The last image is on the eastern boundary of the lake, where the San Gabriel  continues its meandering, eventually joining the Brazos River.

A few weeks ago, while making my way north on the Blackland Prairie, I noticed the southbound evening Amtrak train, the Texas Eagle, as it made its way toward Taylor, continuing to Austin and San Antonio.  The early-evening light seemed to glow on the train cars as it made its way past our planted fields.  I wanted to somehow relate to site visitors what I saw, but it hasn’t been easy.  While Amtrak may have a specific arrival time in mind at various towns, diversions get in the way.  While I didn’t get what I was looking for, this image, made Wednesday evening, comes close as the train zoomed along the tracks past a field of very healthy cotton.   Trains and crops are wonderful subjects.  Sometimes they coexist.

Most of my day was spent photographing the July 4th celebration at San Gabriel Park in Georgetown, Texas.   The annual happening is sponsored by the Georgetown Sertoma Club.  It  includes a hometown parade through the park, music, plenty of food and drink, topped off by a fireworks show which I’m not covering this year.  After this long day, that’s a good thing, too.   These photos were made for my friends at the Williamson County Sun.

Ten years ago this summer we came home.    Among the first things I saw were an expansive network of fields on the the Blackland Prairie.  If memory serves, I was on a bike ride when I saw it.    After 29 years in Atlanta, Georgia, a massive metropolis spreading development, smog, power lines, strip shopping centers and cars in every direction, this site let me know I was home.  It might not qualify as beautiful to some of you, but it is to me.  Note that I grew up in the Piney Woods of Northeast Texas.   We had plenty of trees there, after Atlanta’s closed-in feeling this was nice.   It makes me think of a favorite song, “I Can See for Miles and Miles” by The Who.   This view was taken last night as warm light after a rain shower left us with this.   Our area is rapidly-developing, too, but thankfully there are bits of land like this to remind us it’s  not swallowed up yet.

We had a pretty good little dousing of rain in East Williamson County and Georgetown this afternoon.   While it didn’t last long, it did leave us with some mighty pretty rainbows.   They began to form as I was leaving Taylor for Georgetown.  The rain followed me on the drive west, ending with a good scene along Main Street on the Georgetown square.

A couple of photos from tonight, friends.  As sunset snuck up on me, I wanted to record what I saw, but had to respond quickly.  Sunsets don’t last long.  The second photo was on the way home,  along a dirt road well past sundown on the Blackland Prairie.

If we had maize where I grew up in Northeast Texas, I have no memory of it.   I sure don’t recall seeing it in my Georgia years, but that might have more to do with the fact that we lived in metro-Atlanta.   Maybe it was well-established in South Georgia?    At any rate, since coming back to Texas ten years ago, maize has been an exceptionally-pretty crop.  I do know that maize is part of the family that we call corn.  Our Central Texas corn is mainly used for livestock feed.  Apparently so is maize.   Maize is also used to produce grain sorghum and is used in corn starch.   All that aside, I just think it’s visually-stimulating.  This one’s from earlier tonight near the Bell/Williamson County line.

After many years in Georgetown, the Williamson County Sheriff’s Posse Rodeo has moved north, to Jarrell, Texas.   The venerable arena at San Gabriel Park has been on life support for a while.  The rodeo had to find a new home.   Thanks to the generosity of the Micheux family in Salado, the rodeo has  twenty acres of prime land in Jarrell.   The first of this year’s  two rodeos  was held last evening.   These images were taken then.   The second session is tonight..  As always when covering rodeo, I aim for the culture of the event, not the sports action.  Oh,there’s plenty of that, but it’s much more.  I particularly like to cover Mutton Bustin’.   Those kids and their sheep are a hoot!  Children in general always seem to love the rodeo.  Much of this post will (hopefully) get that message across.