Yesterday I covered a 100th birthday celebration at a Georgetown retirement home  for Jim,  the man on the right, for the Williamson County Sun.  While I don’t usually post birthday parties, this time’s an exception  because of these few moments observed.  The couple at left congratulating the honoree,  Joy and Rufus, were neat.   When introducing myself, I asked if they were husband and wife, to which Joy replied with a smile that matched her name “We’re boyfriend and girlfriend.”   Joy and Rufus are both 90.   Not wanting to veer coverage away from the birthday fellow, I didn’t offer the photo to the paper.  It wasn’t germane.   Maybe you had to be there, but it was a mighty sweet thing to see.  

The images posted tonight are Texas wildflowers taken over the last few days.   They were taken in Williamson, Travis and Milam Counties.  Rather than bore you with my blather, let’s allow the flowers to do the talking.   Well, except for the  last couple.   the final photo is  Coupland, Texas, just down the road from Taylor.  The church, past 100-years-old, is St. Peter’s of Coupland.   The one before that is New Sweden Evangelical Lutheran Church, close to Manor, Texas, but well into the countryside.

I’m into things floral for a while.   This evening, how about some mighty fine red poppies?   These are, of course, from Georgetown, Texas, a Central Texas city of 67,000 known for these beautiful red flowers.   They’re not wildflowers, but that’s okay.   Spring where we live means new life in many forms.   The young lady in the opening photo, now 2, was just learning about poppies during a visit to Edwards Park with her mommy and daddy.  She was enthralled.   And a lady was snapping poppy photos in the sunken garden at San Gabriel Park with her iPhone.   I noticed she was  coming in pretty close.  She indicated that her phone allows her to zoom in pretty close on those buds.   It’s got me considering some type of upgrade of my own phone for those daily walks.   Mine won’t allow close focus.   The rest of the photos are variations of poppies at Edwards Park.   These were taken for my Williamson County Sun friends.

Tonight, the full moon was expected to rise around 8:30, but last night, when the move made itself known, it was a little before 7:30.   Friday, then, was my choice with these photos taken on some wonderful bits of prairie land north and east of Granger, Texas.  The opening photo is my favorite, but since the skies turned that nice shade of blue in short order, one of those is included as well. Bird people, are those starlings?   If you need a lunar lesson, what you see here is a Waxing Gibbous moon, 99.5% full, close enough.  

On that last post, I mentioned a mobile phone photo at the library, which I forgot to post.   Consider it a senior moment. 

These are photos my week of long walks in Taylor.  I’m trying to get a handle on cell phone photography.   What it does, of course, is provide a method to record what I see, a really good thing.   There are limitations.   The phone’s ability to zoom in via telephoto is archaic at best.   If something in the distance gets my attention, it’s not likely to be documented.   Not very well, anyway.   Also, there are problems with close focus on a subject.   Earlier this week, while on a paying assignment, I observed someone snapping closeups of red poppies with her phone, an iPhone.   She indicated it performs well in that arena.  My phone, a $125 Motorola, can’t do that.    But I don’t want to be saddled with one of my “big” cameras while on these strolls.   I’m going to take another look at point-and-shoot models, maybe higher-end phones, but for now, it’s an interesting experiment.  Did I forget to mention Slim?   What a nice man!  Slim, 91, invited me into his home.  I stayed longer than planned because he was a hoot.  “I used to be 6’5”, he said, “but now I’m 5’11.”     By the way, one photo included here, the last one, was taken in our public library, with the phone.   That’s not a place I’d normally tote my big cameras.   Exploring, friends.

For a good part of this week, we had some steady, but much-appreciated rain here on the Blackland Prairie.  By last evening, when these photos were taken in East Williamson County, the clouds had begun to part near sundown.   Don’t worry about those soaked farmers’ fields, friends.   This rich soil will soak all that moisture right up, providing good yields of corn very soon.  

This past weekend I visited the track at Georgetown’s Forbes Middle School for a Special Olympics-style event, the Georgetown Track Meet.    It’s a local event, but teams from Elgin’s Down Home Ranch and the Austin School for the Deaf joined the Cen-Tex Rockets and a team from Georgetown ISD.   I treasure covering these events, always have.   These are some of the photos I took for the Williamson County Sun.  In the opening photo, 14-year-old Alize Ramos, a member of the Georgetown ISD team, is encouraged by Jared Friemel, from the Cen-Tex Rockets, as she nears completion of her 25-meter event.   It’s all good.  Helping out were members of the Georgetown Sertoma Club, the Salvation Army of Williamson County and students from Southwestern University and area high schools.  

A friend recently mentioned the arrival of two baby donkeys born recently, in fact just a couple of days apart, with different mothers.  It only occurred to me tonight, getting ready to post these, that my friend, a longtime Democrat, may have donkeys for that reason.   But really, I think she just likes them, along with her cows, who all live happy lives on a swath of Blackland Prairie land in East Williamson County, Texas.   These photos of the babies were taken when both were  less than a week old.   They are cute!   I don’t like that word (cute),  but it fits here.

Photos in this post are from Taylor’s Fannie Robinson Park.   They’re not so much about people, just images from this park.  I haven’t posted much from here, but let’s remedy that tonight, okay?   Fannie Robinson Park is in the southeast part of our little community, an area with abundant charm.  It does not, however, get a lot of attention.   That’s unfortunate.   Bull Branch Creek, which courses through both Bull Branch and Murphy Parks, flows through here, too.   On the hill above the park are some mighty nice grain elevators, peeking down on basketball courts, a baseball field, a playground, a city swimming pool and a covered pavilion.  If you go north on the hike-and-bike trail just a little you come to the Dr. James Lee Dickey bridge, built over Bull Branch Creek in about 1940, at Dr. Dickey’s urging, to make it safer for children attending Blackshear School to get to class.  Dr. Dickey was a community activist, a physician, a man of color.  Blackshear School was where the town’s African-American kids went to school.    These  are “hats off”  photos to Fannie Robinson Park.   We are a small, but diverse community here in Taylor, Texas.