“People just give me stuff,” explained lifelong Bartlett folk artist Lana Sue Hill, when asked about where she gets materials for her special creations.   I met Hill last year while covering the Bartlett Friendship Days Festival, but didn’t have time to follow up.   After this year’s festival, however, we connected again.    Hill and I are pretty much the same age, both of us Medicare-eligible babies.   So we hit it off pretty well.    Hill’s front yard is hard to miss.  It stopped me in my tracks.   During my Atlanta years, I had the pleasure of photographing Reverend Howard Finster, a north Georgia folk artist from Summerville, at his Paradise Garden.   Google that for more information.  Rev. Finster’s fame grew when the group REM chose one of his works for an album cover.  From there, things took off.    While different in feel and texture, Ms. Hill’s work resonates in its own way.  She event crafts banjos and guitars, using cigar boxes for bodies and frets made of windshield wiper blades.    And I like her little dog, shown in the opening photo.  That rascal’s name is Cindy Walker Cash Daughter Patsy Cline, a long handle that pays tribute to some of her favorite musical artists.   Some of these photos accompanied a recent column I did on Hill for my friends at the Williamson County Sun.   You’ll find more about her on her Facebook page.  Check her out!  

My new friend, Joe, who you might recall from a previous post, has acquired a new bicycle.  “The rim broke on the old one,” he explained.   As mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve seen Joe around Taylor for several years, but only recent met him, on this very bench along Main Street.    Because diabetes has taken its toll on Joe’s feet, he rides the bike a while, then rests a bit.  Sometimes I see him just walking it.    Maybe it’s only interesting to me, but I’ve begun to notice that a lot of folks in Taylor use bikes for their main form of transport.   Joe says that before the traffic on Texas Highway 29 got so bad, he used to ride his bike to Georgetown.   That’s about 20 miles.   I like this in black and white.  No surprise there, right?

During my years in Atlanta we had a gathering of flags similar to Georgetown’s Field of Honor, placed today at San Gabriel Park.  Throughout the week, through November 12, these 1400 American flags, each purchased to honor a friend or family member, many of them veterans or first responders, but not exclusively those groups, will billow in the Central Texas winds.   You could say the flags are pegged to the upcoming Veterans Day, but it’s more than that.   The Rotary Club of Georgetown made this beautiful new tradition a reality.   More power to them.   These photos show the installation of the flags throughout the day and this evening.    If you’re in the area, stop by for some inspiration. 

It’s been a very busy day.  I have no business whatsoever  taking yet more photos of the moon, but tonight, on the way home from paying assignments, there it was … completely full …. and quite lovely.   A second photo, with a few technical challenges, was taken above some grain elevators a little while later.   Gosh, I do love the moon!

Small-town Texas life, while it has its downside, sometimes gives us things like this …. Friday night in Taylor, Texas, population just over 15,000.     Mind you, if I were these boys’ dad, it still might concern me that they’re out and about well past dark, practicing their cycling tricks under the glow of a bank’s night lights.  There’s no way I’d have seen something like this during my time in metro-Atlanta.   Maybe it’s not a good idea here, either?   Call it the cynicism of a long-time journalist.   Still, it made an interesting street photography image, much better, I think, in black and white.   I’ll post the color version below this one for comparison.  At times, however, color gets in the way.

It wasn’t my plan to post more moon imagery this evening, but doggone it, that Waxing Gibbous moon, at 99.7% visibility, looked mighty fine.   The first photo pays another visit to the rookery at Murphy Park, the second in downtown Taylor.   I’ve said it before many times, but I could bay at the moon until the cows come home. 

Just yesterday I was lamenting the lack of fall color to a photographer friend in Georgetown, Texas.   One of the few things I miss about living in the southeast U.S. was their autumn.   Thankfully, right after parting for the day with my friend, I happened on this scene at Chandler Park, where a nice young fellow was enjoying an afternoon of fishing.   Granted, it’s not New England, but it was a sight to see for me.

Tonight’s moon is in its Waxing Gibbous phase, making it almost full at 98.2%.   For yours truly that was enough to merit a visit to our lunar neighbor as it hovered above the beautiful town square in Georgetown, Texas.   This set of photos is for my friends at the Williamson County Sun.

For the first time in a while, I didn’t venture out to photograph trick-or-treaters on Halloween.   Not being one to sit around, I moseyed into the countryside after a series of rain showers came through the Blackland Prairie.   When I viewed the images in color, they just didn’t feel right.   So tonight, when I’m not keeping in tune with the Astros, you get monotone.

You might say “Andy just posted something on prairie grass recently.”   While you’d be spot on, I found myself in a whole field of it last weekend, behind a church in Georgetown, Texas.    I couldn’t resist the temptation.   Yes, it’s a weed, but doggone it, I love it when it glows.