Georgetown, Texas has their Bark Park, one of the most popular places for dog lovers to take their special friends.  On Sunday, I spent the afternoon with a Vizsla meetup group at the park.    This space, full of spectacular pecan trees, attracts visitors from all over Central Texas.   It was  a grand afternoon.   The opening photo presents Bella, a 7-year-old vizsla intent on tracking a squirrel.  I watched Bella for quite a while.   She didn’t get the squirrel, but she was certainly focused on hope.   Austin may have a leash-free space, but it doesn’t compare with Georgetown’s.    These photos were taken for my friends at the Williamson County Sun.

As the days grow longer, these Blackland Prairie sundowns won’t become fewer, but they’ll be later.   Bear with me while I can still these at a reasonable hour, friends.   This one’s from tonight, north of Taylor, Texas.

The horses pictured with this post are images taken several weeks ago.   For one reason or another, I’ve been sitting on them.   These beauties, whom I visited before, reside in a small pasture behind a one-room schoolhouse (now a community center and church)  in Norman’s Crossing, Texas.   The play of light and shadow as the late-afternoon sun faded left interesting patterns on their manes and tails.   On this visit, I probably stayed with my four-legged friends for close to an hour.   I was entranced.   These images accompanied one of my columns in the Williamson County Sun.

Even though it’s been an extremely busy and intense weekend,  I wanted to offer up these photos taken on Saturday night during the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life of North Williamson County, held at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.   Included were cancer survivors, but also plenty of caregivers.  One young lady, from East View High School in Georgetown, managed to make it around the track while hula hooping.    Because this day began before dawn, I didn’t stay until midnight, when this event came to a close, but I think you get the idea. 

This Earth Day has been a very long one, but one that began sweetly at Blue Hole Lagoon in Georgetown, Texas.   A friend, acupuncturist and massage therapist Jagjit “JK” Khalsa, stepped into this cool and cloudy Saturday with Qi Gong, which she refers to as Chinese Yoga.  Qi Gong is a dance-like practice that connects with the universal life-force energy present in all of us .. chi.   It’s a practice my friend likes to do near water.   And Blue Hole is very nice water.  Since it’s such a pretty piece of the earth, I’m including some scenic images from there, where I got to visit with a duck and a grackle.

This is something I attempted to photograph Thursday evening, but my timing was off by a couple of minutes.  Tonight, I determined to get it right.   You will always find recurring themes in my photography……windmills, sunrises, sunsets, barns, land.   You get the idea.   Hopefully I won’t bore you as I document the area where we live.

With Earth Day approaching on Saturday, I thought it might be appropriate to present some of the abundant Blackland Prairie earth where we live.   The spring corn crops are little mighty fine this year.  Fields are full of various shades of green.   While we’ve had periods of heavy rain the last couple of months,  the farmers’  bounty is striking to see.   Mother Earth takes care of us when we, in turn, appreciate her gifts.   All is well on our ocean of land.

On Thursday afternoon, with Central Texas temperatures in the mid-upper 80s, I ambled over to Georgetown, with nothing planned.  A bit of the afternoon was spent enjoying the ambience of the Georgetown Public Library, a favorite respite from stress.   After a while, however, I moseyed on out the door, and loaded my cameras in the passenger seat.   Stopping at San Gabriel Park, I got out  a  book, but reading wasn’t what I needed.   Photography was my medicine.  With nothing catching my attention, I started up the car, planning to visit another good spot.  Then, under the bridge spanning the San Gabriel River, there was this young lady, enjoying the afternoon while expertly (and safely…note the life preserver) navigating her kayak through the calm water.  From a distance, I couldn’t tell how old she was.   When her craft came closer, it was clear she wasn’t old enough to drive.   A rule I try to follow is not taking young ones’ photos  without a parent, or an adult in charge, nearby.   As it happens, she mentioned her daddy was nearby, catching bait fish in a net.   I found dad and asked if it was okay.  He was fine with that.  As it turns out, the little girl is only 9, but she was paddling like an old hand!  She finally tired, taking her kayak out of the water while dad finished up his task.  

If you look at (and actually find) the community of Nix, Texas, you’ll see that it sits just about at the center of our beautiful state.    When we breezed by Nix last weekend, there wasn’t much to see, but I did find Nix Store, circa 1875.   It appears to have been closed for a while.   When I looked at the gas pump, the gasoline price was 42 cents a gallon.    So it’s been a while.  It’s good to see they had an outhouse, shown at left.   Nix is a community in Lampasas County, Texas.   According to what I found on Wikipedia, Nix, at one time in the late 1890s, reached a population of 27, but eventually included this store, a post office (inside the store) plus a combination church and school.   As of 2000, the population had dwindled to 6.     For whatever reason, I decided to put this out there in black and white.

Occasionally, it’s fun to break away from photojournalism and scenic landscapes, instead turning the lens on something small, which we may or may not notice in our hurry-up lives.   This week, during a period of afternoon rains,  umbrella in hand, I stopped by Murphy Park in Taylor, taking in in the beautiful small world of flowers and plants at Liberty Gardens.   This post ends, however, with a goose, oblivious to the rain.   In fact, I think she liked it, as did yours truly.   Tiny landscapes, folks.  Keep your eyes peeled.