Sometimes, when it’s been a really busy day, posts might be nonexistent.  Or I might just take a close look at the road ahead.  That’s what you have on this Saturday night, friends.   This is a county road near my home in Taylor, pretty wet after rain throughout the day.   The lights in the far distance at left……that’s my neighborhood.   These country roads are lovely, day or night.   With Daylight Saving Time making a fast approach (next weekend), I’m enjoying the night light while it’s there.   If you sense I’m not enamored with DST, you’d be right.

Friends, meet Harold.   On the way back from the grocery store this week in Taylor, I noticed a tractor working a field, pretty far along into the day.   Of course I had to stop.   After a few frames, the tractor stopped while Harold fielded a call.  After his phone chat, we talked for a while.   Harold is 71 and lives in Beyersville, Texas, just down the road a piece.   For 33 years, he worked at the Alcoa plant near Rockdale, doing a little bit of farming when time allowed.  In 1997, he retired from Alcoa and put his efforts into working the land.   When we met, Harold was planting corn seed, working a bit past sundown, utilizing night lights on his Case tractor.  When the lights didn’t do the trick, Harold’s on-board GPS system filled in the gaps.   Harold is planting 600 acres of corn this season.   Working with him is his son, Randall.   They’re not planting cotton, but embrace a wee bit of wheat.    Life on the Blackland Prairie is quite nice, even for those of us who don’t till the soil.

Lucy is a constant companion, a house cat terribly-afraid of the outdoors, but she does enjoy her windows.     Do you choose your friends, and where you live, based on political leanings?   It’s good to engage, even if you are polar opposites.   Lucy knows this.   Learn from the cat.  I have.

Most of us who grew up here know this date, March 2, as Texas Independence Day.   Some folks, like yours truly, left Texas for a long time.   Now that I’m home, I appreciate it more than ever.   The land, the sky, its people.   Presented here are photos taken this evening, except for the last one, taken a couple of weeks ago at Louie Mueller BBQ in Taylor.   The others include an early bluebonnet arrival at Berry Springs Park & Preserve in Georgetown, sunset at Zion Lutheran Cemetery in Walburg, and a Texas Century Farm scene, just a little north of Walburg.   A Texas Century Farm is one that has been in continuous operation by the same family for a hundred years or more.   While I don’t always go along with the state’s political leanings, I cherish the place.

In February 1974, my graduation semester in photojournalism at University of Texas in Austin, I teamed up with a classmate, Roberto, to create photos from paper negatives.   For the assignment Roberto and I toted a whopping huge 8×10 view camera around the UT campus in search of good spots to photograph each other.   The camera’s “film” was actually a paper negative,  a very thin piece of 8×10 printing paper loaded into the film holder, then exposed just like you would film.  The first image exposure: 1 minute @ f/11.  The second image of Roberto, in bright sunlight, was a mere 8 seconds, also @ f/11.   Since Roberto took the one of me, I don’t have exposure details.    From there we developed our exposures in Dektol, then arrived at final prints by pairing the paper negative  with another, thicker piece of paper.   What you see here are the results.  The first two photos are Roberto, the last one yours truly.   Back then, I was known to smoke a cigar or two, one seen hanging from my mouth.    I wouldn’t want to tote an 8×10 camera around these days, but it was fun back then!

What I’d really like to title this post is “All the Pretty Horses,” but Cormac McCarthy has that one covered.   Anyway, this is a field I often pass on my wanderings between Taylor and Georgetown.   There are times when no horses are present.   Maybe they’re in the barn?   Or perhaps they’re in a far-off piece of pasture.   It’s a large swath of Texas earth.  A few days ago, however, the horses were back.  So I stopped for a visit near sunset.   And stayed well past that.   A reminder, friends:  the majority of what you see me post are taken within 30 minutes of Taylor.   Perhaps you’ll see some things repeated, but it is what it is.   If money, and time, weren’t an issue, I’d travel to the far reaches of Texas and beyond.  For now, however, there’s peace close to home.

En route home from a grocery visit tonight, the sun was going down, and very fast.  Maybe it’s always a quick thing?    At any rate, I hopped in the car, drove near a windmill I like, and started snapping away.   This photo was seconds before 6:15.   A few seconds after 6:16 rolled around, the solar treat was tucked away for the evening.   There are times, friends, when I wish that my ethical considerations didn’t come into play, but photojournalism is my game so I keep it honest.   What I’m referring to here are the dang power lines.   Maybe they’re barely noticeable, but they still bother me.   I could create a false scene for you by removing those lines, but what I see is what you see.  

This morning I took photos at a Williamson County Master Gardeners monthly session.   The topic was pruning and caring for roses.   While the 2-hour class was very hands-on, with plenty of garden time in the group’s demonstration rose garden, the image that stuck with me was this one.   Normally, I won’t post floral closeups, but here’s the exception.   This is called a Knock Out rose.   Indeed it was.   This assignment was for the Williamson County Sun.

Just some head-clearing photos from tonight, along one of my favorite stretches of county road, just outside Taylor.   It’s the route I often travel from Taylor to Georgetown.   The ancient truss bridge spanning the San Gabriel River is always enchanting.  During what passed for a meteor shower a few months ago, I spent the entire night on it, wide awake.   The meteor shower wasn’t all that great, but the bridge is cool.   The other photo revisits the saga of the hanging jeans.  They’ve been here, in an area adjacent to the truss bridge, for several months.  Maybe there’s some meaning here?   I don’t know, but they continue to be intriguing.  

It actually reached 90-degrees today in Georgetown, Texas.  By the time I took this photo at Berry Springs Park & Preserve near sunset tonight, the temperature had moderated to the mid-70s.   This young 11-year-old was enjoying an impromptu bit of volleyball under the park’s beautiful trees with her dad.   The weekend calls for cooler weather, which might be a good thing since we’re still technically in a winter month!