When this photo was taken this afternoon in Old Town Georgetown our temperature was 88 degrees!   Personally, I’d prefer it a little cooler, but it was quite a good day for a dad and his 5-year-old to enjoy a good time together.  

This is a tree that recently caught my eye while on one of my daily strolls in Taylor.   While I’m no expert on these things, I’m pretty sure its a cedar.    The lines and curves of its lower section was intriguing.    It’ presented at two different perspectives.  The first version adds the context of a ballfield in the distance at Bull Branch Park.  The second concentrates the subject.   Also, each is also offered in black and white.   Of the batch, I think the monotone version of the tighter closeup.    What the heck.  It’s something to do, right?

Okay, I know many of you were glued to your televisions this weekend, watching a football game played in the beautiful city of Houston, but you know what?  There were some big doings in the Austin area, too:  the state’s  2017 Special Olympics Winter Games.   My incredibly-busy and rewarding weekend was spent hopping from Mel’s Lone Star Lanes, the bowling venue, to the Round Rock Sports Center, for volleyball, and Round Rock High School, for powerlifting.    The level of determination and joy expressed on the faces of the athletes, and their coaches and families, was (insert understatement here) awe-inspiring.   A couple to point out:  the 9th photo shows brothers Brennan O’Donnell, left, a powerlifting athlete with the Hill Country Stars, getting ready for competition with his brother, John.  They are what is known as a unified team, where someone not developmentally-disabled (John) is teamed with a Special Olympics athlete.   John, an Austin police officer, is quite close to Brennan.   Another image, number 15 down, shows Georgetown’s Jared Friemel getting a kiss from his mom, Charlotte, after finishing his three games in bowling.  Jared (and mom) are well-known  in Georgetown and Williamson County, Texas.   I’m posting quite a few images from two days of coverage for the Williamson County Sun.   This post, you see, is loosely-edited.  I want to share this as much as this site will allow.  

It’s the middle of an extremely-busy weekend, but I’m stopping from post-production work just briefly to post a few photos from Taylor’s Bull Branch Park.   I post quite a bit from there.   Some of it might be repetitive, too, but what the heck, I like the place.   And so do the ducks.    Future ducks were in evidence the other evening when I was there, eggs nicely nestled in the cypress knobs.    It’s good to think about the new ducklings-to-be. 

These are a few photos taken last evening in Georgetown.   In Taylor, where we live, there’s a rookery at Murphy Park, where ducks, geese and egrets roost, building nests to harbor their newborns.   Georgetown’s San Gabriel Park has a place, too.   Lately, I’ve noticed the egrets gathering at the last part of their days in a few cozy trees.   If one looks closely, you’ll see nests there.   While these may seem like black and white images, they aren’t.   A cloudy day provided the muted tones.  The last  photo, taken well past sundown?   That’s the night’s blueness taking over, with a slice of the moon included. This might not be an official rookery, but the egrets call it home, at least for a while.

A word that sometimes rankles me is “cute.”   Sometimes my subjects are cute.  But consider that there may be more to it than that.   In these February 1983 photos taken on a cold day in Marietta, Georgia, grandparents spend time with two children they obviously love.    They’re simple images, straightforward and to the point.   Maybe, just maybe, that’s all that’s needed for readers and viewers to relate ….tidbits of life’s journeys, friends.   Technology has changed much since these photos were taken, but not the messages.

Before you get your hopes up in anticipation of windmills and tulips, it’s not that Holland.   Texas has one, too.  Ours is in Bell County, Texas, about a 25 minute drive due north of my home in Taylor.   According to the latest census figures, this Holland, home of the annual Corn Festival, held in June, is a bit over 1100 folks.  Holland was established in 1881, but it was around during the time of the Civil War, too.  Back then it was called Mountain Home.   From what I’ve read it got that name from a “mountain” south of town.   The mountain was actually a hill.   The town got its current name from James Reuben Holland, born in 1847 in Clairborne County, Tennessee.   Mr. Holland arrived in Texas in the 1870s with his family.    It’s a quiet place.   I enjoyed strolling around there this week.   The second photo in this post is probably my favorite.  That’s the First National Bank building, at the corner of Travis and Austin Street.   It was built in 1905.  It’s still a bank today, now a part of the Horizon Bank family.  I’m glad they’re still keeping it nice.  The deer heads mounted in the lobby are just about perfect.   There’s some street scenes, too, including something from the Holland Volunteer Fire Department.   Their crews had just returned from battling grass fires near Granger.   As i continue to explore my part of Texas, it’s good to include Holland.

As I was heading north from Taylor this afternoon, it was hard to miss the huge plumes of smoke in the distance.  These days I don’t claim to be much a hard news chaser, but curiosity is hard to ignore.   We’ve started our Central Texas week with very low humidity, somewhere around 20%.   That often leads to fire hazards.   This one created a lot of burning and plenty of smoke, but firefighters seemed to get it under control in short order.     The first photo also gives you not just a fire image, but a sense of the area where we live.    Even on fire, it’s pretty.

This is a little something I saw last evening while visiting the area near Bartlett, Texas.   It was late in day, with the sun shining a wee bit.  Perhaps that accounts for the color of the aircraft’s trail?   I don’t know the answer, but found it interesting.   Of course, the waxing crescent moon’s presence can’t hurt, can it?

When I was in Schwertner, Texas the other night, a lady I chatted with suggested I stop by Bartlett’s City Cemetery.   She recalled seeing burials dating back to the late 1700s.   When I wandered up that way tonight, I did manage to find some burials from the early 1800s.    It’s a large cemetery, very spread out on this piece of the prairie about 18 miles north of Taylor.    Coming into Bartlett, there’s a big sign indicating the town was established in 1881.  Obviously, a few folks arrived  a little earlier.  The photos posted here present some gravestones, but also (hopefully) give you a feel for the landscape.   Walking around close to dark, I managed to see a bench topped with an American flag.  This was an area set aside to honor veterans.   And then some trees, always trees, and sky, and moon, and stars.   It might be an odd thing, but cemeteries provide comfort.   After Sunday’s Memorial Bike Ride, I needed that.