Hill Country Livin'

I can't believe it's the middle of July already. Yes, I know it's been a while since my last post, but you're getting no excuses (or promises) for my posting habits. They just come when I feel like it (or when Winnie shames me into it) ;)

It has been an eventful year so far. We sold our home in Houston March 15th (BIG YAY!). It's a pretty fascinating phenomena how putting your house on the market can cause everything in the place to start breaking.

Even better, we transferred financial responsibility for Kelly to husband Anthony on March 31st (BIGGER YAY!)It was a lovely wedding out here in the Hill Country.

Winnie and Ron have both been involved in "masterful" pursuits.

Winnie became a Certified Texas Master Gardener in May and has volunteered her time beautifying gardens all over the county






Winnie not only has master gardener skills now, but she's picked up some magic skills as well. She picked about six pounds of those little red berries in the photo on the left from the agarita bushes that grow wild in our back yard, and Abracadabra! She changed them into the delicious agarita jelly you see on the right.

Ron is in the current class of Texas Master Naturalists, with certification scheduled for October. Volunteer activities have included clearing brush and cedar trees (technically Ash Junipers), building directional signs for the Warbler Woods bird sanctuary and getting to spend time in Canyon Lake Gorge.

In addition to volunteer projects, the Master Naturalist program offers opportunities for advanced training on a wide variety of topics. One example is a presentation Ron attended on birds of prey by the "Eagle Lady", Doris Mager from Florida. She's holding a Screech Owl on the left, and that's a Caracara (Mexican Eagle) on the right.





Plenty of activities going on back at home, too. Winnie and Ron recently purchased a canoe that will also accept a trolling motor. We have paddled it around on the lake, and plan to do some fishing in it. I'm sure there will be fish stories in my next post!

Getting lots of opportunities to hone our grand parenting skills this year. Tim and Nina have moved out to Wimberly, and we are getting to watch Merced more as they fix up their place.  It's amazing how fast she is growing.









The company that did our garage and back patio flooring opened up a franchise in Bulverde (11 miles away).  We had them do our front porch, and we found the pottery just outside San Marcos.

Winnie finally got her dream dining room table. Well, almost. The table and chairs we ordered from Amish Oak of America were delivered and installed, only to discover the "self stored" feature for storing the leafs in the table were not included. We had the table for about 30 minutes, before it was loaded up and sent back to the builder. Looks like we may see it again in about three weeks. It is beautiful furniture, and we look forward to getting the table.

We are still discovering all the interesting places in our own back yard. While we have been to Wimberly several times, we recently visited Mount Baldy, just outside Wimberly. 215 steps to the top, but the view was worth the climb.




No post would be complete without some critter pictures.

"I'd like to place an order to go"

What a rack!

Why are all these hummingbirds buzzing a woodpecker feeder?

Man this grass is soft, and tastes good,too!

And finally...

Ron riding a Deere!

Fall has Arrived!

I know I said I would try to update this sooner than the last time (5 months), and I think I may just make it, if only by a few days. :)

Just to catch you up, my last post was at the end of June, and it's now mid-November. We  have moved most of our stuff from Houston, and the Copperfield home is on the market.

It has been one of the worst droughts on record here in the Texas Hill Country, but I'm pleased to say we just got over an inch of rain this morning. In June our landscaper was just getting started, but now that's complete and things are looking pretty nice.





The front and side yard have Jamur Zoysia turf grass. It has a thick carpet and is very drought tolerant. Most of our plants and shrubs are native to the Hill Country. The pink ornamental plant here is Muhly grass.











We found a craftsman at the Chappell Hill Scarecrow Festival who makes these street markers. We asked him if he could put a scorpion on it, and he did a great one. Ask Winnie for the story behind this.

We have a drainage easement on one side of our property. On the left is what it looked like before and on the right is after the landscaping. It went from "The Ditch" to "The River"







Our back yard has a Buffalo grass trail around it, with native grasses hydro-seeded everywhere else.

The native plants are a combination of what the landscaper planted (Copper Canyon Daisy, Lantana and Salvia Greggii) and plants that grew wild on the property (Prickly Pear Cactus, Yucca, Agarita and many others). We also added a flagstone deck and a fire ring.









In the front we have wax myrtles lining our electrical equipment. We had to put the wire fence around them to keep the deer from tearing them up.












This is one of several "dry stack" walls that were built. The landscapers actually used a rock hammer to "shape" each stone to fit. No mortar is used on these walls. The plants here are Crape Myrtles, Wooly Stemodia, Mountain Laurels, Loropetalum, Blackfoot Daisies, Jerusalem Sage, Plumbago, Bottle-brush and Dwarf Yaupon.

The garage is coming along nicely as well. I finally got the El Camino up here. I'm installing the Rubbermaid Fast Track system that you can see behind the El Camino. It's a very flexible system that allows you to use several kind of connectors for hanging different kinds of tools. And if you don't like how you arrange things, just unclip and move them somewhere else.

I couldn't close without at least one critter picture. Thanks to Kelly for capturing these two studs asserting their masculinity during the rut.

Hill Country Livin'

I can't believe it's been over five months since I last posted an update to the blog. Time sure has passed quickly. Lots of changes, so I'll jump right in. Probably the biggest change, I retired from ConocoPhillips after 32 years of service. It didn't take very long out here at the lake to help me make that decision. We have been slowly moving furniture from Houston over the last few months, and we now spend more time at Canyon Lake than we do in Houston.

Our daughter Kelly is living in our home in Copperfield, but she recently became engaged and will be moving with fiance Anthony to Baton Rouge, La. That means we will have to get our act together, finish moving the remaining items from Houston and put the house on the market.


So what's been going on at the lake house, you ask. Lots, and here are some pics. I mentioned in my last post we were looking at flooring for the garage and patio. We got that done in February and it turned out very nice. We had a crew from Garage Experts in Pflugerville do the installation, and they did a great job.

We had our first house guests in March, when my parents. Kelly, Anthony, Tim, Nina and Merced all came out to see us.

We have been adding some furniture as we get settled in, but we are trying to space things out a bit. It seems like there is always something else we need to get.

We had quite a crew out for Memorial Day, 12 of us staying in the house at the peak. There was a testosterone bug going around, and everything in sight was deep fried, including corn dogs, onion rings, battered bacon and Oreo cookies! 

 We finally have our landscaping project underway, and the crews have been hard at work cleaning up the lot and are now starting to build some rock walls. The landscaper has told us it should be complete in a couple more weeks.

And after living on the lake for several months, we finally got our first boat ride!

What blog post would be complete without a few pictures of the critter population we are learning to live alongside.

I'll try to make it back a little quicker next time. See you then.