Blooming Huisache

Another lovely sign of spring - the Huisache trees are totally bursting with blooms! I wish my mom was here to see it with me. :)

Sunset Over Our Home

I shot this last night as I came out of our Honey House. The weather has been unusually mild for winter. I believe the meteorologist said we are about ten degrees warmer than normal. Boo. I want more winter before the heat returns. Please. Check out the other sky shots for this week at Sky Watch. I haven't had time to participate lately but I'm going to try and make time this year. I love looking at the shots posted there!

Fall in Our Lil World

As I got in the car this morning, I was struck by the beautiful coloring of our peach tree. I love having the bee boxes in the yard.

Camo Lizard

Anybody know what kind of lizard this is? He was very fast when he saw me coming and I barely caught sight of him before he dashed up the tree truck and went up pretty high. He changed colors very quickly which I thought was pretty neat. I spotted him while I was visiting a friend out in the country.

Look Up for Mistletoe

One of the things I love about Texas - abundant mistletoe. It just doesn't matter if it's 20 degrees outside or 100 degrees. If you look up, you will see mistletoe here in South Texas. I LOVE mistletoe because it always makes me think of the Christmas season and that's one of my favorite times of the year.

Hope you are all having a great Fourth of July weekend.

Happy Lunar New Year

...also known as Vietnamese New Year (Tet) or Chinese New Year. :-) It's the year of the Rabbit or Cat, depending on which book you read. Either way, it's off to a brand new year for us and that meant a day off from work, whic I have been trying to do for many years now. I make time in the morning to quietly pay my respects to my ancestors and to give thanks and ask for blessings in the coming year. This is part of the little prayer table I put together and it includes some fresh fruit as well as sweet treats, flowers, candles and incense. I know it will be another great year for our family!

Having a day off also means when I run errands and see something interesting, I actually have time to stop the car, get out and snap pictures. I had a great time today doing that despite nearly freezing my legs off in the 10 degree wind chill we had here in Seguin. I had not put on a second layer under my trousers and boy did I feel the difference. But more than that, my eyes watered to the point I couldn't see clearly to photograph after about seven minutes. What a wimp. It's so different from the cold I felt in Virginia last week. That was tolerable. I'm sure it had to do with the humidity levels. Anyway, here's a shot of an ice sculpture on Kingsbury/Highway 90 before you get to the Guadalupe River bridge as you drive towards IH10 West. Someone stuck their water hose up the tree. Hope it survives its encasing.



And here's one more shot of another tree that was iced because the sprinkler system was not turned off. We're expecting/hoping (I don't think I'm in the minority on this one) for a few inches of snow over night. I will certainly post a shot if we get anything worthy of mention. Keep warm out there!

Fall Colors

On beautiful days like those that we've had lately, we had to get out and enjoy it this weekend. I accompanied Mark out to a couple of bee yards so I could see what was happening in the countryside; it's been a while since I did that. I loved the cool air and the clear skies. Though we don't have the gorgeous fall colors I'm used to from growing up in North Carolina, there is still beauty to be seen and enjoyed. We do have Lost Maples Park a few hours north of here but we were too busy to make it out there so perhaps next year. Meanwhile, here are a couple of shots from this past weekend.

Hope you had a good aMonday and that the rest of the week will be a great one for you! I get my wisdom teeth pulled manana so we'll see if I feel like posting this week. You never know...there might be something interesting to share. There is always something interesting going on around us, right? :-)

Mesquite at Dusk

Also enjoying the spring sunshine are the mesquite trees. Today Mark saw the first bloom coming out.

Redbud Beauty

Yes, I realize there's a theme going here but who can blame me when there's a million blooming beauties all around town now?? This redbud is right in our front yard but as you drive around town, you will see this along with other gorgeous blooms. Today I even saw my first batch of Bluebonnets along Interstate 10 on the way to San Antonio.

In this shot, the female bee is checking out our redbud and she already has pollen on her hind legs, which she'll take back to a hive. That hive isn't in our backyard so I wonder where she's from. The entire tree is abuzz with bee activity! We have another redbud in the backyard and that's full of bees also.

Hackberry Tree, Rain and the Spurs

The green of the new leaves coming out on the Hackberry tree out back is really refreshing. Though I'm not looking forward to the hot days of spring/summer, it is nice to see things blooming and budding. Green is beautiful. This past weekend we got about two inches of rain! We sure needed it and could still use more. It'd be great if we could get an inch a week for a while (at the least)...still in drought around here. But beggers can't be choosers so I'm very happy with what we did receive.

We're about to head off for game two of the Spurs/Mavs series. Ugh. Can't believe we lost the first game to them. And at home! Oh well, I won't dwell on it. I'll just go and enjoy tonight since it could possibly be our last home game. I hope not but you never know! :)

A Car in a Tree

Last weekend when we checked on the bees out in the country, we also took a drive around different roads just to be out and about. I nearly missed this shot but thankfully Mark saw it and knew I would want to shoot it so he pulled over. It's always good to have two pairs of eyes looking for interesting things in life. :)

Below is a shot where you can see the entire tree, which has a really great shape to it against the blue sky.

Golden Fall Color

This redbud is next to the red Crepe Myrtle from the previous post. If you look at both trees and they are aligned with one another so that you see a great mix of gold, green and red, it's just really breathtaking. I can see this mix when I see at our kitchen table because I have a direct line of sight out our front door. And when I see our fall colors, it makes me happy and very appreciative of the beauty around us in the world.

Some Signs of Fall

We don't get fall colors here in Seguin like I knew in North Carolina, but we do have a splash here and there this year. I love this red color of the crepe myrtle in our front yard.

Still trying to play with the camera and I'm really enjoying it immensely. I love the zoom (15x) and the Smart Feature. Most of the time, I turn it on and really just point and shoot. Literally. It handles almost all my settings just right. That firmware update also made all processing super fast. I love it.

Currently it's about 42F degrees, but feels like 34F. Nice. I love this cold weather. And the Spurs are ACTUALLY 20 points up on the Nuggets at halftime. Also nice, considering the way we've been playing lately. :)