Memorial Day at the ranch

Tim and Alex celebrated our Freedom - provided to us by the service people who have and continue to defend our country - by going fishing.

This is Lake Ray Roberts - just down the hill from our home. Tim and Alex just got their fishing licenses this past week. Today Tim caught a yellow bass - but since it was the only one, he put it back in the lake. Need enough to make lunch before we do the work of cleaning them.
Tim rebuilt the electric

motor for the canoe. Between that and the oars, they can go anywhere!

Alex and Tiffany brought Evee out last night to spend the night

and this is Evee napping

while Humphrey guards her.

She is a precious doll.

This is one of my favorite photos.

Tim made us a sumptuous brunch of french toast with strawberries and whipped cream, bacon and omlets! Yum.

Also having a grand day was Sherman. He is a great dog (when he's not at the neighbor's home!)

Haven't seen these bugs since last year - they only seem to be around in the spring.

And lastly, the requisite flower shots.

The Macro Lens Garden

I don't do it often, but I like to get out the macro lens (a Nikkor 105mm). There are plenty of bugs out to shoot today, but none that wanted to stay put while I took their glamor shots! So - I shot photos of the flowers in the garden today.

These are wildflowers. Tim and I took the dogs this morning on a golf cart ride over to our 26 acres. There we found these flowers in the middle of some tall grasses. I also shot some budding cactus, but they were too blurry to post. Another day.

A few months ago, Tim stuck some bulbs in a pot. He didn't know what they were and neither did I. Now that they've bloomed, we still don't know. They look a bit like carnations, but have a very short stem - they bloom right next to the plant stalk. This one is white. The other one (in a post below is a hot pink). They are really pretty and seem to last a long time.

These are the baby limes on Tim's new lime tree. Only grown for the cocktails they can enhance later.

I shoot with a Nikon D-80. Love that camera. You can see the rest of our photos - traveling the world, the kids, Tim's art at our photo website - www.andi-tim.smugmug.com.

These just bloomed.

These are part of my Gerbera Daisy collection. Why do people call them "gerber" daisies?

Tim said, "why don't you get that wildflower behind the bench there"? This is that wildflower.

I think the marigolds are much prettier in macro.

Found this plant at Calloway's Nursery (love that place! Thanks Jeff and Lee for the Mother's Day gift certificate to Calloways!). It'll change colors and add more orange as it blooms.

These plants are gorgeous. The blooms don't last long, and when they die, they turn to a papery-sort of texture and just blow away.

Also found in the wild - these were crawling with insects. Not sure what's attractive about them to the bugs...

Petting the babies this morning...

On our golf

cart ride

this morning, both
Tim and I said how much we love living here in Tioga, Texas at Sage Creek Ranch. We love getting up and listening to the wind in the trees, the insects sawing, the birds singing and squawking - we can't hear any traffic, no air conditioners running...it's really idyllic.



I was taking the laundry off the line this morning and discovered this fellow clinging to a dinner napkin. (Cool side note - Tim and I were in Thailand a few years ago with our Executives for the Extrarodinary - Education for Everyone - E4E group. We had built a school in rural Thailand. On the final day, the parents of the schoolchildren and other villagers put on a celebration for us. They had hand woven large squares of fabric as a gesture of their thanks. They tied these bands of fabric around our waistsduring the school hand-off ceremony. There were probably 20 or 30 of these large fabric squares. I came across them the other day. They've been packed away for several years now. I didn't want to get rid of them, but also didn't know what to do with them. I've been committed to moving away from throw away stuff and paper napkins have been annoying to me for some time now, but when I have large groups of people over, I don't have enough cloth napkins to make it work. So, I asked my mom to cut and stitch the fabric into dinner napkins. So, now I have about 75 dinner napkins made of hand-spun fabric from Thailand that was given to us in thanks for building a school! I love the thought of the energy those napkins bring each person who comes to our home and has a meal with us!)

Have a fun and safe Memorial Day weekend!

Quarrying our own stone

The weather has been
gorgeous the past several days - good for us since Tim is laying the flagstone walkways. Not only is he laying the flagstone - he is a real man. He is splitting the stone on our property - hand-splitting stone! When he
used the Kubota this past week digging the trenches for the sprinkler systems and the running of electricity, he dug up tons (literally) of rock and stone. Some of that stone is thin enough to use for our flagstone pathways. The stone that isn't thin enough will be split by he-man Tim. It's fun (okay, and darn hard work!) to be able to use the natural elements, indigenous to our property, for our infrastructure. Once the pathway between the house and the pavilion is installed, he'll put in our the first of the patios we're installing on the property. This will also be done with a mix of flagstone and Sage Creek Ranch stone.

I saw all three of these birds on the feeder at the same time today. This doesn't happen very often. They don't like sharing. Farthest left in the photo is the Titmouse, then the Painted Bunting, and finally, the Chickadee. Very shortly, a Bluejay came by and chased all of them away.

This little Titmouse snagged

a tasty morsel of seed. BTW - all my bird photos on this page were taken through the window - explaining the slightly grainy texture of the pics.


Here's a closer shot of the Painted Bunting. Unfortunately, a little blurry.

Mr Cardinal came to visit today.

This little Chickadee was waiting his turn to eat.

An update on the babies - there are three healthy

little ones. And not only are they healthy, but they are absolutely cute.

Last note for today: I've set up the blog to accept Google Ads. When they accept my request, you'll start seeing ads on my blog.

Thanks for sharing our life at the ranch with us.

Sunday

It's a beautiful day at Sage Creek Ranch (Tim's been calling it Sage Mud Ranch the past week as a more accurate description).

While we haven't been monitoring this, I have wondered how much waterboarding the local fauna have been undergoing against their will around here in the past couple of weeks...With this much water and rain, some things likely haven't survived. However, the insect population has absolutely soared. More photos over the next few days on that. Gotta get the macro lens out for the best shots.
It's flower and laundry day here at the ranch. I've been hanging out the laundry to dry. Love doing that versus using the electric dryer (and it saves us about US$40 per month). I love the way the clothes smell, the real scent of "freshness" that no artificial scent can quite capture. I have noticed though, that one must shake the clothes coming off the line thoroughly because some insects and spiders like the fresh scent as well and end up in the house or in the drawers with the clothes!

Enjoy the day!