The Owl and the PussyCat

Gardening in June

Our gardening is going well this year.  Much better than last.  But we also got an earlier start.  You have to get an early start here in the great state of Texas, because gardening season is over by July due to oppressive heat and the lack of rain!

I want to put in watermelon, but it takes so much water and with no rain it just seems like such a waste!  Please say this drought ends soon!  Bring on the rain!  Let's all do a rain dance!
 

We have had one set back in our garden this year. We lost all of our squash due to a red critter which weevils it's way into the stalk and then eats it from the inside out!  But, we still have our cucumbers, tomatoes, basil, snap peas, green beans, and gourds, oh and corn! 

Josef's quite proud of his corn!

Emma's cherry tomatoes, which she loves to pick in the early mornings.

And our sweet little snap peas which we have climbing up our bean poll.

Unfortunately, the peas and beans are already on their way out as well.  Too hot.  So, in place of them, we have planted this neat spinach plant which climbs up the poll and is a purple vine.  I think it will look gorgeous, once it begins to trellis. Will post pictures when it does so.  

Quietly moving

We went out to the woods today, to relax and breath again. Listen to the wind blowing through the trees. Slow down.

Things seem to move so quickly now that we are living back in the city.  I have to remember how important it is to retreat to the woods every so often, when I need to slow down and live in the moment. 

I need to savor these last quiet moments of just the three of us, before our family  grows to four.

Happy Easter!

My parents are in town this weekend for Easter and to see us one more time before Baby Neave comes.  We took a nice drive to Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.  It was an overcast day but the flowers were magnificent.

I made Emma an Easter dress, and the flowers on the dress seemed so similar to these flowers above. I think they are called phlox?

This week I got a special, special present in the mail for baby Neave. 

It's a beautiful day gown made my dearest friend Kate, who as you may know, has been making dresses for Emma since she was a wee baby.  The embroidery  detail is equiste.  I think I may never want to put her in anything else.  It's just beautiful. 

Well, I hope that you all had a lovely Easter weekend.  The big count is now on, 3 1/2 weeks left until my due date!  Everything is pretty much ready for the baby.  The diapers have been washed and hung to dry.

 

The bags are packed and all of Ina May's advice whirling around in head is ready to be put to practice.  I'm ready whenever she is.  Here we go!

For the love of Green Grass

I've been having a hard time adjusting to the Texas scenery since moving here.  Dry, Dusty, Dry, Died.

Weird, because growing up in Louisiana, I could never really see why everyone thought the swamps to be so beautiful and mysterious.  And  only in the past 3 or 4 years, have I started to see it in a new light. As something wonderful and even somewhat magical to capture.
So as you see, my inspiration for taking pictures lately has somewhat dwindled.  I have become completely uninspired. Nature is my inspiration.  Where are thou, my muse?
I'm leaving for a full week Friday.  Heading up to my folks place to run barefoot through the lush grass, watch the bees settle on the flowers and just watch Emma play endlessly in the wide open fields.  Ah, for the love of the country!  I thought I'd never hear myself say that, but I do dream that our next house will be in the country or in a small town with a good size piece of property. 
It's strange to think that we'll only really be here in Austin for 2 years.  This is just a transitioning point for Josef to advance in his career. 
He's been seeing University Jazz teaching jobs posted in a lot of the small university towns in the New England area.  Oh, the quaint little towns with the beautiful colonial houses and large backyards. 
Oh, the prospect of actually having season.  Emma and I have been reading and talking a lot about the seasons and how the leaves change with each season.  On our walk this morning she saw a pile of dried leaves  and cried out "Autumn's here!!" 
Unfortunately, without telling her of course, it's not that the season's changing, but the fact that the leaves are dying on the trees, because of the lack of rain upon our fair city!  We had a powerful hurricane 100 or so miles away and we didn't even have a single drop of rain!  Amazing.
So, I must think of the big picture.  The five year goal so to speak.  I want to keep writing on this blog because I want to be able to look back at our time here with fondness, not with displeasure.  So I must find other means of inspiration if mother nature can not help me out.

But I can still keep thinking of that light at the end of the tunnel, of the lush grass wet between my toes.

Oh, for the love of simple pleasures!

Don't mess with Texas

We stopped for a picnic and short hike on our way home from the lake.

Emma saw a cactus and said it was pretty, just as I was shouting "don't touch!"

I spent the rest of the hike pulling thorns out of her hands!  A very brave girl indeed.  On the walk back to the car, every cactus she saw, she said," Go away cactus, go away!"  I think she gets it!

Lake LBJ

We had a terrific weekend at Lake LBJ with Josef's folks.  They drove up from New Orleans to visit us for the week and then rented a lovely house for all of us to stay in.

We did a whole lot of swimming, swinging, and just plain relaxing.

Josef brought his guitar and we sat outside in the evenings listening to him while Emma sang along.

On Saturday afternoon, when we just couldn't be in the hot sun any longer, we headed over to the local vineyard to sample their selection and to listen to some music.

Emma has been amazing me lately with how well she can focus her attention on things.  She's mad about music, and of course, I wonder where she got that from?  Humm? 

She sat for quite sometime listening to the music, without even stirring.

It was the first time we had been away from our house in Austin, so coming back from the lake was sort  of a strange thing. For a second, I had a small memory loss, like wait, where's home? But, as soon as we headed back, through the rolling hill country, I started getting all excited and giddy, like a little child at Christmas. Excited, that finally, finally after 3 years of not knowning where our next move might be, I finally felt a sense of serenity.

I think I'm gonna like it here!

I love Texas already!  I must say, I was a little hesitant about the big move. You know, leaving family and really good friends, to move to the state where our oh, so wonderful president was Governor.  But, after venturing out, my hesitation has been pushed aside and I am ready to take Austin head on.

In my last post, I mentioned that we had discover the glorious Barton Springs.  Well, it is not only a lovely dip for children and adults, but also for our four legged friends.


Emma talks about going here everyday now, and honestly I can't blame her.  It's lovely.



We were supposed to go to the local farm the day before last, until I realized that in order to get there we had to go up a really large hill.  I have a steel frame cruiser with no gears.  In other words, heavy, extremely heavy.  Plus, the weight of Emma.  So we just took a beautiful ride through one of the most beautiful and interesting neighborhoods in Austin, Hyde Park. Sorry no pictures as of now, but after seeing so many cool houses with whole front yards dedicated to growing vegetables and herbs, I will definitely be back with camera in hand!  Anyway, I have plans to go to the farm tomorrow morning before the farmers market downtown

This morning we went to a nice little festival for children dedicated to protecting the environment.  They had puppets, music, and all sorts of stalls set up with information about the Colorado river and the Edwards Aquifer.
Emma really got into watching a women talk about pollution, the effects of pollution on the area, how pollutants run off into the river, and then into our drinking water.


Then she got to add the food coloring, which was the pollution, and pour the water on the roads and streets! She was really attentive and seem to really be taking in everything that the lady was talking about. Very cool!

 

After that, we headed over to the bleachers which looked out onto the river.  The children from the local school were out in kayaks and having a ball.  Musicians were setting up their music right on the river. 

Beautiful, just beautiful. 


Emma got really excited when she saw the kayaks.  I think she still remembers going out in them when we were in Maine last summer.  We are going kayaking Sunday.  Ah, Sunday, Sunday. 
Sunday is my birthday, and not just any birthday, my 30th one!!  I'm really excited to enter into the 30's.  I've got no regrets and no worries! I'm totally ready!  I've done pretty much everything that I wanted to while in my 20's.  I finished college in 4 years, worked, got married to the most wonderful man, traveled, lived in different states, own a house and had a beautiful baby!  Wow!  If I have done all this in just 10 years, imagine what can be done in the next 10, learning from my past! I definitely know that these next 10 will be dedicated to Emma, but I can only imagine what other neat and interesting things we will all get up to! 

So, the next time I write I will be 30.  I have a wonderful birthday line up, full of boating excursions, good food, a movie, and a trip to see my friend play in her match.  Wow!  I wish you all a super weekend and here's the first of June!

**I'm having problems uploading my pictures with the new typepad webposts.  They are not uploading correctly.  Anyone else out there having the same problems?**

Stage Photographers

What a weekend!  I will never look at a concert photographer the same way again.

First off I would have to say that the trickiest part of photographing on a concert stage is not being able to get right next to the performers. I mean, your on the stage, but there is so much stuff, amps, speakers, wires, mics, that you just can't get close to them.  Then of course, you can't get too close, because you don't want to be in the way.   This is where having the "gear" plays a HUGE part!  I really needed a zoom lens so I could get right in on the performers without being right there.   I must say, it's definitely a lot easier taking shots of things that can be manipulated, such as landscapes, children, and just everyday things, than musicians with lots of  clutter around them.

Fiddling around with the camera, which means trying not to use auto focus, dealing with the lightening of the stage whether it's a covered area or an outside stage, to get the perfect shot when a second later that pose is gone, is really hard. My favorite way to take pictures is just being out there, squatting down, lying on my stomach, or climbing up on a fence, and getting in close to take the picture.  That to me is fun.

I really would like to show you some more of my pictures right now, but I'm going to wait until my class on Tuesday to present them, so I'll post them for you to see on Wednesday.

While all of this was going on this weekend, I also decided to make a dress for Emma.

I'd never done a gathered dress before and this one was so quick and easy to do.  It's a dress from Children's Corner.  The name of the pattern is Amy.  It  can be smocked but it's so quick and easy to make without being smocked.  And it really looks good.  I think the pipping just really makes the dress!
Here she is wearing it at the festival Sunday.

I plan to make another this week.  It's my way of procrastinating, so that I don't have to pack!!!

10 days till moving day!!!

Spring has Sprung

We are fully into Spring down here, and almost on our way out.  Everything is blooming like mad.  The smells from my Jasmine bush as I hang up the laundry is intoxicating.

And when I say that everything is in full bloom, I mean everything, including the bad stuff: Poison Ivy!  If you've always wanted to know what it looks like, here it is.

Emma and I have been chatting with my parent's blueberry bushes.  Asking them to quicken their ripening process so that we may be able to pick them before we leave  for Austin.  My mother is all in a huff, because she can't believe that we won't be here to pick them, and she doesn't know how she can send them.  I'm sure she'll find a way:)

My father says that he has to add an additional box to the bee hive this year since they are growing out of their current residence. It must be from all the flowers on the satsumas bushes.*

And of course from all the grandmotherly love.

Now that the season is fully under way, our local farm has also opened it's doors  again for business.

There is nothing like farm fresh eggs with Joe's delicious homemade toast to start the day!  Yum.

**My parent's satsumas bushes have some kind of parasite that has been curling up the leaves and not allowing the flowers to go to fruit.  If you know anything about satsumas bushes please drop a comment with any suggestions.  They would be most grateful!**

Wordless Wednesday