Sunday, May 3, 2009

Cats and Birds

In the background is the bird feeder and Puddles is attempting to climb a tree!! She didn't quite make it.
Thunder loves to sit under the cedar tree in the center of the patio. He thinks he is invisible!!
This is a "Painted Bunting". It has a blue head, green back and red front. Very pretty bird.
Another shot of the bunting.

Another beautiful day in Texas. 70's and low humidity now, but will get in the mid 80's today.

Sandy
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More LBJ Ranch

Well, after my last post I did have a picture of the huge 480 year old oak tree at LBJ Ranch. Here is a shot from the side of the house (Terry drinking some water), and below the two pictures are of the front view. Very impressive.


Sorry this picture of Puddles got in there. She is drinking from the "birdbath" that I improvised with a ceramic flower pot saucer. I have it sitting on top of the rock with the bird feeder in the background. As you can see we do have some flowering plants. the low to the ground yellow flowering plants are Lantana. We also have purple Lantana in other places in the yard. Most of the plants are native plants. The taller blooming yellow plant is Jeruselum Sage. These plants will get big so we will probably transplant some of these to other areas. We also have one on each side of the front porch.

More flower pictures to come.

Sandy

Birthday Drive to LBJ Ranch

We didn't take very many pictures, but here are a few. We drove down to Johnson City and visited L. B. Johnson's Ranch (Texas White House) and were amazed. The house is 8000 sq ft and he spent 25% of his Presidency here meeting with foreign dignitaries, etc. In 5 years in office he held 100 BBQ's under the oaks shown above. I was amazed. the house sits on the Pedernales River but the locals pronounce it with an "r" after the first e as "Perdonales".
This is the "Texas White House". Johnson died here and Lady Bird had a life estate and did not die until 2006. The request was to put the house back like it was during Johnson's Presidency so they are still doing that. The only room that is now on the tour is his "office". Lots of work was done here. I can't blame him for spending that much time here instead of Washington, DC.
This plaque shows a meeting of the joint chief of staff under the huge 480 old oak tree that is in front of the house on the left side of the above picture. I'm sorry I didn't get a good picture of that tree!! Anyway, it was a nice day for a drive, hot (90 deg) and windy with low humidity.

The property currently is 2200 acres that the Johnson family still owns, but the Federal Government owns the house and grounds or about 800 acres. It is still a working cattle ranch.

We also visited a Wildseed Farm and the German town of Fredericksburg. If any of you every come to visit, we will go to there for the day. Fredericksburg is in the book "1000 places you should visit before you die". We got there about 4 pm and most of the stores closed at 5 pm so we didn't get much done. We will go back. Of course we had to stop in our favorite fudge shop for 6 squares of fudge to take home. We got carmel chocolate, dark chocolate, walnut dark chocolate, peanut butter chocolate, carmel pecan chocolate, and pecan chocolate. Yummy!!

More in a few minutes with our flowers.

Sandy
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Saturday, May 2, 2009

Wendy in Cambodia



Wendy is traveling in Cambodia and Laos for two weeks. If you want to follow her blog its www.yaydrwendy.blogspot.com .

We are just hanging out weeding our beds, embroidering bags for Albuquerque, etc.

Hopefully I'll get some more pictures out there. We are going to Choke Canyon in a couple of weeks for 10 days. Maybe this time we will actually remember to take the camera. We are camping 5 days with friends from Kerrville, TX, Gene and Mindy Betterton.

All for now. Sandy