Grape kool-aid season

That's right. The mountain laurel's are blooming all over town (with one exception, which I'll get to later) and their intoxicating scent—so amazingly like the flavor of kool-aid that matches the color of their blossoms—is easy to partake. (This supernatural-seeming confluence of color and smell does make you wonder about divine coincidence, does it not?)

Even more wondrous is the fact that droughts don't seem to have much effect on their bloom production—a sure-fire sign that they're native to this area. So even though we've had little measurable precipitation since before I left for London last fall, these beauties are putting forth in abundance. Everywhere. The photo on the left above was taken while I was waiting in a bank drive-thru, and the lovely specimen on the right above is outside the gym at St. Mary's. (This one is also the source for the photo at the top of the post, and you can see its graceful shape in full below.)

About the aforementioned exception to the purple riot around town: it's the one in our yard. I swear that if there were a contest for the latest-blooming-mountain-laurel in town, we'd take home the blue ribbon every time. Right now this is all you can see on our specimen: the seed pods from last spring's blooms hiding the bright red seeds that the good Aggie horticulturists in the link above correctly describe as "poisonous...[with] narcotic properties."

At least our guy's late-blooming habits mean that we'll have blossoms and scent to enjoy when most other folks are already missing theirs. In fact, my only complaint about these wonderful tree/shrubs is that the blooms don't last very long—you just get used to marveling at them and they're fading, then gone. Perhaps a metaphor to encourage us to take some time and smell the roses—or the laurels?—while we can.

Tuesday night lights

We just got back from a walk down memory lane, of sorts—at a high school soccer game.

There was a time in our family's history (actually, about 6 years worth of that history) when every Tuesday and Friday night in the first quarter of each year* was taken up with this activity. Tonight we were just casual spectators; certainly we wanted our team to win, but that incredibly intense personal connection that only parents of children playing team sports can appreciate was—thankfully—absent.

This morning's paper picked tonight's game, between our own Alamo Heights Mules and archrival Boerne, as the best bet for the week on the boys side. So, since we had an open evening, we decided to take it in. It turned out to be a very good game, exciting but with an emphasis on defense, just the way we like it. The final score was 0-0, but since it was the Mules' first tie, with no losses (in district play) it puts them in first place in the district.

We enjoyed watching the energetic and skillful young men playing where our son and daughter once played, met some of the current proud parents, and generally reveled in the pleasant, spring-like evening. Next week the girls are playing at home, and while they're not leading their district (we keep up with these things in the paper, although not quite as assiduously as when we knew all the goal-scorers mentioned) they're having a good season. So we'll have to come support them, too.

---

*Unlike high school soccer in most civilized parts of the country, soccer here is played in the winter, which is most unfortunate since it runs almost concurrently with basketball, and often kids who like one of these sports like the other one, too. But playing both is practically impossible. (It's also very unfortunate for the poor soccer parents on those brutally cold winter evenings. Nothing makes you feel the cold more sharply than sitting for 90 minutes.) The reason for this travesty, I assume, has something to do with the other kind of football, which shares facilities with real football in this part of the country. And, for some strange reason, it takes precedence.

Below you can see part of the shared field. The yellow line extensions are for soccer, whose players don't need the yardage marked off but have to put up with it anyway. It's distracting at first, the kids tell us, but they eventually don't notice it. Still looks surreal to me, though.

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!

[Note: title needs to be read with Gomer Pyle intonation. Sorry if you're too young to know what this is; there are advantages to being 60 years old—see below.]

We went to meet friends for dinner at an incredibly typical San Antonio Tex-Mex eatery Wednesday night, and, being an earnest blogger, I thought I'd get some blog-worthy photos of the place and took this one, of the restaurant with Venus above, as we approached it....


..... not realizing that I was freaking out my very devious (but also extremely sweet) husband by doing so.

You see, in my obliviousness I didn't realize the crowd of people in the restaurant were all people I knew. [I just thought they were there for the free margaritas we'd heard about.]


It turns out the free margaritas was just a flimsy cover story to set up a surprise birthday party for yours truly, attended by 60+ (appropriately enough) friends and relatives. And after I'd specifically told said husband I didn't want such a fuss made. Well, I was wrong.

The very nice people at El Milagrito, where they're not even usually open for dinner (the picture on the right is of us with their friendly, cooperative staff), provided loads of yummy Tex-Mex treats, there was a rented margarita machine and ice chests of beer, and a wonderful time was had by all, myself especially.

Husband of the hour managed (in a rather short time, as I was to learn) to gather groups of friends from many of my separate lives, some of whom I hadn't seen in ages. Since ....

• kids outgrow their sports endeavors, meaning you don't get to see the friends you made among the other parents any more (like this group above at the left)
• people have the temerity to move out of your neighborhood, or retire from their jobs, also meaning you don't get to see them any more
• and even folks you should see often, like current neighbors and relatives, you don't get to visit with enough, because we're all so busy

Here's a few more pix from this thoroughly enjoyable evening:

[thanks to Henry and Christina for these great photos]

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

Thanks to these and all the other lovely friends and family members, and also thanks to those who weren't able to be there. Having so many people to be fond of certainly more than makes up for the down-sides of being so ancient.

The party's location means the "little miracle" and that's a wonderfully apt description of each and every one of these precious friendships!

¡Muchas gracias, mis amigos!

Early birds

I've started seeing some new shades of green around town, especially noticeable on a cloudy day like today. Yep, the trees that leaf out early in the spring—ash is perhaps the most likely to jump the gun—have suddenly become very industrious. But their more cautious cousins won't be far behind.

Some of the most spectacular early spring sights are courtesy of the flowering trees, and they're starting to put on their brief, but impressive, shows. Dogwoods are usually among the very earliest. They're more common further east, in the damper climes of the east Texas woodlands, but we do have a few around here, like this one busting out in front of the Olmos Dam. (This is one of the pictures I took about 10 days ago, part of a group I plan to use in a future post about this structure and its interesting history.)


Redbuds are much more common and I just noticed their splashy purplish pink blossoms for the first time today. This specimen is in Monte Vista on my way home from work. I need to enjoy these beauties while I can because they shed the lovely blooms much too quickly, and for the rest of the year aren't really very attractive trees (imho).

Speaking of Monte Vista, one of the streets that begins in that neighborhood is named after this spectacular flowering native tree, the huisache. The street runs as far west as where I found this specimen, although it's actually on a different thoroughfare. It looks awfully nice in bloom, but apparently on ranges it's something of a nuisance, as you can see if you follow the link to a "Brush Buster" website.


I'll try to keep my eyes open and my camera ready and bring some more signs of spring to the blog in upcoming days.

Workplace, sweet workplace

Not much blog-worthy has been happening this week, so I thought I'd use some photos I've taken and saved for such an occasion—a look around the place I work.

I've been a librarian at St. Mary's University for over 30 years (gee, I must be old!) and I've seen a lot of changes on the campus, most for the better. The Library's even changed its name in that time, and there has been lots of new building. The newest structure is the bell tower you can barely see on the right, the photo being taken on a very foggy morning a few weeks ago.

The tower is rather attractive, as such features go, and it was a particularly apt addition (although cosmetic and not exactly practical) to the campus since our alma mater—the words are carved on the tower's base, as you can see on the left—uses the tune from the 1945 Bing Crosby movie. [I haven't actually seen that movie, but remember in The Godfather when Michael learns his father's been shot, right after he and Kay have seen it—movie trivia tidbit!]

The university was established in 1852, but didn't move to its current location until later. The oldest building on campus is the one shown below on the right (in much different weather), St. Louis Hall, built in 1893. You can read more about St. Mary's history here.

The bell tower is about to be replaced as the newest structure, since they're putting the finishing touches (it looks like) on a snazzy new dorm that will be the largest we have (see picture below). It speaks to one of the biggest changes that I've seen here—lots more students want to live on campus now than when I started work here and the place was largely a commuter school.


Of course, although I do see the rest of campus periodically—working out and swimming in the gym, treating myself to a bought lunch in the cafeteria (they have great soup) and teaching/meeting occasionally in classrooms—my main abode here is the Blume Library. Fortunately, although it's a building that's starting to show its age (it was constructed in the big library building boom of the late 1960's) it's a very pleasant place to work. Not the least because of the wonderful windows around its perimeter, that afford me this nice view from my work area (nicer when the pecan trees are leafed out, which will happen in a month or so):

St. Mary's has been a good place to work—congenial colleagues, satisfying and rewarding labors [undertaken in a flexible, enlightened schedule that's given me the best of both mommy-and career-tracks], 3 semesters free tuition for my oldest [and all of the credits transferred when he was ready for someplace new], a year's worth of tuition exchange scholarship for the youngest to give her a taste of life outside of Texas, and, last but certainly not least, the opportunity for me to live in London for a semester at practically no cost.... I can think of worse places to spend 30 years!

Busy day along IH-35

It started out as a rather unremarkable Saturday. Promised spring-like temperatures led me to join Henry's paddling group on a short trip along the San Marcos River, but these boat trips are the rule, not the exception, most weekends. We started near Pecan Park and I took the nice shot at the right, of tree and water, from the bridge where I was doing what I always do to start these trips: waiting for the shuttle to the take-out point to return.

Those also serve who only wait for shuttles to return by guarding the boats and gear, some of which is pictured on the left at the low, narrow bridge. The somewhat busy roadway is so narrow here, in fact, that traffic each way has a stop sign to manage it—only one car can get across the bridge at a time.

Henry and I each kayaked today, since it was too windy for the canoe. In fact, there were a couple of stretches during the trip (mercifully they were short stretches) where I wasn't sure I could keep moving in the right direction, even with the current's help.

So how do we transport our boats to the river? There are several different options but yesterday we went with this one, shown on the right. Two kayaks in the minivan, with me sitting in the left-hand back seat. The picture was taken from that seat, looking out the usual passenger seat window.

[You can read about an unfamiliar sight along the river on—strange as it may seem—my London blog.]

The paddle was so short, we had most of the afternoon ahead of us when it finished. So we gave Sally a call in Austin. She had been unable to join us for the river trip because she had two indoor soccer games on her schedule for the day. San Marcos' proximity to Austin meant that we could scoot up there easily and watch her play. Since we visited a while with the paddling group after the take-out, we were in something of a hurry to reach the indoor soccer arena in Round Rock, north of Austin, and I only had time to take an iconic Austin photo out the car window.

[Actually, to be a truly iconic Austin shot, the cars wouldn't be moving but would be stopped in one of the city's typical, numerous and infuriating traffic jams. But the jam had come earlier than this far downtown this time.]

We had snacked rather heavily at our late lunch break on the river, and Sally didn't want to eat much between games, so instead of taking her to dinner she took us to Fry's electronics wonderland. She needed a new tv cable, we needed a new printer cable, and Henry had been making new computer noises a lot lately. (And they even have a little cafe in the store—necessary to keep the companions of serious shoppers like H happy—so we got a smoothie for a light dinner.)

To make a long story short, their prices are really good, and we don't have one of these stores in San Antonio, so we walked out of there (a little over an hour later) with two new cables and one new computer! The new machine is supposed to be Henry's but I hope I'll get to play with it occasionally.

Back to the soccer place in time to watch a really exciting game (the first one was just a scrimmage due to lack of showing up by the other team). It was really neat to get an unexpected visit with the little girl, and watching her play always brings back pleasant memories of many happy hours when she was younger and our schedules were totally framed by games and practices. I don't miss the hecticness of those days, but it was nice when family togetherness was so much easier (when kids weren't in Austin and Bolivia, that is!). Having adult children is a real treat when you can have little surprises with them like the way this day worked out.

Won't be long!

Until baseball season starts, for real, that is. I was reminded of its proximity when I left work this afternoon and heard some amplified sound coming from the side of campus where the baseball field is. There was a game going on!


Of course, the college season starts before the pros do, but pitchers and catchers for my beloved (and much maligned) Houston Astros will report to spring training a week from today. (You can count down to the minute with a gadget on the team home page!)

This year has the special added treat of the World Baseball Classic, which I think is 'way cool since I'm also a soccer fan. Soccer players at elite levels have played for both clubs and countries for ages, and it is so much fun to watch favorite players in different team surroundings. I can't help thinking it isn't too bad for international harmony either, but I guess that's debatable. 8-)

I also have some other special baseball plans on the drawing board for 2009. More about those later. For now, I'm just excited about the upcoming spring training and WBC games. Play ball!

Bare choirs soon to be singing

I did some much-needed yardwork today. My exceedingly vigorous antique rose bush—Old Blush—in conspiracy with some equally robust ruellia, was beginning to make a Sleeping Beauty Castle-type move on the back of our house.

And being out in intimate contact with this plant life (I've got the scratches to prove it!) got me to thinking about how soon spring will be here. It was especially obvious as I saw that some weeds have already started to move in on our front yard, in particular this nasty little number below on the left. It's fortunately easy to remove, but I was careful to wear gloves—its leaves are sticky and they secrete something that bothers. Can someone tell me the beasty's name?

But back to the trees, whose bare branches always remind me of the line from Shakepeare's Sonnet #73 that I borrowed for my title today. The shapely specimen at the top of the blog was next to my car in the parking lot at work today and I'm embarrassed to admit I can't remember what it looked like with leaves and can't identify it from its winter state. So I'll have to wait until it leafs out to tell you what it is.

The one below is easier, though, since it's in my front yard and I vividly remember when it was planted there, probably 20 years ago. It's a cedar elm and it will be looking especially lovely in a month or so when its leaves start to come out. Cedar elms and mesquite look so lacy in their new leaves; the sight of them is one of the things I look forward to most eagerly in the spring. (btw, my daughter-in-law noticed a colorful addition to this tree last month—it's just out of the frame here—and took a lovely picture of it for her blog.)


You can also tell that it won't be long before some of these bare branches will be bare no longer when you look at the ornamental pear tree in my neighbor's yard. It's one of our earlier leaf-ers and you can see the swelling of the leaf buds clearly already....


Of course some guys don't do the bare, ruined bit at all around here. On the left is a live oak, also in the parking lot, which just replenishes its leaves gradually throughout the year. And on the right is our Monterey oak, which loses its leaves almost all at once, not in the fall but in the spring, when they're pushed out by the new crew. Long after most folks on my block have stopped having do any raking, we always have a good bit to do when this guy does his spring leaf switch.

I'll be keeping a close eye on all the trees I photographed today and will try to catch them (and some others as I can) as they start to leaf into spring, and then when they're finally in their spring/summer finery in full. When not only are the sweet birds singing, but those sweet leaves are also there, blessing us with their priceless shade.