[Nearly] Wordless Wednesday: Happiness is ...

... working a Christmas puzzle with your daughter

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night

When we were in Colorado this summer, actually all together for a few days, we took advantage to take our Christmas card picture. The "album cover" approach was the kids' idea, and since they usually don't like posing for these pix, I thought it best to go along. Left to right, we are: globe-trotting writer/son, myself, cat parent/daughter, globe-trotting artist/daughter-in-law, and kayaking spouse.

The setting is Upper Water Dog Lake, arrived at after a fairly long and strenuous (for me, anyway) hike along the Continental Divide. It's some of the most beautiful, and some of my favorite, scenery in the world, though, so it's worth the shortness of breath and aching feet.

And, being a location with so many pleasant associations for us, it's a fitting place to say this from:

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year !!

To all my kind readers

Wordless Wednesday: Peace on Earth

More fall/winter color

We are being treated to much more vibrant tree color than usual as the year winds down. I'm crediting the early freeze we had a few weeks ago.

Some winters we don't get a hard freeze at all, but when we do, it's almost always in January or February, when the mostly brownish leaves have already been blown off all the trees.

This year's earlier-than-usual cold temperatures [I assume] gave us the wonderful colors you can see here. Remember my Wordless Wednesday post last week? There are even more of those lovely ornamental pear leaves in our driveway now, as you can see at the left. The red ones must be the weaker cousins; almost all that's left now on the branches are the bright yellow ones. Who wants to sweep the driveway when you have a red carpet and a golden roof?! [with dark green trim from our Texas mountain laurel]

Yes, I know we need to fix our downspout

Here's another view of this gorgeous tree, planted by a dear neighbor who died of ALS several years ago. I think of her whenever I gaze at the tree, and I know she'd be pleased that it brings us, and the family that now live in her house, so much pleasure.


Even more glorious are the views from inside our house. It's like having the best wallpaper in the world, without the hassle!

from our bedroom window

from our newly painted guest room window

Some other showy trees round about town:

this row of Chinese pistache dress up our HEB parking lot

cedar elms between the Library & the University Center on campus

another pistache (?) across the street from us

yet another especially vibrant pistache outside my office window

And, finally, a reminder that we aren't in New England, no matter how the other photos look. Here's a palm outside the Library framing the lovely red oak in the background:

Wordless Wednesday: Holiday cheer is where you find it

[not intended to be a Folger's ad—
don't want to jeopardize amateur status]

¡Sábado gigante!

Well, maybe not exactly the atmosphere of the noisy, rather racy, Univision variety show. But I did have a lot of fun today the San Antonio Museum of Art's Bazar Sábado, a folk art Christmas market/fundraiser loaded with wonderful stuff. Mostly from Latin America.

You can get a taste of what's on offer in the picture at the right, which I snapped before the large crowds of customers invaded the bazaar.

Some friends just happen to be in charge of the jewelry counter and needed volunteers.

So....they asked me to be surrounded by cool jewelry, get to see lots of happy Christmas shoppers buying stuff they're thrilled to find, and know I'm helping a good cause....twist my arm!

Even though I'd already almost finished my Christmas shopping I couldn't resist buying just a little more. Next year I may wait for this cool event to do my shopping.

Wordless Wednesday: results of a windy Wednesday

Being thankful...

...for modern conveniences like thumb drives, that allow you to transport pictures from a non-internet-connected computer to one that is, so that blogging can be done, in spite of ongoing router issues.

---

...and also for our lovely Texas hill country, and for family hospitality, willing to share their little section of it!

Here is our daughter Sally, down from Austin for a Thanksgiving visit [for which we are also thankful!], holding the gate open for us to get to our relative's property at Diversion Lake. It's not far from town, but you know you're in the country when you can get scenery like this:
The small lake, just downstream from Medina Lake and Dam, is used to channel water to irrigation canals in the area. Due to our extremely dry summer, the lake level is quite low, and still going down, in spite of recent rain. But I'm sure the landowners in the area prefer that to the horrendous flooding that occurred a few years ago. When our relatives were very glad their house was as high above the lake as it is.

But there was enough water for my brother-in-law to take out his sailboard. However, the lack of wind was more of a problem. He did a lot of standing still on the board, and listening to ribbing from the shore about how "dangerous" the sport is. The paddle boat on the far shore in the background of the picture is one Sally took over with her cousins to walk in the nice woods on the other side of the lake. I was much too lazy for any of this activity and had a very enjoyable afternoon watching more energetic family members, eating, and taking in the scenery.

Things looked especially lovely as sunset approached:
Regular readers of this blog will know of my fondness for trees, wherever I am. And there are some really fabulous ones right outside the doors here:
One of the cypress trees shown in the photo above was displaying the outrageous color I highlighted in my most recent Wordless Wednesday post.

But, even though they leave the fall color spotlight to their more extroverted colleagues, you really can't beat live oaks for a basic structure that's pure poetry:

Something we can all be thankful for!

Please stand by

Either our router, or our modem, or both, have decided to stop serving our every whim, internet-connection-wise. We will attempt to rectify the situation soon, but in the meantime, since the internet is only at work and the photos are only at home, there will be a [hopefully brief] blog hiatus.

Wordless Wednesday: who sez we don't have fall color?