A good spring for flowers

It's really amazing what happens when we get adequate rainfall! I've been very impressed on my morning walks (which I can take every day now!) with the profusion of blooms in the neighborhood this year.

Our wonderful crape myrtles are reliable bloomers even when moisture is scarce. But they seem to have responded especially well to the recent rains and are outdoing themselves. The tree above and on the right is a few blocks away, on my generic walking route. What a treat, to have such sights so easy to hand.

Going through my photos from the past couple of months, I found good snaps further afield as well. Here are some that especially caught my eye, from far and near...

a lovely exotic on the St. Mary's campus...can anyone tell me what it is?

another lovely I can't identify...on the Trinity campus

yet another mystery...there are lots of these little lilies all over...this was at Trinity

sunflower on a neighborhood walk

oodles of lantana everywhere...these are on the beautifully-maintained Trinity campus

lots of yards in the neighborhood like these showy Pride of Barbados

one of my neighbors has this delightful bit of wild meadow in their lawn

I'm not much of a gardener, but even my poor yard has given us some floral bounty. I've never seen this many blooms on my white althea...

please ignore trim that badly needs to be painted

so pretty!

...and it's been a few years since we've had blooms on these severely-neglected day-lilies...

I'll close with a very unusual "flower" that I've seen all over the neighborhood, although not on our own sago palms. (They might not get enough sunlight to be able to produce these amazing cones.) Impressive, eh?

Wordless Wednesday: so I guess this is a thing?

It's getting real...

...retirement, that is.

What once seemed comfortably in the future has all of a sudden moved to just around the corner. In fact, in a few days I'll have single digit workdays left!

And I've had not one, but two fine retirement parties...so I guess it must really be happening. The lovely flowers shown above are from the university-wide celebration for all the retiring faculty. It was very nice, and in addition to getting to take home some of the floral decorations, I was given this wonderful watercolor by Bro. Cletus Behlman, the University's talented and prolific artist in residence:

It shows the distinctive main administration building and is now proudly on display in our downstairs powder room, where we've had another of his paintings for some time.

But a more special party was thrown by my wonderful colleagues on Friday. Look at these great decorations (and decorative eats)—a perfect sendoff for a government information librarian.

Here's a closeup of the cake, "painted" by our own cake-artist-in-residence:

Even the cupcakes sported stars and bars!

We had to have the party now since several of my co-workers will be on vacation the rest of the

month, but I'll be working thru May 31.

I have a lot of old emails and documents to sort through, I need to do some final tidying-up of our tangible collection, and I want to go over my research guides again to catch anything that needs updating.

Since they are not replacing my position, my work is being divided up among several of my colleagues, and I want to leave things as shipshape-and-Bristol-fashion for them as I can.

That's the least I can do for this group of friends who went to so much trouble for this great party!

Wordless Wednesday: the heart of early music

Springin' out all over

Spring often takes us by surprise around here. But it's pretty hard to ignore. Not only do you start thinking about putting away the sweaters and bringing out the shorts, but you have these colorful reminders all over town...

another briefly-blooming redbud...this one on campus

campus redbud in the foreground

our neigbor's lovely ornamental pear

bottlebrushes just getting brushy

new blooms on campus yuccas

baby pine cones

One of the star performers every spring is the Texas mountain laurel. They spread their purple blossoms and grape-kool-aid aroma all over town.

But just to show that no matter how many springs you see, they can still teach you something, I happened to notice this mountain laurel variation on the grounds of the aptly-named Laurel Heights Methodist Church, near where I catch the bus each morning...

It's undoubtedly a mountain laurel, albeit with white blossoms. And if Silicon Valley would get on the stick and invent an HTML tag for smells, you'd see that it perfumes the air with the same scent as if it had grape-colored flowers. How about that?!

Here are some of the more common variants...

one of the church's more conventional trees

a particularly rich crop of blooms, across the street from the church

close-up of a specimen down the street

an Olmos Park example

Some of these beauties don't hang around too long, so you need to appreciate them when you see them. A good life lesson, eh?

Wordless Wednesday: invasion of the office chairs!

Wordless Wednesday: another bumper crop

Wordless Wednesday: School colors

Wordless Wednesday: new growth

Glories of spring

I would put Texas' state flower up against any other. Especially as a herald of spring. And especially this year, when our wetter-than-usual winter is resulting in a bumper crop of blooms of all kinds, all over town.

The yard above is one that I pass twice a day on my way to and from the bus stop. Isn't their mix of colors a delightful one?

I also pass a rose bush with spectacularly-smelling blooms. It's just inside the fence delineating the University boundary. I can't go by, even if I'm running a little late, without taking a whiff of beauties like this...

Gorgeous to look at, too, right?

Here's more roses, this time in front of an apartment building near where I park to catch the bus:

Not as fragrant, but pretty flashy!

Further up the path from the rose bush, between the street and the science building on campus, are these handsome guys:

And next to the Library's patio, this hawthorne is trying to break some kind of bloom record:

For just a brief moment, though, flowers aren't the only vegetation worth watching on the campus.

Other trees might be more stately, or noble-looking, and might provide more shade. But for a few days in the spring, I submit that there is no more lovely tree than the lowly mesquite...

Several of these lacy beauties grace my path to the edge of campus, and they've just taken my breath away this week...

Here's a close-up of the leaf growth that makes these delicate natural sculptures:

Before long, they'll have matured out of their bright spring green and somehow just won't look as striking. So I'm trying to enjoy them as much as I can in their early finery. Hope you do, too!

Wordless Wednesday: it must be spring!

New England in south Texas

Thanks to an early cold (for us) snap, we are enjoying one of our best color autumns in years! Here's a sample from around the area, for your enjoyment...

at the end of my street

I swear I don't remember some of the trees that are spectacular this year ever being colorful at all before! A good example is the guy above. I'm not even sure what kind of tree this is...never having noticed it before.

one of our front yard trees

The cedar elms in our front yard are always nice, but seem to have a little extra punch this year...

...as do these beauties at St. Mary's...

next to St. Louis Hall

at the front parking lot

Not just San Antonio, but the whole area, is experiencing a peak color season...

looking up in an Austin back yard (note the half-moon)

reflections in the San Marcos River

These may not seem like much to our friends and family in the far northeast, but for us they're pretty special!