Easter biking

After a rather dreary and chilly Saturday, Easter Sunday here was sunny, breezy and beautiful. Great day for a short but strenuous bike ride, which I undertook just before lunch.

The strenuous part involves riding up to the highest point in our little municipality, the parklike hilltop you see below. Along the way I couldn't help stopping to take a picture of the normally rather ostentatious lawn ornament on the right in its Easter finery.


This pleasant greenspace is where the neighborhood celebrates the 4 of July, and, coming up soon, Fiesta. I'll be out of town for most of the Fiesta festivities, attending a librarians' meeting in Florida, but I'll try to post some images from this city-wide week-long party.

In the meantime, I got a little bit of exercise today, courtesy of my trusty steed—my dorky but comfortable bike, shown here in repose:

Sailing around the neighborhood under pedal power makes me feel like a little girl again, even though back in those days accessories like the lock and helmet you see here weren't missed or felt to be needed. I seem to be sounding more and more like an old fart these days. But, at any rate, Happy Easter!

...by any other name

I so wish I could embed a scratch-and-sniff app into the blog to duplicate the fragrance I experienced when passing this lovely gaggle of roses on the way to my car this afternoon:
Hey! why don't you guys at Google get busy on that?!

Anyway, it was amazing! This must be peak time for roses all over campus, as they are putting on quite a show. My two little bushes at home are also looking quite handsome. Quite ready, Mr. DeMille, for their close-up:

I was looking through my photo collection to see if there were other rose shots that I could use here and came across this one. It takes us back in time to January, soon after I returned from London, when no one had pruned the dears for over four months (not to disparage the stay-at-home spouse: rose-pruning was not on his list of chores). I had never seen so many hips in evidence before, since although I'm not an assiduous gardener I do keep the extremely robust Old Blush somewhat pruned, if only to keep it from taking over the yard. But I may have to let it go again this fall—the hips are almost as pretty as the blossoms!

---

Going back even further in time, 29 years ago today our little boy was born. What a wonderfully life-changing event that was! Think how much terrific travel writing I'd be missing out on if that had never happened. ¡Feliz cumpleaños, Hal!

Play-time

We're glad the unseasonably strong cool front that blew through here yesterday didn't come calling a few days earlier. The weather on Saturday was warm enough on the river to call for some voluntary splashing, although I didn't go so far as to take the kind of lunch-break swim that I'll want to during the summer. The water is still a little cool for that.

But we had a very pleasant afternoon paddle on the upper Guadalupe (this means upstream from Canyon Lake). Henry has more pictures on his blog, but I took my camera and managed to get a few nice shots. As I always am, I was impressed by the stately cypress trees all along the banks. Those you see on the left above were at our put-in point.

The lacy cypress leaves (needles?) were just coming out on a lot of the individuals along the route. Their shady canopy will be most welcome when summer really gets here and any bit of shade feels like a small blessing from on high. Here's the extent of their budding out as of Saturday:


The title of this post is a reference to Henry's newest toy, a trailer designed to haul several kayaks and/or canoes from home to put-in to take-out and back. He and a few of our paddling buddies had 'way too much fun arranging and securing the 6 boats we loaded up at Guadalupe River State Park, our take-out point, for transportation back to where their owners had left their cars. Boys and their toys! Always entertaining!


In this case also environmentally responsible, since we saved the planet some greenhouse emissions with fewer cars having to motor to the river. But if it wasn't fun, too, I doubt if they'd be doing it.

Wind & Weather

It was really windy yesterday. Real "whippin' up the waters in the bay"* weather. We don't have a bay handy but there were tiny whitecaps on Woodlawn Lake, which you don't see every day. I stopped on my way home from work to take this picture of the waves splashing over the little dam and you can see them in the background:


Here on the right is one of the palm trees by the lake with its fronds blowing every which way as well.

All the blowing was in conjunction with a cool front that is keeping our evening temperatures nice and cool, but it's warming up nicely enough during the day that I plan on kayaking with Henry on Saturday. And, unlike him and his friends, I don't do water sports when the mercury dips too low.

We'll have to see if the little rain we had a few days ago has made any difference in the river flow level. We had a brief morning thunderstorm but very little moisture came from it, I'm afraid. However, when the morning sun peaked through the dark clouds briefly and shone on St. Mary's administration building, it was just too pretty not to snap a photo. Especially as I was in perfect position in the parking lot to see it, just having arrived for work.

*this is the way I remember the words (although the links I found have different words than "whippin'"), from when we sang this song in 7th grade girls choir. Please don't ask me why I remember these lyrics but often have trouble with the location of the keys or my cell phone. Just one of life's little mysteries.

Less news is bad news

I freaked out when I saw the paper yesterday morning (and not just because of the bad Spurs headline—unfortunately I already knew about that second loss to the lowly Thunder in as many weeks). At first I thought it might be an April Fools joke, but, alas, today's paper was just as tiny. Here's a picture of Wednesday's sports section on our dining room table, next to Tuesday's business section.

Our Express-News has been getting lighter lately, and I knew they had just laid off a boatload of writers not too long ago. But I was not ready for the new comic-book sized (or that's what it seems like) format. I agree it doesn't look like much difference in the picture, but it really feels different as you hold it above the breakfast cereal. An important consequence of the trimming has been a complete reorganization of the comics page—this is a very big deal!

There's news everywhere (and not just in print) about the hard times facing the ink-on-paper media industry (if you missed this clever April Fools story, you might enjoy it, but there is a very uncomfortable truth beneath the humor). But this is really hitting home!

How much longer before the paper disappears, altogether, like the Cheshire cat?

Pantries need filling

My blog-buddy over at JAPRA* is publicizing this laudable effort, a play on tomorrow's holiday status: not April Fools, but April Food Day. And I'm happy to participate. The cause is inspired by a shortfall at a lot of food banks and other similar organizations, as they're hit with the perfect storm of more needy patrons and fewer donations, given the sad state of the nation's finances.

Get in the swing of April Food Day and make a donation to your local food bank. Ours is here. Or here is the national organization Feeding America, which used to be called Second Harvest.

---

*to see what the acronym stands for, click on the link and get acquainted with one of the best little corners of the blogosphere.

No lambs yet sighted

Fortunately here in South Texas we don't ever put either shorts or coats into too deep storage. You never know when you'll need one or the other. For every few Christmases celebrated in shorts and tank tops, there are a few late spring mornings like today, when I had to pull my London-bought coat out of the closet. Never thought I'd be wearing it again before next November! (the scarf is also a London purchase—a bargain for a £ on the street in East London!)

We got down to the 40's last night and are forecast to reach 34 tonight! Not that I'm complaining. The longer we can put off the nights when it doesn't get much below 90, the better. Although our neighbors in Amarillo might disagree.

But what's that I remember about March going out like a lamb?!