The current cross stitch work-in-progress–Charles Wysocki’s “Quilts for Sale”–has slowed a bit because the chart isn’t quite accurate and I’ve had to make some fairly major adjustments. This happens, when the pattern maker uses software to convert a painting or photograph. Artificial intelligence (in whatever form) makes mistakes. Takes a human eye to spot them […]

The pyracantha is especially beautiful this spring, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Here’s a bee, gathering pollen from this prolific early bloomer to take back to feed her friends and ensure the continuation of the hive, at the same time that  she helps to ensure that the blossoms will produce those […]

Well, bluebonnets, of course. And pyracantha, yellow Missouri primrose, daffodils, paintbrush, Texas mountain laurel, redbuds, dogwood, and more. Late March and early April paint the Hill Country with lovely swathes of color, before summer blasts through and turns everything brown. These are among my favorite days of the year here at Meadow Knoll, where the […]

Here we are, almost the middle of March–how does this happen? Is it a function of being immersed in something so deeply that time telescopes in the doing? Or of keeping busy with too many tasks? Or of too many events in our world, too readily reported to us, too many to keep straight? Or […]

                          This Sunday morning’s email pulled me into one of those magical moments that a benevolent Universe brings us every now and then, and I wanted to share it with you. I opened my email to find that a reader named Janine Seitz […]

Weird photo. If you can’t quite make it out, you’re looking at bugs on prickly pear cactus, in a bucket. The white stuff is the cottony shroud that the bugs–rice-size scale insects called cochineal–produce to hide their babies from predators. Bill, who had gone out armed with his mattock to make war on the invasive […]

We’re finally getting a reprieve from the long string of brutal 100-plus degree-days that plagued us this summer. The hummingbirds are migrating south now, this one enjoying the turk’s cap, one of my favorite Texas natives. (Photo: my brother, John Webber). But nectar flowers aren’t plentiful in September, so we keep refilling the bottles of […]

We’re used to the midsummer heat here in Texas, but this year has been brutal–the highest temperatures ever recorded (108 in Austin, 111 on our north-facing back deck) and a record-breaking string of 100-degree days that began in June and continues into July. Severe drought here, too–everything is tinder-dry. I usually have a collection of […]