Category Archives: Texana

Tracking Victorio

Posted on March 26, 2009 | Comments Off on Tracking Victorio

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 You’ve heard of Geronimo, no doubt. How about Victorio? The black troops of the 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry and the 24th and 25th U.S. Infantry regiments, tracked the Apache chieftain and his band of maurauders across West Texas in 1880. They even followed them across the border into Mexico where he was finally cornered with the help of the Mexican Army who slew him and his band. You probably seldom hear about it because it is not the PC version of the oppressive white man and the peace-loving, in-harmony-with-nature American Indian and his black and brown fellow sufferers. History is more complicated than that.

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Posted in Texana

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Bluebonnets!

Posted on March 23, 2009 | Comments Off on Bluebonnets!

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They’re abundantly available, after all, just farther east than we’re used to. This shot was taken by a friend who lives out near Washington-on-the-Brazos.

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Posted in Texana

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Warm days, cool nights

Posted on March 23, 2009 | Comments Off on Warm days, cool nights

These are the days of spring in Central Texas, and one only wishes they would last all year. With what little rain we’ve had so far, alas, the ditches along the highways aren’t filling with the usual red, yellow and pink flowers, and bluebonnets have hardly made an appearance and probably won’t be abundant in any case. And the scorching days are coming. You can feel them when the early evening hours are still hovering around seventy-five degrees, before the natural dip back into the low sixties.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

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We fly off to D.C.

Posted on March 13, 2009 | Comments Off on We fly off to D.C.

We’re leaving the rancho this afternoon to fly to D.C. for a week of family reunion before the family there moves to Tyler and we’re no longer able to save money on a hotel. Weren’t able to get into the Spring Break mob converging on the Capitol and the White House. But we have plenty else to see and do, including visiting Mr. B.’s paternal grandfather’s grave in Arlington and, hopefully, catch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

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Posted in Genealogy, Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana

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Let the flooding begin

Posted on March 12, 2009 | Comments Off on Let the flooding begin

We’re under a flood advisory from the Austin-San Antonio office of the National Weather Service :

"AT 644 AM CDT MODERATE TO HEAVY RAINS WERE FALLING AT RATES
APPROACHING AN INCH AN HOUR.  RAINFALL FROM YESTERDAY AND OVERNIGHT
HAS BEGUN TO SATURATE THE SOIL AND AREA CREEKS ARE RESPONDING.
PERIODS OF HEAVY RAINFALL THIS MORNING WILL RESULT IN MORE RUNOFF."

LCRA Hydrologic gauges around Austin show almost two inches of rain at many spots in the past forty-eight hours. (Three to four inches seems to be the norm out in the hills.) And more rain is forecast through Saturday. Remains to be seen if this is the big one. But our droughts almost always end with floods.

MORE:  We’re unlikely, however, to get anywhere near the fifteen to eighteen inches we’d need to permanently end the drought, according to KVUE meteorologist Mark Murray. It will help green things up for spring.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Fall all over again

Posted on March 10, 2009 | Comments Off on Fall all over again

It sounds like rain, the rain we’re not getting in the long standing drought, the sound of the oak leaves hammering the shingles on the ranch house at night. In the day, the metaphor changes to a blizzard of leaves flung on the wind. One of the drawbacks of life in Central Texas–our second fall, when the oaks drop their old leaves and dress in new ones, is normal. They are a mess to clean up. A bigger mess, even, than in the official "fall," because we have so many more oaks than other kinds of trees.

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Posted in Texana

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Tarantula

Posted on March 8, 2009 | Comments Off on Tarantula

Add the tarantula to the rancho’s indigenous species. Mrs. Charm saw a black one last night on the patio with a body about four inches long. It had just walked up out of the flower bed. She reached for a dust pan to smack it with but the attached broom fell down and the tarantula reacted to the noise by scurrying back into the bed.

So we looked them up on the Web and she was consoled to learn that they are rarely harmful to people and not aggressive–unless you’re a mouse, a lizard or a small bird. They’re even sold as exotic pets. In six years we’d never seen one in the back forty. Although the pool guy did report fishing a dead one out a few months ago, probably looking for a drink in the drought and apparently done in by the chlorine. I’ll have to be more careful pulling weeds in the future. I was already on the alert for snakes coming out in the spring warmth.

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Posted in Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana

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