Yea for YakTrax!

A great invention for walking around in the ice (especially while watching the neighbor's cat slide around on it!). Too bad that the beauty of an ice storm has to come with so much danger!

Above is one of my fountain grasses (I wait until spring to cut them back--they provide such great winter interest). Below, see the frozen russian sage and rose of sharon. By tomorrow evening, the coating of ice should be gone...

Winter Interest

We haven't really had much of a winter this year (although whatever winter we do have seems to come during the morning rush hour), but the landscape is still stark. Maybe it seems even starker without a nice blanket of snow. Sigh. There is some good winter interest in the landscape, however. I hope you can see the color of the crab apple branches. Kind of matches the house ;)



And, the choke berry has berries, still.

We seem to be getting all the rain that we missed last summer, so the ground is quite saturated. I hope that doesn't leave all my bulbs rotten and dead. The next month or so should tell.

The Lonely Bird Feeder

Here is my new bird feeder. So far it has been up just under a week, but I have yet to see a bird at it. I hear birds, but they are not eating the seed. Maybe I need to move the feeder, but this is the same place where the birdbath gets regular visitors all summer long.

San Antonio

I visited San Antonio a couple weeks ago. Below are pictures of the Live Oak tree which was relocated to the site of the Alamo in 1914 (at the age of 40). Aside from its historic location, I found it interesting that the limbs all seem to bend toward the ground. I guess that is typical of the species? As you can see in the close-up, various supports have been placed to keep the tree from toppling over.

Here is an artist's rendering of the same tree.