Nature
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Have had over 2 inches of rain overnight. Slow, steady kinda rain. Rain all day. The best of what nature has to offer. Making Hershey's kisses peanut butter cookies to warm up the kitchen. Today's picture is of a small collection of arrow points, knives, scrapers, and flint pieces used in various ways that we unearthed when Mike and the girls and I dug trenches everywhere around the perimeter of our house to put in irrigation. We dug, dumped the dirt in buckets and hauled them to the sifter to run it through and inspect what was left for artifacts. Was gruling work for us girls but we found so many fossils, pottery pieces and rocks that I would take to work with me. There was an attorney I worked with that had a secondary degree in archeology and could look at one of my pieces and tell me what period it was from and how old and what it was used for. He always looked forward to seeing me after a weekend of work. The developer of our subdivision owned 20,000 acres back in the 50s and ran it as a ranch for cattle. We still have one of the loading banks they used and there are still insulators in the trees where they first ran electricty. He told me a lot of history and that they had pretty much excavated all the indian mounds around here and I saw some of his best arrow points. I have a perfect one that Mike and I found while digging at the University of Texas site right before they were going to lose it to sewer pipe trenching for a new subdivision. It's over 6,000 years old and Mike found a sea pod that is over 11 million years old per the attorney. I walk down by the lake when it's low and can find all kinds of fossils. I am a sucker for hauling home more rocks that you can imagine. I put them in the pots when replanting and even have an old aquariam that I filled with all my rocks. I would love to get a metal detector as there is a place where I found an old foundation of a cabin off in my property across the street from our house.
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Hey, those aren't cookies!
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Now those look like cookies!
mmm. -
@rockchalkjayhawk looks like u took a bite out of the 2nd one on the bottom rt. Hmm
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@crimsonblu22 said in Nature:
@rockchalkjayhawk looks like u took a bite out of the 2nd one on the bottom rt. Hmm
I wish!
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They were super crumbly when the girls took them off the pan after baking. Melt in your mouth crumbly. Yummmm.
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HAPPY EARTH DAY!!!!! I was a sophomore in high school in Leavenworth in 1970 when the first Earth Day was celebrated. I remember Robert Redford being a big part of this endeavor to wake people up about the connection we all have to making sure our planet is happy, healthy and keeping the environment rather than paving everything with asphalt and concrete. Robert used to vacation in Austin as a young boy and was in awe of the Barton Springs pool, which is fed by a natural spring. He narrated a documentary on it and the activists that were demanding construction be limited at the Spring's beginning started a years long fight by the Citizens of Austin to protest the development upstream by a "less than caring individual", Jim Bob Moffat, who with all his money thought he could rape the land to gain a profit. At a City Hall hearing that went on for over 24 hours, the City of Austin denied his development permit and the Springs were saved. From time to time they have to close it due to runoff from the other developments that were allowed upstream and it is a never ending fight to keep the Springs healthy. It's a constant 68 degrees and people swim in it year round, even in winter, and it is a shock to your system when you jump in on a 100 degree day! There is a salamander that is on the threatened species list and a cave cricket that was also found and were able to declare it a federally protected habitat. One of our clients owned a 2,700 acre ranch where the headwaters for Barton Springs began and I got to help the ranch owners protect their land with conservation easements with the City of Austin and The Nature Conservancy, whereby their land will never be sold for commercial development and is monitored yearly for control burns, hunting, grazing and wildflower restoration. Each year this family had an open house and Mike and I went to several, which included hiking to the beginning of the Springs and seeing the flora and fauna. Just breathtaking. We all can do our part to keep what we have before it is too late. That's why I plant so many polinator flowers. My wild sunflowers are a haven for the migrating Monarchs and this year I didn't even pull up the dandelions because before all the spring flowers have bloomed, the dandelion is one of the few plants out there when the bees need it the most.
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I lived in Austin in 1978 and visited Barton Springs regularly. It had absolutely nothing to do with the girls that would frequently sunbathe topless.
My reputation as an a-hole wasn't helped by the fact that I would tell out of town visitors that Barton Springs was Texas' only natural hot springs.
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Today's photo typifies the gloominess around me. This is the spot near the foundation I think I found. It's thick with cedar. This is called a "bulbous". Cambridge Dictionary shows it as an adjective: Protruding and sticking out in a rounded shape. Classic depiction if I don't say so myself.
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Had to run to town today to get more bird seed. Today's picture shows how many birds were all waiting their turn on a very rare, icy, and snowy morning back in late January.
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Lots and lots of cardinals...do they elect a pope?
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Today's picture is of a green tree frog that I find in my plants when watering. They especially like the palm trees. Swaying on the wind.
I have a wren who has built in a nest in one of my mother-in-law tongue plants and for the second time when watering, she flew out of the nest and brushed right past me above my shoulder. I could hear the flutter of her wings. Mental note to stand further aside when watering!
#RCJH GO KU
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@RockChalkinTexas-0 adorbs!
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@RockChalkinTexas-0 Love these posts! Must be fun every day. We have 2 hummingbird feeders in the gardens around our patio. Those little zoom demons go buzzing by us all the time! In cartoons, we would be spinning like tops while they dart back and forth from one feeder to the other.
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@mayjay Glad everyone is enjoying. I want to see some of you guy's photos though. It gives me a break from all the craziness in our world. The girls and I watched better than a dozen hummers last night before I put their feeders away. I have stood near where they feed holding a feeder in my hand and extending my arm and they will come to me and feed. I can really hear the buzzing when doing that. Last night Hattie was laying on the bench watching us watch the hummers.
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@RockChalkinTexas-0 I wanted to add some pics but couldn't find a link to add a pcture. In ages past, it was in the part of the menu bar accessed by scrolling to the right. Linking text or a url doesn't work because my pics are neither, just jpg's on my phone.
Am I missing something, @approxinfinity ? 🤨
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@RockChalkinTexas-0 I wanted to add some pics but couldn't find a link to add a pcture. In ages past, it was in the part of the menu bar accessed by scrolling to the right. Linking text or a url doesn't work because my pics are neither, just jpg's on my phone.
Am I missing something, @approxinfinity ? 🤨
When you are composing your words, look below the box and you will see a "download" icon. Click on that and then go your photo, hit copy and then go back and paste it in. Easy Peasy!!!!
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Thanks so much! I'll look for some pictures and give it a try. Got an irrigation assignment now from my wife, the Master Gardener. (I guess that's how she learned that Lantana won't water itself!)
