Birds....I finally have birds.....

Late Monday afternoon we got my birds!! Three of them. How exciting!! They are ring neck doves, probably mixed with white doves. I want a pair of the all white doves but they didn't have any young ones. Will check back later to see if they have hatched any new ones.

No names yet. We don't even know if they are male or female.
I try to go in the cage a few minutes every day to get them accustomed to me. I can't wait until they start cooing......
The cat made me so mad. She was so excited when we let the birds lose in the pen. She just knew we had brought her "dinner". She watched for quite a while, in her crouching stance, and I would spray her with the water hose when she got real close. At one point when I was sweeping, I heard a commotion and found the cat hanging on the cage mid way up, causing the birds to fly and thrash around. Needless to say, she got a good dousing with water. Next she climbed the tree beside the cage, and got up on the roof, trying to figure a way to get in. Now, thankfully, she doesn't pay attention to them. I guess she figured it was futile to waste her time when she couldn't get into the cage. She lays in wait at my wild bird feeders, where she has a little better chance of success.

Silly cat

This is our cat, Kitty. She likes to sleep on the swing.

Charley

We stopped in Round Rock on our way home and visited with Samantha, Brandon, and Charley.

Charley is growing so much!!

I don't blame her, I wouldn't look at me either with a cap covering my "helmet hair".
We spent a few hours with them and headed for home.

Saturday

Saturday morning we headed into Fredericksburg, even though the weather was threatening rain. And imagine that I found flowers to take a picture of.

We ate lunch at a restaurant called The Auslander. We have eaten there several times before. We got some really good fried mushrooms and a sausage/kraut plate. We were in a German town, after all.....

Just noticed, hope this guy is pointing at something.....I think he is using his pointer finger....
The rain did come and kept us moving from awning to awning, store to store. Saturday night, some other friends from high school were in town on their bike and we all went to dinner together. It was a great time of visiting and lots of laughter.

We had some issues on the way home, Morgan called them "adventures". But at the time, you aren't exactly thinking that. We got into the Pedernales State Park and found that we had a flat front tire. When we used the on-board air compressor on the bike, it ran the battery down. Luckily, we found a good Samaritan in the park that jumped it off for us. Needless to say, at that point, I don't think either of us enjoyed the pretty scenery on the way out of the park. We were just wanting to get out and to civilization in case we had more problems. Put a can of stop-leak stuff in the front tire so that took care of that "adventure".
This is the view from a lookout point before we started into the park.

Wildseed Farm

I thought this was called the Wildflower Farm but I guess maybe the name has changed. It is just a hop, skip, and jump from the peach orchard. We have passed it many times but this was our first visit.

This rooster was in the gift shop. It is made entirely from dried peppers. Kinda neat.

Love these colorful pots.

There were several waterfalls.....

....and a butterfly house.....

I don't know that I have ever seen an orange rose.

This is one of the fields that stays planted with some type of blooming flower, along the road that leads to the farm. I don't remember what this purple flower was but it was a very pretty sight driving up.

More color.

I really enjoyed visiting this wildflower farm and asked Greg if he thought they would mind if I just lived there. I could have stayed for hours. Greg was very nice to tolerate going with me. Although he did perk up a bit when he saw the butterfly house, thinking about his science class at school.

Stuff

Susan has some neat stuff in her flower beds.

Dinnertime

The store stays open until 6, and Dan is usually pretty tired so we decided to just grill our dinner the first night, Friday. He had bought a couple of T-bones, chicken, and some jalapeno poppers, we took some Zab sausage, and we finished off with corn on the cob, baked potatoes, and squash.

Greg really wants to build a grill like this. Not only is it a fire pit, but can be cooked over as well. And when the fire flares, the grill can just be moved over and away from the fire until it settles down.
Dan took his turn at putting bbq sauce on the chicken.
We ate at the picnic table but about mid-way through dinner, it appeared we would get rained on so we moved the table under the patio just in time. It was a great dinner with lots of good food, good wine, and good friends.

The life of a farmer

Fredericksburg is known for its peaches. But this year, the late freeze got nearly every peach in the area. Our friends' house is smack dab in the middle of their peach orchard, also surrounded by their huge veggie garden. This is some type of purple lettuce.

Lots of tomatoes that aren't quite ready yet.
The store not only sells all sorts of veggetables and fruit, but baked goods, jellies, relishes, pickles, and fresh eggs. Guadalupe is the baker. He does an excellent job!! I bought a loaf of this wheat bread and it was WONDERFUL!! It was gone within two days and Morgan says she is ready for more!!
The strawberry strudels looked good. I donated mine to Morgan. But I did eat an apple turnover that was to die for.

This peach pie had just come out of the oven. Yum!!

Since the tomatoes aren't quite ready at the farm, Dan has been driving to the market in San Antonio every morning to pick up fresh produce to sell. I hadn't been at the store an hour before I had to have a tomato. This is the "cull" box, meaning the tomatoes that have been pulled because they either had a bad spot on them or were bruised. They use them to make salsa. I grabbed one, sliced it with a knife, found some salt and pepper, and was in tomato heaven!!

Road trip

We spent the Memorial weekend in Fredericksburg again. There was a threat of rain but on Friday when we left, it was really nice. The roadsides were full of things to see. Lots of hay in this field.

Some type of grain ready to cut.

Field corn

Lots of wildflowers.

We arrived at our destination shortly after noon.

Another picture of the suspension bridge

Spring Concert

Baylor was the site for Morgan's spring band concert. It is really a beautiful campus.

The Ferrell Center is the dome in the background where the Baylor men and women play basketball.....you know, the games that I will be going to next season......did I mention that I was given tickets for the women's home games?????

I am assuming these are connected to some pipe organ somewhere, although I didn't see it.
The concert was excellent!!

Memorial Day

Hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday!!

Wild flowers

I am not sure but I think that Texas may be one of the prettiest wildflower states. Lady Bird Johnson made sure of that many years ago along the public roadways. These are growing at the end of our street. I think they are called "black eyed Susans".....maybe.....

We are having BIG internet problems at our house. I will post more pictures later of wildflowers from this weekend but may have to do it from work.

Grillin'

Got an awesome JenAir grill off of Craig's list last week. Monday night, we piled it full of food. If you are gonna create all that heat you may as well fill it full. We had boneless beef ribs, seasoned pork loin, chicken quarters, corn on the cob, and some stuffed jalapenos. The grill, and Greg the griller, did a great job!!

If you have never grilled corn on the cob, you don't know what you are missing!! It will spoil you to boiling or steaming your corn, believe me. The next night, I made skewers of zucchini, mushrooms, onion, and pineapple chunks, plus steaming more squash in foil, and heated the twice baked potatoes that I had made, to go along with the leftover meat. I also made a skewer of pineapple chunks and apple slices. Not bad. Next time I will melt some butter and put some cinnamon in it to brush on the fruit.

When the rain stopped......

When the rain finally subsided, it was so nice outside that we decided to try out the new wagon. Jonathan didn't complain.

He was just taking it all in. Rain left lots of water in the ditch. Don't know what this silly face is all about. I love this wagon. It was a great purchase, new and not from Craigs.

We had turned around and were heading back home. Think Papa had had enough and could hear our take-out Chinese food calling him.....

Not sure how old a toy has to be to be an antique but this little Fisher Price wagon belonged to my boys. It has got to be 30 years old and still in good shape. I have lots of their toys in the attic for later. As the only girl, Charley will have to tolerate GI Joe, He-Man, Ninja Turtles, Tonka trucks, Star Wars, and Legos, among other things that I have totally forgotten about that are stored away.

Jonathan is now crawling. No longer doing the paraplegic army crawl. And boy, can he move fast!!