Plans for now

We are very excited, because Eva's parents are coming to the United States and to Canada! So we are making plans to meet them!

Fernando and Eva will be attending a Primatology conference in San Diego. Rebeca and Jason plan on meeting them there in San Diego to spend a few days with them. After the conference, Fernando and Eva will drive to Las Vegas, which is where Eva's parents will be flying.  From there, all of them will drive up to Yellowstone, and that is where WE are making plans to meet up with them. The plan is to spend several days in Yellowstone, and then for all of us to drive on to Calgary together.

Guillermo and I had been doing a little studying of Swedish over the years, but now we are really getting serious about at least building up our vocabulary a little more.
Guillermo och jag studerar svenska! Den ar svar. :-)

And more 100's

The forecast for tomorrow is 102, and it will surely hit that. That will make 11 days in a row with a high of 100 degrees or higher. The forecast for Monday is 103!!! It's been brutal lately.

Yesterday we met some friends for lunch and got stuck in a terrible traffic jam on Loop 410. Fortunately, the accident wasn't TOO far from where we all started coming to a crawl, but it's interesting seeing how 5 lanes of traffic coordinate their movements to get into one single lane past the accident site. We were lucky, because at least there still was one lane open. We got to our friends 30 minutes late, but had a good lunch with them anyway.

Father's Day

Yesterday was Father's Day, and we spent it relaxing here at home. Guillermo was king for the day, and I made him a special dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, salad, green beans and a peach pie.
Here are some pictures of the beautiful combination of colors that we see everyday by our driveway. It is so amazing and we just love looking at all the pretty plants. Even with the dry weather, they seem to be thriving with just "hose water".

100 degree day highs

It's been pretty rough around here in the afternoons, with the temperature reaching 100 degrees, sometimes 102, for the last several days. We still have not had any rain, and the forecast says there is no rain in sight for several weeks. It is starting to get worrisome. Our day to water is Wednesday, so we'll try to get out there early morning or late evening to give the grass a LITTLE water.

The things we can water by hand still look decent, they're hanging on as best they can.

Remember the sunflower pictures we posted a while back, well, here is Guillermo with that same sunflower now, in a different stage. Starting to grow the seeds. It is so big, that it hangs halfway down to the ground.

And here is another sunflower in the garden, it is a fairly new one. It still looks nice and fresh.
This is the kind of bounty that has been coming into our house regularly. In this picture are 7 different kinds of beans that Guillermo grew. Every single one of them tastes delicious!

Back in the Hill Country

33 years ago, Guillermo and I were taking many trips out into the hill country. There was nothing we liked better than driving together on the little country roads, listening to Neil Diamond's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" and seeing what wildlife we could see.
So, every year, on June 12, we remember those times way back then, and the last few years we have actually started going BACK to the hill country on that date. We drive the same routes we used to take to Blanco and always visit Tejas Trails, which back then was a nice place for us to access the Blanco River. That is totally out of the question now, as it is all fenced off. We are grateful it wasn't back then.

This year, we went back through Blanco, stopped by Tejas Trails and stopped in at a Lavender Farm to see what they had. We then drove on to Wimberley, hoping to stay in the same lodge we stayed at during Thanksgiving. But the minute we entered their parking lot, we knew it was hopeless and sure enough, there was no vacancy. So, they directed us to the Wimberley Inn, which is where we stayed. Our room was bigger than we needed, but it was very nice, and COLD, which was wonderful since the weather was so hot and humid. We loved the grounds at this inn, and after having a nice dinner at Ino'z in downtown Wimberley, we walked around in the woods there at the Wimberley Inn. We saw several deer and lots of cardinals.

The grounds at the Wimberly Inn

This was outside our room.

This is the view of Cypress Creek from our table when we were eating at Ino'z.

There were LOTS of bikers in Wimberley, and from watching the news later, we figured it was because Robbie Knievel was going to do a big jump in Austin Friday evening.

The next day, we had a late breakfast at the Wimberley Cafe and then took as many backroads as we could back to San Antonio. The most interesting road was one off of 281. The map said the road was Urschel Rd., but we never found that, instead turning on a road named Spring Branch Rd, since it was in the same area on the map that Urschel Rd. should have been. After a while, we realized we were on the right road, so they must have renamed it. It was a little road, and we accidently got off of it at one point, because the road seemed to veer left, but we didn't know it at the time, that it changed into a new road at that point.
So we went back to where it curved and realized that Spring Branch Rd. actually continued on straight onto a dirt road, and was NOW named Urschel Rd. It wasn't a very friendly road at that point, because it seemed to be the entrance gate to a ranch. But we pressed on. So, now we are on a dirt road, and pretty soon we come upon a gate across the road. Nowhere on the gate did it say no trespassing, all it said was to close the gate behind you. So, we opened it and went through. We passed three more gates like this, the last one actually with a No Trespassing sign on it. But no matter, we drove on through.
We loved that little road, and it took us right to where the map said it would. We didn't see much on this trip - we saw one wild Turkey and a few deer, but that's it. After leaving that little road, and getting back on a bigger highway, it didn't seem as interesting anymore, and we just drove straight home.

Spring Branch Creek from that little dirt road.

The plants in our yard were SUFFERING when we got home, so the first thing we had to do when we got back was water!

Our beautiful yard

The yard is looking so nice right now, even with hardly any rain. And we don't water the yard, only the plants. We love walking around outside in the early morning and evening. The mosquitoes are out, but not TOO bad yet.



The days are forecast to be close to 100 the next few days, so all the nice looking plants are probably going to start declining, especially with no rain water.

Happy Birthday, Guillermo!

Happy 67th Birthday to Guillermo today!!!

We had a nice breakfast with Eugene and Muriel, and after breakfast I fixed Guillermo his "birthday pie". Every year he gets a peach pie for his birthday - he favors that over any kind of cake. And the pie was ready before Eugene and Muriel had to take off. So we enjoyed pie and ice cream with them before they headed on to Tucson.


This is how Guillermo spent a good part of his birthday - talking to people calling to wish him a Happy Birthday! Notice the basket of garden vegetables in the background, fresh from the garden!

During this particular call he was talking to his brother, Alfred, and this picture shows him describing how big something was in the garden.

Guillermo's birthday meal.

Eugene and Muriel are here!

Guillermo's brother Eugene and his wife Muriel arrived here this afternoon. We enjoyed visiting with them, walking around in the garden and out in the field, and later had a great meal at Cha-Cha's to celebrate Guillermo's birthday (which is tomorrow).

Muriel, Eugene and Guillermo
Guillermo and Eugene eating beans straight off the plants.
Guillermo and Eugene looking at all the onions drying.

Eugene, Muriel and Guillermo

Linda's beautiful poster

Here is the beautiful poster that Linda put together for Aunt Elfi's memorial last Sunday.

She did a great job, and it's a very loving tribute to our aunt.

Missed photo opportunity

The plan today was to take Mom to her doctor appointment, then have lunch downtown at Schilo's and then take a river taxi to the newly opened section of the riverwalk. But since the day was forecast to be sunny and hot, we decided to just have lunch and skip taking the river taxi. The new section of the riverwalk would have been very interesting, there is even a section where the boat goes through locks!! Similar to the Panama Canal locks. There aren't many trees yet, though, in the new section, so it would have been a hot ride at that point.
So, I left the camera behind.
After lunch at Schilo's, we decided to take a little walk in the shady section of the riverwalk to Starbucks. Along the way, I pointed out to Mom and Guillermo the little shop where Martina loved to get a cookie, and the shop where she had fun looking for Western things. And right after that, we saw a most amazing thing on the banks of the riverwalk. A Yellow-Crowned Night Heron. Right there, not more than 6 feet from us! It was just enjoying life there on the river, with all the people walking right by it. It became a little more vigilant when it noticed that some people (us) had actually stopped and weren't moving on. We stood there for several minutes in awe of being so close to this beautiful bird. And oh how sorry I was that I had left the camera in the car. We couldn't have ASKED for a better opportunity to get some really good pictures. It just stood there, staring just as hard at us, as we were staring at it. Finally, we walked on, thinking how nice it was to have been able to see that heron so close up, and what a shame it was that we didn't have the camera with us.

These are pictures I took yesterday out in the yard.
The first picture shows Guillermo right after he moved the Bleeding Heart plant into the front yard and then a couple of pictures of the Bleeding Heart plant itself.



This is a beautiful zinnia growing in Guillermo's garden. It's a big one!
The sunflowers are starting to come out now.
This is for perspective. These sunflowers are huge!