mumby road

  • Willie

    Happy Birthday to this fine fellow.

  • Julie Davis (Austin, TX)
    Oil painting of a cedar-covered limestone hillside in the Texas Hill Country
    Study - Hill Country in Summer

  • John Graves' Small Swift Birds

    In recent decades it has become customary, and right, I guess, and easy enough with hindsight, to damn the ancestral frame of mind that ravaged the world so fully and so soon. What I myself seem to damn mainly though, is just not having seen it. Without any virtuous hindsight I would likely have helped in the ravaging…

    But God! To have viewed it entire, the soul and guts of what we had and gone forever now, except in books and such poignant remnants as small swift birds that journey to and from the distant Argentine, and call at night in the sky.

  • Texas Harvest

    It never seems like it in August, but there are upsides to gardening in a hot state.

    a bowl of yellow-orange cherry tomatoes

    Sun Gold cherry tomatoes

  • Hell Weed

    Smilax (or bindweed or greenbrier, among many other names). It covers everything, and its roots reach down to hell. But, once a year for about a week, it puts out pretty purple flowers. So it’s got that going for it. Which is nice.

    Purple flowers are abundantly growing among green leafy vines
  • Duane Thomas
    RIP, Duane Thomas, one of the greatest runners in Cowboys history. When an interviewer referred to the Superbowl as "the ultimate game," Thomas' never-to-be-forgotten response was, "If it's the ultimate, why are they playing it again next year?"
    Dallas Cowboys running back Duane Thomas in the 1970s.

  • Across the Alley in the Golden Hour

    Shadows of trees against the side of a garage.
  • Willie's the One
    To no one's surprise, Willie Nelson wins Texas Monthly's "Celebrity Texans" bracket. And, in previous rounds, with very few exceptions, the Texan who should have advanced, did. A Final 4 of Willie, Nolan Ryan, Kelly Clarkson, and Matthew McConaughey is just about right.

  • Richard Diebenkorn, c. Nineteen fifty-seven

    Happy Easter!

    Painting of single-stem flower against a blue-green and yellow background.

  • Things I Really Like: an Ongoing List

    • Birdsong
    • Tottenham Hotspur Football Club
    • Archie
    • Tamales
    • Black licorice
    • Woodsmoke
    • Good Table Talk (more often, actually, Bar Talk)
    • a Ploughman's Lunch in a pub's garden
    • a 5:1 Martini, with a dash of orange bitters and 3 olives
    • Wind Chimes
    • Telephone calls with my out-of-town kids
    • Tacos with my in-town kid (and kid-in-law)
    • Resident Taqueria
    • Heat
    • Daffodils
    • Steel-cut oatmeal and a soft-boiled egg
  • Willie: Evidence that God Loves Us
    Willie Nelson playing his guitar, Trigger
  • Not the same state

    This goes a long way to explain why it’s so much harder to live in Texas than it was 25 years ago: Why Is a Midland Billionaire Spending So Heavily to Support Ken Paxton?

  • fun fact
    "Texas natives are more likely to stick around their home state than people born in any other place in the U.S., according to a new analysis of Census data. ... Approximately 82% of people born in Texas still lived there in 2021 ..." [Texas Tribune, 30 Aug 2023.](https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/29/texas-native-born-stay/) No surprise there. Anecdotally, in 1976, seven of my high school classmates and I drove together to enroll at the same college in California. Seven out of eight of us returned to live in Texas after college or graduate school. Texas Flag
  • Panhandle scenes at 75 mph. XIT
    Cattle grazing in tall grass in the Texas panhandle. High plains and clouds in the Texas panhandle. Wind turbines in the Texas panhandle.
  • Laura's Garden | Bush Library, SMU, Dallas
    Texas TreesTexas WildflowersTexas WildflowersTexas WildflowersTexas WildflowersTexas Trees

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