Category: Odd Jobs

  • My socks may not match, but my feet are always warm. ~Maureen McCullough   The drought took its toll on many of the oak trees in the Hollow. But Tom found the good in that this past weekend by cutting up the dead ones into woodburning stove sized pieces. Our woodpile had dwindled so much…

  • The sun was victorious today in this recent game between it and the gray skies. That in itself was enough to make me happy, but I was especially grateful to see it today because there were four houses on our property tour! One a little east and north of our office, one close to downtown,…

  •           After several days of gray skies and temperatures below freezing, the sun finally made an appearance yesterday afternoon. And the clouds even stayed away long enough for me to say hello to a half moon and a sky full of stars that dripped all the way to the tree tops.…

  •     Well, these were actually taken last night, Thursday. I traveled with a bunch of Keller Williams colleagues via bus to Fredericksburg for a day of shopping, a wine-tasting, and then a stop in Johnson City on the way home to ooh-and-aah over the lights.     With temperatures below freezing and a wind…

  • http://ads.blogherads.com/65/6567/campaigns/14/1426/1426662/x90.js   The index card is yellow and splotched, the ink faded, but considering all of the action it's seen over the past twenty years, it's amazing it's still around at all, much less legible. When not in use, I keep it tucked in a small recipe box with other favorites, mostly one-pan wonders where…

  • Just about every Tuesday, a bunch of us grab a map, pile in someone's car, and ask Siri to navigate us along the route to the one, two, and sometimes three houses or condos selected for that week's tour, scattered in various neighborhoods in Austin and the surrounding communities.  Road trip! A really short one,…

  •             …and I'm glad of it! We've needed the rain! Ponds are filling up and I'm already envisioning the fields of wildflowers we'll have in the spring. The rain brought other gifts, too. I've been trying to capture a tiny reflection in a raindrop for a long, long, long time.…

  •   I stood near a rocky, cactus-covered cliff on Saturday, staring down at a bend in the Pedernales River that still sparkled with water, despite this drought that has lingered for so long here in central Texas. What a sweet surprise and relief to see that water! When I listed this long, narrow acre-ish lot on…

  • Yesterday I drove to the other side of Austin to wish my daughter-in-law a happy birthday in person for the first time, grateful that they finally live close enough that I can do that. It comes in handy for someone like me who always forgets to put birthday cards in the mail in time to…

  •   1. Do yellow wildflowers lining roadsides count as "Autumn Color"? (I love them whether they do or not!)   2. This morning at an orientation at the Austin Board of Realtors, I won two door prizes in a row, first a bottle of wine and then a canvas bag that tells the world I'm…