High Holy Day of EASTER 2006

This image is from Friday, Good Friday. Now is Sunday, the day of resurrection. The spring flowers are a bit spotty this year. We had a drenching rain three weeks ago now, and nothing to speak of since! The Blue Bonnets are noticeably missing. Only in ditches, so far, mostly where a little more water has collected. Some flowers came out more abundantly, like a lot of Foxgloves over on Pathfinder Rd. Also there seems to be more Engleman Daisies than ever, and Paralena. The Paintbrushes are fading already and not many. Few and far between. Thelsperma and Storkbill are not abundant as usual.


Ah, so pure
But something very interesting happened at Zack's. A banana plant came through with a bloom stalk before a leaf appeared. You can see how the pistils are are turning into bananas, a whole ring at a time. When the petals of one bloom die, another forms inside with another ring of pistils and so on to eventually form the big bunch.....
Banana Love

I know of no other fruit that forms this way. I have only seen the blooms high up on plants in the Ft Worth conservatory. Or fully formed bunches still on the trees in Mexico. This is a rare treat.

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Yesterday, went to Hico with Alice after our walk. She needed to buy a pie at the Koffee Kup Kafe. Voted best in Texas by some mag or other. We did this once before back some 5 or 6 years. Decided to eat lunch there since it was after eleven AM. This happened before. A mistake like last time: her BLT was less than great, and service was slow. Under the old faded photo of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. My cheese burger was ok, saved by piles of lettuce and tomato! The place was full of bikers out for the good weather. These were the yuppie bikers, not the bandana bart gang crowd. No noticable colors or costumes. Maybe the KKK still meets there, and keeps the town ethnically pure, such is the bad rep this place has. But there were two Hispanic waitresses, never-the-less. The Wiseman House Chocolate works was open for business. We declined. I sold some pictures there once.

An old log cabin close to the Wiseman House was open and we walked through. Probably someone had in mind making it a visitor attraction, but all inside was some rustic chairs and a dirty table which could be intended for an information desk....We took Levi and went shopping, past the ugliest sculpture in Texas, of Billy the Kid in flight. He was from that town, and a local hero, if he can be called that.....

Alice bought a small school desk, one of those with the big fan writing area from long ago..... Going back home through the prairies and hills... Chalk Mountain, Flat Rocks, river crossing....