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Plum, Texas  6.25.2017 Plum is a small town just to the west of LaGrange.  It is an historic town settled by Americans and German immigrants in 1869 along the MKT railroad track. The first settlers established the Baptist Chuch.  Later it was a favorite place for Czech immigrants to settle, and with a larger Czech population, the community was able to build the Catholic Church.  The stone for the Catholic Church appears to be transition limestone, which is quite flinty and much harder than one typically knows limestone.  It was quarried at Muldoon. The Catholic Church, Sts Peter and Paul, has hosted a feast every year since 1927, so this year was the 90th year that they put on this fund raising effort. The food was good, maybe the best of all the church picnics so far this year.  It featured fried chicken, sausage, smashed potatoes, sauerkraut, beans, and dressing, along with tea and a dessert. The dining area was small, and the tables were close toge...

Schulenberg, Texas 6.11.2017   We another good picnic at the Knights  of Columbus Hall in Schulenberg, right alongside Hwy 77 just south of the city downtown.  This KC hall was large and they had a very efficient serving line.  The food was really good, consisting of fried chicken, sausage, sauerkraut, green beans and smashed potatoes.  All with dessert for $9.00 Here is a photo of the inside with the many people enjoying the outing: Since this is a fundraiser for the church, they also had a silent auction and a regular auction.  The items in the auction were those that were donated to the picnic by individuals and by local companies. Outside, there was a really tuneful Czech band: We listened to the music for maybe 30 minutes and then the band took their break.  We sat next to a couple who were visiting from Fort Worth, the lady having grown up about two blocks from the church, so it was a homecoming for them. While we ate our lunch...

The Cat, aka Amber, has taken up a position at the front door side windows for the last few months. These side windows go all the way to the floor, so she can crouch there and look out at whatever happens outside. There has been a stray cat that wanders by on occasions and we often wonder if the stray cat is what she waits for each night.  Not at all sure how a cat who has only seen her mother some years ago can recognize another cat out the window, but that is a whole other story. So, we happened to think that maybe the raccoon is her nightly visitor.  So, last night we put the game camera on the front step, and sure enough, there it is. We wonder what the raccoon thinks when it sees the cat grinning  through the glass pane?

For the third year in a row, the Leopard Frog has taken up residence in the water tub under the front eave.  This year it was early, but that may have been because we went several weeks without any rain and the surrounding area was getting dry---definitely not frog habitat. The frog continues to sit on the plank, partly in the water.   There are times when the frog will leave for a few days, and so we are watching to see when it takes a short trip out of the tub again this year.

This year, without any doubt we constructed the best garden ever at this location.  It came about because we built raised beds for the vegetables and we were diligent at keeping the weeds under control. We planted tomatoes, 3 varieties, three kinds of squash, cilantro, parsley, turnips and beans.  They all got off to a good start. And then the deer found how to get into the garden.  No we were not so naïve to think that this nice new garden would not need protection from the deer, so we had built a six foot high fence all around, except the part accessible from the breezeway. We went through about ten iterations of building a more secure fence, each time finding that the deer (we think just one) located another way to get in, either by jumping or crawling through some small hole. The last move on our part was to extend the fence to 8 feet high.  This was determined to be needed because one night I spotted the deer in the garden, opened the door to scare the cr...