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We have been advocates of increasing the time that children spend outdoors rather than staring at a phone screen.  Our interest in this subject was sparked by attending a live lecture based on the work of Children and Nature Network.   Alongside this, after publishing the book Unstructured Time, we became more observant of children as they encounter the outdoors. Always, its amazing what you see when you look. So, on this gray day in January we decided that we were in need of some outdoor exposure, being concerned with the ills of cabin fever. Now, cabin fever is not terminal but it sure seems like sometimes it could lead to that.  W e decided to take some of our own advice about the outdoors and head for the woods. Since we're always interested in exploring new areas we decided to head for Lockhart State Park which is only about 30 minutes away.   Although this park is so close to where we live, we have never visited this park and so not only do we get t...

Here it is, January and it is now the beginning of so called cedar fever season.  Cedar is our central Texas evergreen which is not a cedar but a juniper.  But, we call junipers cedars because that is what we have called them for hundreds of years despite the fact that we all know them to be junipers.  We could not change our vocabulary now because too many phrases depend on the cedar wording. The newspapers publish on a daily basis the pollen count in ambient air to make sure that those who are not subject to cedar fever can blame their feeling bad on cedar fever without the risk of being criticized for being a hypochondriac. No matter what, allergies to cedar ---ooops---juniper pollen is a serious thing to many people.   We know of people who have moved from the area specifically because of their allergic reaction to the pollen---running nose, coughing, headaches, etc. Old timers say that the way to cure yourself from this allergy is to eat only a few of the sma...

The history of the Annual Christmas Bird Count is interesting for how it was a way to shift from annual contests of how many birds could be killed to how many birds can be counted.  So, for many years now, volunteers have been conducting bird counts in late December.  The count is conducted on the same day across broad parts of the country.  The 1600 acres which make up our community has been in the bird counting area for the last three years.  There is some fluctuations of the numbers of birds as well as the numbers of species. Below is the summary of the data for the last three years:                                                               2019       2018     2017 Number of Species                            ...

The nuclear physicists or the late 1800s referred to themselves as an orthodoxy of scientists, especially those who worked in the field of the transmutation of the elements.  This was the field that started in the late 1800s and culminated with the production of the atomic bomb in 1945. Many of the scientists thought long and hard about how this community of scientists managed themselves.  Who decided what to work on, who decided what theories were correct, what was it that made the whole process of discovery move forward to untangle this puzzle of how the atom was composed, how elements could be modified by irradiation and how elements were to be catalogued.  We take the periodic chart of the elements for granted today, but someone had to devise the logic of how to arrange all the elements in a logical manner.  This logical manner, once devised, led the scientist in predicting what elements could exist but not yet discovered. Some could be created by bombardment of...

Two years ago, we discovered the Kingsbury Aerodrome, not more than thirty minutes from where we live.   Its not advertised broadly, perhaps because those who need to know about it already know about it. The Kingsbury Aerodrome is a privately held 501(c)3 organization that is home for the fair and open house of the Pioneer Flight Museum.  For this, don't think of a Museum like a building housing all sorts of artifacts.  Think instead of a budding effort by an owner of a sod airstrip and a perhaps a 100 acres of once pastureland, plus some metal barns that are in the first stages of becoming storage places for vintage aircraft.  And another vital component is the large number of members who are volunteers to take care of the site and help with the annual fly and drive in. We missed last years fly in because we chose instead to go to Alpine to the convention of the Center for Big Bend Studies---its always on the same date as the fly-in.  This year we chose the Fl...

County fairs are receding as the rural land gets chewed up into subdivisions and commercial property. But, county fairs still exist and we found one in Guadalupe County, Texas where the county seat is Seguin and much of the land is agricultural--mostly for ranching as only a few crops are grown there at this time. This county fair ran for three days a week or so ago, and so we decided to check it out as we always like to see farm animals and especially like to see the work of young people doing 4-H work. Sheep and goat judging was going on when we arrived so we first took in the sheep judging, but quickly moved over to the goat judging as it looked more interesting. The owners of the show animals must have their animal under control and with goats, apparently grabbing them by the head is one way to do it.  Then they have to have trained their animal to stand erect and with their back legs stretched out so that the judge can assess the muscles in the back. It must take some a...

We received about 3/8ths inch of rain last night with the arrival of the cold front, the second of this fall.  The first one, about two weeks ago, was dry. Normally a diary entry on the subject of rain doesn't get initiated because rain is not that noteworthy.  But here, this summer, it is noteworthy since this rainfall last night is more rain in one storm than we have  received since May, five months ago. Drought is not uncommon here, as evidenced by the struggle that oak and elm trees have to get established, but the  mesquite, ashe juniper and prickly pear cactus seem to have no problem getting a foothold.  Lots of change occurs as one moves west past the 100th meridian.  But this drought, right here at this place, is far worse that the major drought of 2011 or 2005.  Rain storms that cross Texas are normally rather small cells and move in different directions depending on the time of the year.  It is possible that with this pattern of rain, ...