Walking The Chalk Cliffs but Finding Real Cement

There are chalk veins that run through this part of North Texas. They break off and fall into the streams along the way, thus widening the opening distance between banks. Such a major fall happening about this time last year and the work has just been finished to where that part of the trail can be opened again.

Each fall and spring, I walk the length of the two separate soccer fields that are bordering the White Rock Creek and the soccer fields. Although it was rather a raw type of cold, it wasn't that bad walking. For a long time, I have wanted to go down the high bank to the creek bed and shoot the amazing cliffs. I have not done so because I am afraid of falling. The path down is about a 40foot drop.Today, I noticed that some one had driven a piece of #3 rebar into the ground and tied a rope to it so you had something to hold on to as you either went down or came back up. That is rather dangerous on two fronts. First, the rebar sticking out of the ground would impale anyone that fell on the bar regardless of which way that the party was going. On the second front, driving the rebar into the ground at the top would normally work, except, these are chalk cliffs and weight put on the bar either going down or coming up could cause a hugh hunk of chalk to break away and a fall would be a major life threatening event. However, today was not that day for me just yet, so I stuck to the line of scrub bush where the wildlife and plants thrive. In this section, I was hoping to get some good shots of a cardinal or two. I saw them. They were singing and moving around in the brush, but catching one out on a limb for a good shot just didn't happen for the red birds today. I didn't even see one of the horned lizards that hang out around fallen branches.

The part of the  trail that collapsed had large blocks of sandstone covered in wire mesh and stacked in pyramid fashion.  The trail along the creek from that point also had new iron fence rather than the wood simulated plastic made from recycled bottles.

Following the trail a bit more and ending at Flag Pole Hill, the cold and the gusty winds had the big waterfowl finding cover except for a hand full of the old birds. Since seeing the coyote at Flag Pole Hill a few weeks ago, I have continued to look for it. Time is running out when that leg of my cycle will change the week before St. Patrick's Day  when the local festivals of  Dragon Boat Races, Deep Ellm  Arts Festival, Plano Balloon Fest, St. Patty's Day Parade and the Dallas Blooms at the Arboretum will fill out the travel calendar until after Memorial Day.

The trail now has an upgrade of steel railing after the repair where the the chalk cliffs collapsed up ahead .

A home made tent frame padlocked to a tree in the dense brush. Things like this were not to be found anywhere along this part of the trail last year. There are more homeless this year that refuse to go to a homeless shelter.

And, just as I headed to the grocery store for fill ins for the rest of the month, I found a group of cement workers that took a moment out of their day to have a bit of fun. You guys were alright!! I didn't get every one in the picture. I was at a stop sign and they were working in the lane next to me.

Drove Through The Old Neighborhood Today

Mom has been gone, now, more than a decade and a half and my son has been gone over two decades already. My son lived with my mom in that period when he was uncertain and before he graduated from that big ten school up north. Ever so often, I will drive through the old neighborhood and note the changes since we all had seen it as a part of our lives over a period of three generations. Yes, I had tears in my eyes at time. As long as I breathe and draw a breath, those tears will come again. I am sure of that. That's a pain that eventually fades, but never totally goes away... especially of a child that goes on before you.. That just isn't meant to be that way, although I believe that things happen for a reason as part of our living on this earth. I try not to remember much of the bad and to focus on all the good times that the three of us all shared together under the same roof at various times in our lives. And there were some pretty awesome times at that.

 Me under mom's roof  twice, and my son under her roof once and one more time under mine. So there was an overlap that bound us all together. Even my younger brother lived on the same street at one time, just down the street from mom's.So the old neighborhood, even today, continues to be relevant and closely connected to the core of making the drive down memory lane.

My brother had bought his first house in University Park in the Park Cities, sold it and today, it's gone with a Ronnie house squeezed on the lot. That was also part of my journey today to not only see how the old neighborhood has changed but to also see how much has been replaced by the Ronnie houses. The quick answer to that question is, "A Lot". It isn't just our old neighborhood, though. It has wiped out beautiful ranch homes of the 50s with two and three story manses of stone using up every square inch of dirt for house. While I have written about this process before and I understand the process that tips the scale on both ends of the equation, there are pros and cons on both ends before, during and after construction.

I also saw that Hillcrest High School is getting one mammoth addition to the front of the school. To me, that is a result of the old neighborhood undergoing a re-birth of new families moving back into the old neighborhood with younger families because of the Ronnie house effect, and desirability of being in that  neighborhood, a well developed area that has been established for a period of time. Then, suddenly, larger, more modern new homes replace the old and instead of waiting 30 years for the trees to grow, you have them the day the house is ready for  you to move into. Magic? Kind of.

Sill, it is always nice to be back in the old neighborhood from time to time, especially when I need to have the tears flow down my cheeks in an emotional bath of love for that part of my family that put their heads down and dreamt under the same roof for a period of time.

 

These are not Ronnie Houses but part of the end results of land purchased that was to small for development of the same number of Ronnie houses or some zoning issues. These are north of North Park and SMU and west of North Central Expressway. This is the third set of these that I have seen being built in the larger scale block of neighborhoods around my old neighborhood. I had to chuckle to hear a realtor talking about 50 lots. Only in Texas is it 50 feet wide and 50 foot deep that might give you 4, maybe 5 feet of back yard. My first house was 50 x 150 and for a first house, that was small, to me. It's all about the land value. Land is precious, indeed.

 

 

Willie's Playing Deep Ellum's Bomb Factory Tonight.

Willie Nelson is at the Bomb Factory Tonight. There is not a ticket to be had. Sold Out Performance and the Buses just hit the parking lot. It's cold today and the streets in Deep Ellum were packed. The lines at Pecans was out the door, down the street and around the corner.Tower Cranes are taking the Ellum to new heights! Twenty Years ago when I was doing marketing studies for a Fortune 100, things were quiet the difference than today, but it was apparent  even then, that  Deep Ellum was coming to what is happening now, then. It's nice to know that I was on target then and have been able to watch the development  rise to the top.

Willie Nelson Plays The Bomb Factory Tonight

This Sky Crane is getting engine work done. It's been flying over my house for a couple of months, now. Out of sight is two massive HVAC systems that seem to be heading to the rooftop. That is---when the three workers are done. There were some 20 workers in neon yellow vest and hard hats in the parking lot huddled in  a tight group---waiting for some kind of signal  that the work was complete.

This is the Canton Street Side of the Bomb Factory. The busses are on the other side of this view.

Mother Nature Put The Breaks On Spring.

Spring is popping out all over. Trees are blooming, daffodils are blooming, flowers are blooming and tree buds are popping, some with full green leaves open already. Yesterday was in the 80s; today was in the mid 70s. A cold front finally decided which way it was going to have forward motion after it stalled then moved south a few miles then stalled. When I came in around mid afternoon, it was warm. By dinner time it was cold with nearly a thirty degree spread in temps.That kind of spring should be expected with the off-the-wall weather we have been having this year.


It's going to slow down spring for sure but it's not enough to stop it all together. There are more spring issues to deal with. For one, towns and cities around the metroplex are in their annual  rush to shoo-off the great white egrets before the big birds nest. If communities can't get rid of the birds before they do nest, then the birds are off limits completely while they nest and cover yards, sidewalks, rooftops and streets with their smelly droppings. You see, the big birds are Federally protected once they do settle into their nest. So neighborhoods are blowing horns, whistles, watering them down when they are in the trees ( I think that one is somewhat comical because the birds are "waterfowl" folks, they fish in water, waterfalls, stand on one leg and sleep in rain storms. A water hose isn't going to get the job done.). The pelicans will soon be getting ready to leave for their nesting sites from Salt Lake all across the northern states that border with Canada. It will be interesting to see when they leave this year because the snow pack on both sides of the Rockies is massive this year.

Today, I added another new item seen at White Rock. There is always something new at the lake. That just amplifies the mystic of the lake. This Hookah was being worked on by a man who have just  had the pipe come to him from a friend that was visiting family in Iran. The glass base is absolutely awesome in craftmanship as is the woodworking on the pieces that rise above the top of the glass base. I love both glass work and hand carvings of wood, so when I saw this, I had to have an image. The man was kind to afford me the opportunity to shoot the piece.

The Pelicans Dominate the Waterfowl at the lake for a variety of reasons, the least of which is that they have the second largest wing spand at 8 feet.

The ground cover in the wetlands were totally under water two weeks ago.

Park Cities In The Spotlight This Week.

We published a couple of articles about the coyotes that were at White Rock Lake and Flag Pole Hill that were being aggressive. I spoke to a resident that neighbors the lot where one coyote was stalking a couple of horses that were grazing. She said to me that she sees them all the time and that one had even tried to attack her daughter but they thought it was because of the chickens that they were raising in their back yard.

Most of the experts have long noted that the coyotes and bob cats were on the move south after the work to expand both the Dallas North Tollway and the 121 additions to McKinney. It cut off a rather large pack of coyotes forcing them to come south. The bob cats were using the utility right-of-ways to bypass traffic and people as they moved along the greenbelts.

The Katy Trail Extension at White Rock had become a coyote highway at night because of the ducks and small pets that were allowed to be out unattended.  It was funneling them toward Fair Park and into South Dallas with the ultimate being the Great Trinity Forest, a 6,000 acre lowland hardwood forest. Movement on the Katy Trail  through Uptown and the Park Cities was basically cut of by US75 Central Expressway-- cut off that is until the city built  a multi-million dollar way for coyotes and bob cats to cross Central Expressway right into the Park Cities, Uptown and into South Dallas along the Trinity.

Two women in the Park Cities are excited. They seem to thing that the three coyotes that they have seen is something new and they are trying to head it off early. The problem is, they really have been asleep at the wheel. This is not something new. This is not some great  reveal. This is reality that has been going on for the past 20 years or more.  There has been a lot of discussion about this for most of those 20 years. The photographers have noted it. The news has run stories about it. The naturalist have blogged about it. It ain't new!! In fact, it is rather old news.

Having that pointed out, yesterday, I made a trip to University Park to see the Robert Indiana "LOVE" sculpture that was presented to the city of University Park by a couple in celebration of their 25th wedding anniversary.  To me, it was a touching gesture by the couple to present LOVE to the University Park across from one of the most amazing pieces of architecture in the area, Highland Park Presbyterian Church. (yeah, Scotland!). I have long admired the detail and the massive size of the structure. It's my kind of architecture that I not only admire, but LOVE, so to have that piece of sculpture in the adjacent park to that wonderful architecture made the afternoon seem like heaven.

LOVE to the Third Power

This piece has been shown in New York and around the country.It's home is now University Park, Texas.

The island setting is a great placement. The sod is dormant at the time having been put down not long ago.

Another Week of E-Ticket Weather Rides

It's been so back and forth temperature-wise this winter in North Texas that even the  weather geeks are going back into the record books to justify why this is happening. One thing is for sure. While the buds have started to open and the flowering red bud trees and dogwood trees are blooming, these every-other day cold fronts will slow down the full arrival of spring a bit. Noticeable also is the green showing up in the woodlands where the tree canopies have held down the cold and frost from reaching the ground which allows the trees and scrub bushes  to stay a bit warmer than the open meadows.

With more down time than normal, it has allowed me to find problems with my camera settings and to experiment and to correct the issues that I have been having with the auto focus and other settings. So, it's not all being a bad thing. But, I am getting excited to be back out in warmer, sunnier, dryer and less windy days than what we have been experiencing here in North Texas.

Valentines Day will be mid 70s with a warm south wind. Since I have a doctor's appointment, that will get me out earlier. With being inside so much it had my schedule a bit out of whack.  Today, in an effort to catch up on some routes that have really fallen by the wayside of late, I headed out for the Trinity mid-way between Irving and downtown Dallas.

Much to my surprise, some of the areas that normally are closed off from high water were open. That shows right there that the new pumping stations are up and running and above all, working. When I hit the ramp going down into the old Trammel Crow Park on Sylvan, the sand was like two feet deep in parts of the parking lots and they had not been cleaned off from the flooding. Walking across the old Sylvan Bridge, which is now literally 30 feet below the new bridge, the amount of wood and plastic that had been collected was astonishing. There was evidence that the crews had done some
 work on the banks. There were also large 60 gallon trash bags full of plastic maybe. They had been neatly placed on the side of the bridge's west end waiting for a crew to pick them up. Large animal tracks from the river up onto the smooth riverbank's sides could have come for dogs, but they could have also come from   a pack of coyotes, too. A person walking their dog would only have left one, maybe two, sets of tracks at most. These covered the entire area and could only have been made by a pack of  many.

The purpose was to test the new settings on the camera that had been adjusted last night. I got my shots and headed back toward home with a quick stop at the grocery for dinner.  Generally, I play a little game with myself to guess my mileage reading when I pull into the driveway. Tonight, I was off by two tenths!! Now bad from being cross town and not including where I would stop for groceries. The old man is still got some sharpness to him.

Plastic flowing from the Northern Communities down the Trinity and collecting under the old Sylvan Avenue Bridge, now used as a crossover for the Skyline Bike Trail and its connections , old and new.

The western edge of Downtown as seen from the West back of the Trinity at Sylvan Avenue bridge (old).

Working Inside with Ceilings at 200 feet!

A wild life camera. Nothing unusual there. What is unusual is that it is in a cemetery

Sunshine rules in  my book, and over time, days when the clouds roll in tend to really give me a good case of the downers. I don't get depressed, but I do get down with weather like we have have the past several days. In short, I discovered today that it isn't so much the clouds as it is the level of the ceilings. Today, the National Weather Servcie's web site, indicated on an hourly basis that the clouds were hanging at 400 feet, 200 feet, 400-300 feet most of the day. It really wasn't raining much, the total rain fall has been reported at less than .07 of an inch or less several hourly reports showed. With a total of less and .22 of an inch total since yesterday, that is measuring drizzle and with low clouds.  That is a downer of a sprinkle kind that I just as soon see move on out tomorrow and welcome the cold front in it's place. That should clear things out nicely.


With that kind of misery from weather, it gave me a change to look back over the past two weeks of images in more detail and find all the unusual things. And I did find one. A very interesting one at that. In fact, I debated whether to post it or not for several reasons. Yet,  it's got editorial value and those are the ones that hold the most interest for editors and brokers of editorial stock images the most. And... open my mouth and insert foot again... the hawks have positioned themselves in better locations where details highlight their beauty even more after I post that this blog isn't turning into a bird blog. I should have know that Murphy's law would come back to haunt my words on that topic.

Beautiful Red Shoulder on a Wire. This is the second time I have seen him on the wire in the past 4 weeks. Usually, he likes trees over the roadway. (Click on the image to enlarge)