Meet My Goal To Return To The Lake By the 15th of January.

Today was my longest trip out since getting out of ICU and returning home. It was also my second grocery shopping trip and all went well. It is good to have goals, especially ones that you know that you can meet, but the questionable ones make for a challenge that drives the human spirit.

As I made the trip around the lake, it didn't take much time to spot an old friend sitting in his favorite tree where he waits for a mate each January. The bird is not camera shy at all and will put himself out in the open, when he soon did across from the marina.

While I am no where near making my regular route of shooting again, I am thankful just to see the lake again. It will not be a daily trip again for several more weeks,but I have patience and will set the bar a little lower now, because I do see some areas where I won't be able to return to full steam again. I guess that is what happens when you get old. Even my doctor said he saw another 10 years for me. It's nice to know that someone is watching the clock.

Red shouldered Hawk Hanging out in search of a mate. It is nesting season already from Raptures.

True, I Almost Died and Was Near Death--Happy New Year to All My Readers

....and I have long said that," if you create the beast,you have to feed it." And, yet, I have many to thank for their continued support with purchases of my images for the past several weeks of down time.. I also have a lot of professionals at Medical City Hospital Dallas from the Emergency Room to the Operating Room to the hospital stay over the holidays. The Doctors tell me that 15 units of blood is a lot of blood to have pumped into you in a relatively short time.

 I cannot thank the Dallas Fire and Rescue enough for their quick response time and professionalism. There has never been any doubt about DFD ability to serve the community where they are based. Regardless of the station assigned, they need support the year round and I will work in ways that I am just now beginning to formulate on how to help the fine men and women of the Dallas Fire and Rescue.

The staff of nurses, food service, environmental cleaning, admitting, and the support staff at Medical City Dallas, I offer you my gratitude and thank you for your help and support during my emergency.

Recovery time is estimated at 8 weeks. And, last but by no means last, I have my two brothers, my daughter and my youngest son to thank more than anyone will ever know. Family is everything.

Long Horn Bull with a beautiful view of Lake RayHubbard.

 

A true Texas Longhorn

Lake Ray Hubbard toward the southern end and my last shooting day before my life-threatening trip to the hospital

01-09-2020:Update and corrections for more clarity.

Consequences Not Intended Lead to Double Problems

Arthur Gordon, wrote in one of his inspirational books that tells about how everything of consequence begins. When I first read his chapter it was an eye-opener nearly 40-years ago. Now, it has been "nailed up in my mind" to paraphrase Gordon, and I see examples of it every day. Law students know that laws are crafted with an intent behind them. A consequence before hand  if you will.

It got me to thinking. Cigarettes had  a bad down side long after the health problems were made for debate. The down side I'm talking about are the discarded cigarette butts. Long after the paper wrap around the filter is returned to nature, it is the fiber of the filter that hangs on a years afterwords. Many still stuck in cement cracks and  the like long after the smoker has died and was buried. It is a double consequence to smoking cigarettes. As Gordon wrote, "Perhaps, this is the way every thing of consequence begins".

So, Sunday, I drove a few large parking lots looking for the second consequence to the smoking situation. It didn't take long to find examples. It was an unintended consequence to driving people away from,cigarettes. Turns out it is now  spent vape canisters--the modern version of a cigarette filter. So in trying to help or cause people to make life decisions legally by banning smoking in specific areas, the unintended consequence is now two-fold. We still have smokers of cigarettes. Even at $5.00 plus a pack. They are still discarded over bridge railings, from balconies of apartments, out car windows along roadsides , riverbanks, parks, and businesses. We all have seen that consequence of smoking (health is a totally different topic here). Now, instead of just filters, we have filters and canisters. A double whammy. These were discarded after a Friday Night Lights evening in Texas---a football game under the lights.

Click on any image to enlarge all three images.

The most popular type found. In reality, cigarette butts were a better consequence as for the environment.

Another type of vape dispenser

The Watch refill

The Steamboat Was Back On The Lake Yesterday

Several years ago when I heard (before I saw) the sound of a steamboat whistle, it just didn't fit. At first, I tried to write it off. It is just not possible to have a steamboat on this lake.Well, I was proven wrong when I saw  coming across the water,  a guy standing at the helm with long leather gloves, one hand stretched forward and resting on a piece of equipment.

The Dallas Morning News had published an article about the guy who built the steamboat from an old sailboat. It was amazing. Hearing a true steam whistle was a sound that is so distinct you always know that sound from any other.

About a month ago I saw the guy and his boat back on the lake. Then Sunday, I saw him on the lake  going up White Rock Creek under the Mockingbird Bridge. Later in the day, the guy from Hooters drove his little boat car drove down the boat ramp and was going across the water with people running with their cameras to snap a shot of something that they had never before seen. In fact, it is this last statement that has brought me back to the lake time and time again over the past 20 years. Its the unusual. The different. Always something different. And it is these very things that will bring back all the people who were running for the boat ramp with their cameras trying to get a picture of the little car puttering across the water for years to come. I could not bring myself to ask those people if any of them saw the steam boat?

 Click on any of the images to enlarge all three for better viewing.

See the two steam whistles in from of the pipe stack?

If you are interested in the boat car....there is a post in the archive with pictures.

Flag Pole Hill With Drone Here Is The Lady Ghost Images

Click on any image to enlarge.

 Special Post For Those Learning About The History of Flag Pole Hill and White Rock Lake flying drone.


post was of 10-3-2018. 

Colors Have Arrived In North Texas In The Middle Of Tornado Damage

In reverse order of Spring moving north, colors move south at about the same rate of speed---20 miles per day. Just as learned in 5th grade biology, nature is based on math and formulation of equations, but in science, that is what you want. You want that reassurance that nature is still running a tight ship, which she does. Never-the-less the colors for another season has arrive and they are spectacular already.

The city crews are out picking up the miles and miles of tree branches and trunks between the streets and sidewalks for the second storm of the season. I have seen hugh tracks of vacant land filling up with semi-high stacks of branches with brown leaves now as they have died on the limbs that were fallen. I wonder sometimes how colorful those branches would have been had they not been dropped by the tornadoes that stuck a path of destruction across north Texas---especially the Metroplex area with 10 confirmed tornadoes that dreadful night of the outbreak.

One tree that I miss so much is the sugar maple. While our Oaks pretty much match the vivid colors of the maples, its those wide and broad leaves that shine and glimmer with color this time of year. Halloween  in the Great Lakes have that smell of burning leaves. Yeah! it's illegal to burn them, but somehow those curbs of leaves seem to just break out in flames. It must be the ghost of Halloween past. Free trees are being made available for planting to help rebuild the massive loss of trees this year. It will be a few years before they start to show color to full scale but planting trees has always been my thing. There are three six-footers on my porch now Hopefully, they will be ready to plant next year. The Maple that I planted when my son was born is a towering majestic piece of timber today at 49.

Migration This Year Had Highs and Lows

The major concern was for the pelicans arrival this season with the massive storm kill-off of waterfowl in Mold, Montana. As it turned out, eventually, we got our regular number of birds to take up residency until late March.

The other major migration was that of the Monarch Butterflies. California got a large number to pass trough this year, but in North Texas, we only had a fractional number of flies. I did some in my neighborhood and always saw a hand full at the lake, but the butterfly garden had a hand full of the royal flies.




 Weather played a part, most likely with the jet stream not shifting south like it normally does. Also, while this is the central flyway for birds and Monarchs, again, weather to the west was more favorable than what we were having here. The most worrisome of all is, of course, the declining number of Monarchs.

For those that like to track Monarch Migration, Monarch Watch. The info source is from the Entomology Program at the University of Kansas, 1200 Sunnyside Ave.,Lawrence, KS 66045-7534.