Beautiful Tennison Entrance. PeoneyPoppies are coming up in porch flower pots

The Entrance Gate to Tennison's High course and Low course.Both are 18 holes. 

                                                                     Peony

Paeonia lactiflora 'Sarah Bernhardt'

A prized favorite for over 100 years

I have my fingers crossed that the seed I planted two weeks ago will produce four pots for my porch. The seed that I saved from two years ago is already coming up. The question is did I save the seed the right way. I love these blooms. These are more like a royal version of the carnation, but the demand to get them to grow is much harder than others think. So, they grow to 2-3 feet tall and will make for beautiful porch pots on either side of the gate. Stay tuned!

Downtown Plano Again. Lunch with my brother

 Yesterday, I  rode the Red Line up to Plano again. My brother had invited me to lunch at Fillmore Pub. I've been there before and I didn't even have to look at the menu. Their fish and chips are outstanding. The clock on the cover page of this blog sits on the sidewalk outside the pub. My youngest brother had the chicken salad sandwich. You can make a couple of meals out of that thing. Never-the-less it was a good time. By the time little brother got there at the appointed time, I had some 90 images in the camera. Trying to download them was something I found out later could not be done because of a cable that was broken from years of use. Found one. Ordered it. When playing with the old cable, I finally got it to work. Needed a new one at the time anyway. 

The 28th Annual Deep Ellum Festival

 The expansion of the area and the number of vendors was a total plus from the past years before the pandemic. Most of the vendors that I spoke with were from the regular arts rolling vendors that begin in Texas and move north to the Great Lakes  to where once, Ann Arbor was the grand finale. Since I don't live in the Great Lakes now, I can't confirm that Ann Arbor Street Fair is the same as I once remembered it. What I can say is that Dallas' Deep Ellum was every bit an Ann Arbor fair. It was a fun time today beginning with three young people that made the day. 

While walking both sides of Main Street looking at display, I say an amazing quality of merchandise, much of new technology in the arts. What I saw was outstanding. The new businesses were amazing and right on key to what I had predicted to a Fortune 50 company after spending six months walking the streets of Deep Ellum for a study that ended up with a presentation of a grant to the Deep Ellum Board for the Associations use. Hurdy and Michael, you would be impressed today after seeing how much this Festival has grown over the years and how the old painting of the School Bus and the old tunnels that now have a Dart train station sitting on top of them today is still a place of paint---old water tower.

These three great sports were so much fun. As I was walking this "wing" off the Main Street run, I spotted the guy on the left eating a sprinkled whatever. To the left  of where the three are seen in this image, I stepping into a vendor's tent. Telling her what I was up to with these three. I wanted to be a true paparazzo for once and waited until he started to eat another bite and swing around the corner and snapped the Blog's Number One Spot--the front page. He was totally caught by surprise and the expressions were well worth the effort. 

The guy in the back said that he would like to be in the image with his friends. It was totally possible because they were such good sports about the situation. Thanks to you all. I really appreciate being a paparazzo-in-action. If you read my website "about us" you will see that while we use the name (and how we got it) this type of picture is not the general rule. 

This is the image of all three when expressions were more back to normal.

                                                    No more posting links. Sorry.

Some people need praying for more than others in that hackers are so bold today, they leave a trail even when the site is under testing for such things. God bless them.

Some things just can't be explained about animals.

 My little buddy, Martin, always stops to listen when I talk to him. It is that pose, expression, that this post points out.

Interesting Finds

 Since selling my car, riding the bus and the trains have been my only mode of transportation----except walking, now that I have almost reached full recovery. Of course, there are days of exception due to weather (not an excuse) and more recovery as an on-going process. Having said that, my workflow has more than quadrupled in recent weeks. That---is what makes this all possible. 

Now, when I had my car and I made my daily route about the Metroplex following my travel wheel that I used for years to set up a route. That enabled me to cover and recover the Metroplex without missing anything when following up on construction products, or new ones. It became an act of faith at time. When I got in the car and pulled out onto the street,"Lord," I would say, "The wheel is yours. Take me where you want to go." Not surprisingly, my best days of shooting and getting images that sold 50 times over or more, came from those days. In short, I had no plans of where to go on those days, just turn the wheel almost blindly. 

Now that I do ride the public transportation, I had a thought a couple of weeks back. Why not do the same thing riding the bus or trains? And so I did. And so, every day this week I have sold pictures. I've found things that I would never have found on my own. Today, I found an amazing tree budding out with red seeds that are much like the 'helicopter' seed pods of the Maple trees. I had never seen those before. Oh, I've seem hundreds of time those little 'helicopters' flying down through the air from a Maple but the pods were tan to light green and rather leathery. These were identical in looks but they were bright red and while they were rigid, they were also soft to the touch. The tree bark was white like a Sycamore tree. And, if that wasn't enough, I found the southern version of a yellow Forsythia. One like I remember when growing up. In the Great Lakes, they are pretty much the same but there is a minor variation on bloom development and opening stages. Relatively minor differences. Since being back in Dallas, I have looked for them, but only today, did I find the Forsythia of my childhood.

 

 

 

 

Storms of two years ago and a lot of buildings still look like this one---unfinished.

 More storms tomorrow. Strong tornadoes forecast with heavy rain producing flash flooding, hail and more as the dry line passes. It's gonna be an interesting morning, afternoon and evening in North Central Texas.

Hopefully, the downtime tomorrow will afford me the opportunity to edit pictures from today.. There were not as many as the last batch. About half the size in numbers. But, there were some interesting takes on a new project that I have been working on.