Balmy, Then A 30 Degree Drop With More Cold On The Way

More Pollen For the Allergiers

The T&P Train Trestle with new Bridge over the historic trestle

The  Katy Trail Extension about to join the White Rock Trail shortly after it crosses W. Lawther in the back ground

After clicking on the seat belt, the next  button was to open the moon roof. It was balmy, and the humidity could be cut with a knife. By three-thirty, the temp had dropped to 48 F and the wind that was driving the cold front had arrived. Luckily, I was just getting ready to pull into the driveway, having worn two coats and was ready to head inside the house. Timing is everything and my timing today was right on target. It's going to be about 5 days before we get the sun back and the temps reach normals for this time of year, which is 63 plus or minus a degree here and there. This past 15-months has been relentless with low hanging clouds, heat lasting longer than normal, short fall, colder than normal for winter and although the flowering trees and tulips are up and blooming, the cold has returned. At this point, I don't even know what to think about the heat for the summer. But, right on target, March 1 and flowering trees are swaying in that cold breeze.

Albert E

Albert Einstein once said that, " Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." Over the years, it comes to me little by little that the mundane and the magical come together blending a mix to bring balance in life. Of course, looking for that balance is an individual experience to some degree. What might be in balance for me may not always be the balance for anyone else. Yet, the law of physics kind of hold the thought on an equal playing field generally.

The American Coot in a rare display of their water dance of mating feather displays.

One of the more unusual use of textures to make a new home really become an eye catcher.

Beauty in a single flower.

Before I retired, I was fully aware of the power of imagination. After retirement, I began to see more examples of it every day. The more that I recognized it, the more that I came to see that Albert was correct. "Imagination is everything." I'm in my second reading of the book, Einstein. It is a rather slow read and a big book, but that is part of the experience of the read. It gives that imagination a chance to brew while in the read. In other words, it gives you practice if you don't have a strong imagination to begin with but if you have a vivid imagination already, it's like a hundred experiments all going off at the same time. Practice makes perfect my piano teacher would tell me at the conclusion of every weekly lesson. That creative imagination was born and I use it every single day as it flows over into photography.  

It's Been An Uneasy Stay For The Visiting Waterfowl.

We had record rains for three months this past year. This year started out with two floods at the lake that displaced the logs that the pelicans like to hang out upon. The high water levels have also brought in shifting sandbars that split Sunset Bay into another world for the Coots and Ducks, Cormorants and seagulls. It became readily visible to those of us that visit the lake almost on a daily schedule that the pelicans were uneasy and were seen in areas of the lake where they normally do not go. Pelicans up White Rock Creek beyond Flag Pole Hill on Goforth is not a good place for them. Especially if they roost that far up. The Cormorants are up in the trees there because their big log was dislodged by the high water levels and floated down  the lake shore several hundred feet.  But pelicans roost on the ground and bob cats and coyotes do feast upon waterfowl as we all know.

And, if that is not enough, there are more kayaks on the lake. More fishing boats. More motor boats for the sailing clubs and the rowing clubs. Even beyond that, there have been drownings there this year and just today, a father and son participating in a sailing event capsized and needed a high water rescue because of the thermal factors with colder than normal water. And some humans just can't get it into their heads that the birds notice things like that more than we give them credit..

Last year the number of mallards that were seen with their young broods was down to only a couple of pairs of mallards. Even the old gal on the east side of the lake that usually raises 8-10 ducklings, when seen, only had 5. It's almost a give me that the happy balance will always be in favor of people before it is wildlife in a dense urban setting. I know this. I  can accept this with reservations, but that is why there are state wild life preserves where the game wardens protect wildlife more than in city parks.  It isn't something that I enjoy agreeing with, of course, but the realization is that we are lucky to have such a vast diversity of wildlife so close to the heart of the city. Still, it behooves all of us to keep an eye more in tune to the nature that is around us and to have parks and lakes like White Rock where we can come and enjoy the wild as it was once upon a time. 

A little treasure for the  birders at the lake.

This old guy has one of the big old style bands on his leg. There were some with the newer wing bangs this year but they have already taken flight back north for breeding season. The big snow storms that are still coming down up there will not last long now.

Here is one of the washed up sandbars that runs for many, many yards in an arch around Sunset Bay

British Airways Flight 192 is called by ATC Speedbird.

Watching  a cam a  DFW last night, I saw the British Airways flight 192 on a taxiway using a Boeing 777 rather than the B-747 they usually use. This got me to thinking that with the bigger twin-engine plane and the overhead jet stream still running at  130-150 Miles Per Hour, I logged on to see what the flight had filed as a flight plan for speed and altitude. Every thing checked out as a normal flight---except for the factor of the overhead jet stream's tail wind.

Just as I had expected, the flight was into the tail wind almost before it had reached half of it's flight altitude. Quickly, the flight had reached it's planned speed of 555 mph and the speed just kept climbing. When it hit 700 MPH, it was pretty close to Mach .9 plus.. Of course, the speed of sound has no set number because of temperature, pressure and basic weather conditions like humidity and dew point---kind of like the basic when we check our blood pressure. Never-the-less, the excitement began to build as the plane hit its cruising altitude of 37,000 and the speed kept inching up beyond 700 to 710;715;720. Then, the altitude changed to 36,500. Finally, the speed slowly hit 721.Then 722,then 723,724 and 725 balanced it off. Ironically, the ATC(air traffic control) nickname for BAC192 is 'speedbird'.

Here is a flight headed for London from Dallas and before it is out of Texas into Arkansas, the flight is booking at 725 MPH (living up to it's name of speedbird, for sure.). That caused me to look at the estimated arrival time. It had already picked up 23 minutes early status. Before the flight made it into Illinois it had settled down to just under 700 mph but continued to book toward Maine, staying inside USA air space until it left Maine's borders.

I went to bed thinking that the jet stream was more close to 155 mph at the altitude and that the flight would most likely land in London early rather than late. I have never seen a commercial flight hit 725 mph, but in the 50s I can remember that boom caused my breaking the sound barrier. There were thunderstorms under the flight as it moved across Arkansas, into Missouri and across southern Illinois, Indiana and into Cleveland Center Airspace. It might have hit the sound barrier and the thunderstorms would have been a pretty good cover.  The flight had made that 887 miles in a little over an hour from Dallas departure.

While drinking my coffee this morning, I checked to see just how early it did land in London. 8 hours, 43 minutes with 10 minutes early. The graphs did show the drop in altitue and an increase in the air speed to match that 725 mph speed.  Who said that a jet stream tail wind isn't that much of a factor for travel? It was fun to just watch that flight slicing through the air at 725 mph. Sheer excitement.

Winds at the surface were 40 mph today with higher gust. They blew in dust from west Texas and DFW had a ground stop for a bit.

Gates at Tenison Memorial

The Twin Gates to Tenison Memorial Park, a park of the larger W.W. Samuell Park, part of the City Parks Division. Tenison is two -18 hole courses,one of the best city courses anywhere! The architecture is one of my favorites. I could look at these gates all day because they are first class all the way. Bernie. This one's for you, partner!!

The stratus melted away quickly today with a 120 MPH  jet stream overhead. The sun popped out early and away I went a -picture-taking! Being out in the field less than an hour and the sun was strong enough to pull up the temps into the 50s before noon. In short, it was a perfect late winter's day.

The red bud, dogwoods, and some flowering trees are already in bloom. So, I went looking for them in park lands and golf courses. One of the best places for that in Dallas is The W.W. Samuell Park and it's adjacent 2-18-hole courses, the lower course and the favorite of many, The Highlands.There are wild fields of daffodils, red buds, flowering trees and before the rose blight wiped out the rose garden in the park, that was also an early spring visiting place..Now, for a good public rose garden, I have to make it out to Farmer's Branch.

But the golf course was full and the driving range was full so parking was less than perfect for the will dafs that I could see from the road. The walk would have been more than I was prepared to do today. It's a rolling hillside, to boot. That meant I had a good shot at the Gates. They are an outstanding architectural achievement. It's to bad that more people don't know about them. But, they are on the back side of the park albeit the gates are the formal entry with winding uphill driveway to the trail head of both golf courses. The putting green was loaded and people were parking in the main lot and walking across the drive to the putting green with irons and putters in hand. They didn't even bother dragging out the bags from the ones that I saw. I've been there. I know the drill. And I would have--I have--done the same thing. I played one season on a Federal Golf League. I still think about my old partner, Bernie. The guy had the patience of a Saint.I can still hear his voice in my head saying, "take your time, now". Trying to remember what branch Bernie was in. My thinking after all those years seems to me that he was  IRS,U.S.Customs or Postal Inspector. Frankly, my memory card on that just didn't bring up many details of Bernie's job function. Frankly, remembering Bernie and those soft spoken words far outweighed his job function many, many times more. I liked that guy as a partner.

It's Practice Time Again. Just a little Putting and Chipping Practice.

From the last flood, this log washing up into an alcove with a fishing lure bobber entangled.

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.