Happy New Year everyone!!!

Another Poster - This one is for the Winnsboro Farmers Market

The manager of the Winnsboro Farmers Market this year is a member of the Master Gardeners and when she saw the Spring Conference poster I did she asked me about doing one for them.  This is it!  I did several versions and they selected the one I like most.  I'm going to the printer this morning to pick-up yet another one.  It's a one-off that will be used for our entry in the Master Gardener state awards competition in March.

We recently found out what breed of cat Shadow is:

She's a Russian Blue and this description explains a lot about her:

"The Russian Blue is a cat breed that has a silver-blue coat. These cats are known to be highly intelligent and playful but tend to be timid around strangers. They also develop close bonds with their human companions and are highly sought after due to their personalities and unique coat."

As many of you know, Shadow often comes running up to us when we step outside.  She goes with us when we walk the trails or go to the mail box.  She loves to stay with me when I work in the greenhouse and she just has a very fetching personality.  We didn't really want another outside cat but quickly learned - when Shadow decided that she was going to live here - that she wasn't your ordinary cat..

World Famous Wildernest Zipline

This is Brian and the water in the background is the English Channel - and on this day it's a cold and blustery part of the North Atlantic between England and Europe. And what does that bumper sticker say? 

Merry Christmas!

This is special!

Perhaps you thought that all of my excitement about the little town of Winnsboro was just the raving of an old guy - but take a look at this list! It's a list of state cultural districts as designated by the Texas Commission of the Arts.  All of them!  And you see the names of all the big cities in Texas on the list - but down at the bottom is the little town of Winnsboro.  The ONLY rural Cultural District in Texas!  Pretty special!  Almost half of them are listed as having "website coming soon" - but not Winnsboro.  Here's their site.

More Photo Elements 9 - This time PhotoMerge Group

In this exercise I'm saying that the picture on the right is the best picture except for Lizzie - in the picture on the left she looks a lot better!

So I marked Lizzie on the left picture and Elements moved that image to the picture on the right and also did a lot of editing to merge it in properly - making change' to Julies leg and Kevin's leg also.

When you call up the pictures Elements uses behind the scenes logic to sync the images and that's why the display of the picture on the right has a white space above it. It's pretty amazing when you view the changes with a mouse click.

Seeker of the Fleece!

So - whose lap does Pancho chose to lie on?  The one with the fleece throw on it.  (Can be empirically proven.)

Wood County Master Gardener 2012 Spring Conference

This is another Photo Elements 9 project that turned out OK.  I think this will be the final version of the poster that we will use to advertise our conference in March!  It pays to have the right tools!

Christmas Sharing

Hospitality House Christmas Party! 

A young little girl to Jack: "Do you go by Jack so no one will no you are Santa?"
Jack: "Yes, how did you know?". :)

This is a post from Jack's wife Linda on FB.  That's Jack with the little girl in the picture.  The beard really belongs to Jack and it's there all of the time.  But Jack has a lot of Santa on the inside too.  (And he writes, sings, and plays the guitar too - really well!  He played at the Wildernest Treehouse JamFest!)

More Photo Elements 9

I've been playing with several things in Photo Elements 9 today - skipping the watching of tutorials and just playing with stuff using the limited amount of knowledge I've picked up in the last couple days.  These two are different treatments of a photo on the Cibo Vino Restaurant website.  I like both of them.  (BTW - take a look at the right column on my blog further down where I've added a few links to some of our favorite places here in Winnsboro.)  My main project is the poster for the next music event here but I can't post that because it has several things on it that are just in the wishing stages right now.

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More learning Photo Elements 9

I watched over 20 of the on-line tutorials today from the most basic to a few of the easier kinda neat things.  Here are a couple tests of the "Out of bounds" feature. I'm definitely missing an important piece of this!  There's a keyboard command to turn it on but it turns something else on when I do it! I guess that means some Google time is in order?

November 2011

I like to look through my pictures at the end of a month to see what we've been doing with our time.  Of course there are some posts from November below this one but here are a few more pictures with some captions:  It was a pretty busy month!

Worked on our Wood County Master Gardeners Spring Conference arranging a speaker, acquiring a raffle prize, and worked on poster ideas.

Created the "Scrapbook Song" DVD for Alex

Found a picture of grandson Colby on FB.  He lives with his father. (Starnes)

Spent a morning traveling around Wood County taking pictures of fall color - but this one is in the back yard.

Had tree removal done at the house and tree trimming done at the Treehouse

Did some refinish work in the chapel and we replaced the cross with one more appropriate.

Spent an hour or so one morning taking fog pictures.  This one is almost the same place as the 'fall color' picture above.

Attended the Winnsboro Fine Art Market

Found a picture of granddaughter Haley on FB.  She too lives with her father. (Gattis)

Had the JamFest T-shirts made and have sold most of them now.

The sign for the city of Quitman is going in.  I worked on the project.

Attended two afternoons of music at the Winnsboro Fine Arts Market.

We are adding some stone pathways at the Wood County Master Gardener's Wildscape Garden at the Mineola Nature Preserve.

A cold Christmas season night in downtown Winnsboro!

Attended several music evenings at Brewbaker's Restaurant and Pub.

I completely rebuilt the upper pond - removing the stone, cleaning and repairing the liner, dug  it deeper but made it smaller, and replaced the stone, pump, filter, and waterfall.

And, of course,there was Thanksgiving and the week of prep that goes into it.

Another Reyes record

At three years, five months, and eleven days - Xander is the youngest to solo on the Zipline! He was pretty cool with it but when we took him off at the bottom he didn't know how to get back to the Treehouse so we did it hand-in-hand!

Is it time yet?

So the joke was - during the time of building the East Bridge, the Treehouse, the Zipline, the Chapel, the Sky Bridge, the West Bridge and Zip Line - that all we needed now was a Gift Shop. I guess my question is - Is it time yet? We've got Wildernest hiking sticks and canes, Wildernest hiking stick medallions, "I rode the Wildernest Zipline" bumper stickers, Wildernest T-shirts, Wildernest Treehouse Jamfest T-shirts, Wildernest Treehouse Jamfest Photo Books, and assorted Wildernest DVD's ("Building the Treehouse", several Thanksgiving DVD's, several special Treehouse and Zipline events. I guess we could get some coffee mugs made too. So what do you think?

Just finished "Cross Fire"

Just finished reading "Cross Fire" the last in the Alex Cross series of books by James Patterson. I believe that there were 17 of them. All were good reads and fast reads and entertaining reads. My only complaint is that he found it necessary to have the murders in each novel committed in a more grisly manner than the previous. In the one before this one he had to resort to a method made famous in the movie "Fargo". It can't get any worse so he had to stop I suppose. This last book was a wrap-up that finally did away with the menace that tracked him through many of the books.

I'll probably go now to another series of books that Patterson has written, The Women's Murder Club. There are ten in this series with the eleventh due out in next May.

Another weekend at Crossroads Music Co. & Listening Room!

Here Comes the Sun. Listen to this and compare it to the Beatles sound! And look at the smiles - they're having a good time playing this!

Dave Walser and Brian Magnus on cello.   We saw these guys at Crossroads last night and it was a unique experience.  Dave Walser was a member of Beatlegras, a trio that played mostly Beatle music and they did a great job - and Dave voice was a big part of that.  We were all singing along last night especially with the encore - "Hey Jude"!  In addition to Beatles music he also did some Bob Dylan, some James Taylor, and a couple of his own songs.  Wonderfully enjoyable evening!  We liked every song!  Brian is a freelance cellist and cello teacher.  He also plays with Heather McCready (which I've posted about before - another Crossroads favorite) and with the Allen Philharmonic. (Another parenthetical - the other two members of Beatlegras, Milo Deering and George Anderson also play with Heather.)

The night before we heard Druha Trava, from the Czech Republic. These guys make it to Crossroads every year and I've wanted to check them out the last two times they were and we finally did it this year. They've been touring the US for six weeks and played in Wichita, Kansas the night after they played here. You may have seen my FB post - in the Czech Republic they have only one top music list (not one for each genre) and Druha Trava has been number one on that list this year.

I don't know how Gus continues to bring in these quality musicians to play at the modest venue of Crossroads Music Co. and Listening Room. I think it must be something like the Wildernest Treehouse Jamfest. It's just a neat place to play and the finances sorta take a back seat. (Speaking of seats, we've been fortunate enough to get good ones for these two shows and the photos here were taken from our seats.)

It's unusual to have two shows on one weekend but it happened this weekend. Nothing more now until the Saturday after Thanksgiving when they'll have the sixth anniversary show!

Wish I had a photo for this one

We were walking the trail this morning and Glynda stopped suddenly and pointed ahead.  About 20-30 yards ahead was a big buck (deer) probably an 8-10 pointer.  We stared at each other for a minute or so then he raised his tail and trotted off.

(Shadow was with us but had dropped away at the time.  We'd been at the Treehouse and she'd gained access to it by climbing a small tree beside it and then jumping over to it. When we got back to the house she still had not rejoined us and the last I'd heard of her sounded like distress.  So I hopped on the lawn tractor and drove back to the Treehouse and she came walking down the steps to see me.  I petted her a bit and since she was OK I got on the tractor to go back to the house - and Shadow ran over to the same small tree, climbed it, and jumped over to the Treehouse again. I guess she wanted to stay there awhile?) 

Blast from the past!

Someone posted this on FB the other day and it reminds you what a special place the old Rubaiyat in Dallas was. It was THE place in Dallas for listening to this kind of music - this kind being in the folk genre.  This is the calendar for March 1971.  Almost all of these guys eventually succeeded in music to one degree or another and several made it to the international stage. The first guy on the list is Jimmy Johnson played blues for many years but, with the very common name, it's been hard to find anything current.  The second act is Uncle Mike and Micky Mouth.  Mickey is Mickey Raphael and he's been in Willis Nelson's band for year playing harmonica. Allen Damron ran the Chequered Flag night club in Austin for many years and was second in command at Kerrville. One of our favorites from him is "Is There a Heaven fro Balloons".  John Vandiver stayed on the Texas scene until his death (about 1979 I believe) - here's a 2010 tribute to him by Shake Russell. .  England Dan and John Ford Colley  England Dan is Dan Seals of Seals & Croft, Summer Breeze, etc. Mike Murphy is Michael Martin Murphy, Wildfire.  Mike Williams was another successful Texas musician and is now a pastor.  I could find almost nothing on Karen Oznick.  Frummox was Steve Fromholtx (The Man in the Big Hat, written by Steve, recorded by Jerry Jeff) and Dan McCrimmon - both successful Texas musicians and Steve is still making music.  Three Faces West was Ray Wylie Hubbard's first group.  It was him and Rick Fowler and Wayne Kidd.  Ray has had some national success (Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother also recorder by Jerry Jeff) but is still a music maker on the Texas scene (and will be in Winnsboro later this year).    And that was one month at the Rubaiyat.  (It was fun reading the FB comments from other people that remembered it.)

You know you're old and in a small town when

you say "Look, Jeff moved his car".

The pub, which is part of but behind Brewbaker's restaurant, opens onto Market Street.  The restaurant opens onto Main Street.  Jeff is the owner of both. We were going to lunch down Market Street and saw Jeff's car parked outside the pub - it's a yellow BMW convertible so at least it's a special car.  A hour and a half later on our way home from the library we were driving back down Main Street and noticed his car in front of the restaurant.  So I said "Look, Jeff moved his car". I guess small things get noticed when there aren't that many big things happening.

If you love our country you should check out this 2009 video!

Antique Car Parade - One of the "Funnest" Days of the Year in Winnsboro

Yep - that says "Willis" on there!

Lots of folks having a good time, lots of old cars!  More cars than you can take pictures of.  I said I'd do just a few this year so I only took 47 pictures!

Lindsey Gail at the JamFest

They had to remove the video of Lindsey from Youtube so the link we had here doesn't work anymore - but check out her website.  She was our headliner act.

See her website at Lindsey Gail.com

Wildernest Treehouse JamFest



Gus and the blues band

Jack "Scruffy" Ainsworth

Ty Lenius

Amy Haid

Tami Hix

Kent Gooding

KMG - Kevin, Mia and Gus (with a little help from some friends)

Lindsey Gail

Alex and Kent

Lee Ann Mitchell



It had to be a cool Saturday evening when the moon is full (or close to it) and the hint of Fall is in the air.  The woods can be dark but moonlight makes it inviting.   Place was important because a stage in the woods at a tree house seemed to touch the imagination of audience and performer alike – and they all came. And our listeners were just right in number (about 100) and their appreciation for what they were listening to was there.  Our lineup of talent was still growing just a few days before.

The performers – Jack “Scruffy” Ainsworth, Ty Lenius, Amy Haid, Tami Hix, Kent Gooding, Lee Ann and her group, KMG (Kevin, Mia, and Gus), Lindsey Gayle, Alex and Kent, Gus and the blues band.  That’s ten acts – and they all came just to share music – and thanked us for inviting them.  And there were a bunch of back-up guys too; Jim and Greg on bass, Limbo on mouth harp, Alex O., on guitar, Allen on percussion and the back-up guys with the others.

Gus Gustafson

Several of us worked very hard to try to make this thing come out right but it would have happened anyway without our efforts.  But Gus is the man that pulled it all together organizing equipment, booking the performers, and much more - and we're really thankful to him.  We're proud to say that the Wildernest Treehouse JamFest was a Gus Gustafson Production!!!