Live oaks stay leafy all year. In their part of the woods leaves crunch underfoot catching autumn off guard. When winter drops its snow she stands tall in the watery sun and glimmers green.   Live oaks sprawl lazily up entwining their branches and mischievously reach out to chuck the wind under its chin and…

Hubs sprays the house for pests, beetles, scorpions, ants and other creepy crawlies that I don’t really mind unless they’re in my pantry.  The cats don’t need to be bitten though and scorpions turn up in the darnedest of places. The spray leaves a trickle of residue along the baseboards usually a few days after…

In England we have Memory Clinics. My mother used to go to one to rule out dementia, or as it used to be called, senility. She was asked a few questions about current and past events; of course she was brilliant at the past ones and had a bit of a stretch for the current…

Thirty years ago I was working as the phone room manager at Rainbow-Ticketmaster in Dallas. I had two sons, Ian was 3 and a bit, Simon was 10 months old and my blue-eyed cowboy was preparing to go on the One For All World Tour with The Bee-Gees. Rehearsals began in February 1989, the tour…

The time for Sprout to be collected, after the Mexican resort holiday on the beach, came and went. Simon, our son, kept us informed, “I’m just so busy with the new bird and enclosures to build…” “We’ll keep her until you can come to pick her up,” we told him. We looked down at her…

We get an edible magazine. That doesn’t mean it can be eaten after it’s been read, though that’s a novel idea… It celebrates food and community in North Texas, season by season. I get ideas for unusual recipes and where to find great supermarkets and farm to table restaurants. No fast food here!  Although some…

Simon, co-founder of Window to the Wild, husband to Lindsey and future father of our granddaughter-to-be, camped all night outside the Richardson Animal Shelter to get a Great Pyrenees puppy in preparation for their move from the bird refuge to their own piece of land. We met Sprout at Brain Dead on Lower Greenville the…

We took a trip up to the Denison Dam managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  It’s located on the red river between Oklahoma and Texas and was a pleasant 45 minute drive from Footlights. Because of the heavy rain so far this year the reservoir, which creates Lake Texoma, has risen to great…

To celebrate the one year anniversary of Hubs’ knee surgery we went to Mexico. Not to the beach but inland to a delightful, colonial city called San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato. The streets were cobbled, the trees were worked around, and we walked…a lot!  Very good exercise for us both. Our airbnb was at the…

There’s a really pretty ridge at Footlights, overhung by trees making it shady and grassless and cool. It backs onto the creek and when it’s rained there’s the soothing sound of flowing water to accompany the  hawks crying overhead, and the yapping of excited coyotes, both in pursuit of the rabbits (I wishfully think) who…