For the past 3 years we have gone to the Texas Butterfly Festival in Mission, TX the last weekend in October. It has been so much fun to be around a lot of people who are interested in butterflies and birds. We have gone on field trips and JMM took a class on butterfly photography once. I was really looking forward to it again this year. This morning I set about doing the registration and checking on what classes or field trips we wanted to attend. Much to my dismay, rather than picking and paying for the activities that we wanted to participate in, there is a flat fee of $275 per person which allows you to attend any of the activities. To make matters worse, I have a disability and there is nothing outside the National Butterfly Center that I can attend and JMM wasn't pleased that he would have to leave me to attend any of the field trips. Long story short, $550 is just too much money for not enough activities for both of us. Instead, we will take a trip on our own to the Rio Grande Valley in November and do our own field trips. This also means that I can attend the Houston International Quilt Festival since it is always the same weekend as the Butterfly Festival.
Sunday afternoon we went to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts to see a film about an exhibit of paintings by Vermeer at the National Gallery, London. The exhibit emphasized the place of music in his paintings. I learned that there are only 36 paintings by Vermeer of the about 50 he produced. He died virtually penniless.
Hot, hot, hot! It has been 95-96 degrees every day for the past 10 days. Thank goodness for air-conditioning. I grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast in the days before air-conditioning and it was no picnic. I remember once the church placed large blocks of ice with fans blowing over them to make the sanctuary more bearable. Didn't help. We had hand held paper fans from various funeral parlors to fan ourselves during the church service. Helped a little. We had an attic fan in our very first house and it was wonderful; it honestly kept the house pleasant at night. However, it did draw in tons of pollen which was bad for allergies.
All the swallow babies have flown. Finally, I can get the porches cleaned! We have almost no butterflies. We have a pair of woodpeckers and a pair of hummingbirds, and the usual cardinals, mockingbirds, bluejays, and an unknown wren. The fields are ripening: the rice is beginning to turn golden, the sorghum is a gorgeous rusty red-brown, the cotton is green with white fluffs, and the hay is ready for a second cutting. Beautiful.
I want to see Ghostbusters II. I'm in need of a good belly laugh. Loved the original Ghostbusters!
That's all the news from OakMeadows where the cats are belly up sound asleep and the people have to walk around them.
3 comments:
Thanks for all the news from OakMeadows. Mostly good. Except for the heat. i think making your own butterfly festival will be at least as much fun or more. You two know a lot about ID and where to go, so have fun and bring pictures!! Meanwhile, hope you stay sort of cool. We grew up in Eastern Washington State in the days before AC -- it is desert-like there and summer temps would often reach 3 digits. (Not so humid as you have though.) Sometimes, the paper would publish a picture of a waitress frying an egg on the downtown sidewalk. I fainted from the heat once or twice, but except for that as kids we just took it in stride. Looking for shady spots to read, swimming in the river, playing in each other's basements -- endless games of monopoly .... if it got really hot my whole family would go down to the basement to sleep. Bill said his would go outside to sleep (they lived in a rural area).
I know all about the cats and walking around them...errrrr, uh....tripping over them. Seems Tahoe [black tabby] likes to snooze in the dark area, and Winston [white persian] prefers the light horse blanket or white cow hide. By the way, that cowhide is really COOL to the touch!!
Love this time of year also, so many things are getting ripe and ready for harvest. Too bad about the hike in entry fees [with no qualms about the people who pay!]. But, actually I like YOUR idea better. Go on your OWN excursion at your OWN pace and enjoy what YOU want to see.
Hello, it is hot and humid here too. Sorry about the cost of the Butterfly Festival. That does not seem fair. I would love to do some birding at the Rio Grande Valley, I heard it is awesome. Seeing the butterflies would be a plus. Enjoy your day and the weekend ahead!
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