Three Kings' Day is past, and Christmas is officially over

Hello, everyone.

The tree is put away, the ornaments are (almost all) in their boxes, and sadly the house is back to its quiet norm.

But quiet times are also productive times--trees are getting trimmed and a row of snap peas and half a row of lettuce seed are in the ground. One hopes! Especially one hopes that the cutworms have all gone to little buggy heaven.

It's much colder in Montana at this time of year. The last time we were there, it was June. We passed through the length of Texas and crossed Colorado, visited eastern Montana and then passed on to northern Wyoming before driving home again. These are just a couple of the pictures from that trip.

Wild horsemint. (It might be one of the other native monardas, but you can find several at this site to consider.)

Badlands of north Texas: Palo Duro Canyon, a beautiful sight, and in 2007 it was green.

For my non-US readers: it takes about 14 hours to drive from the bottom of Texas, where we live, to the top of Texas. And that's using quiet, smooth roads and going about 70 miles per hour! (I seem to remember that we did have a tire blow out near Lubbock, though, which was about an hour of the day. Still, it's at least 13 hours from the Rio Grande Valley to Amarillo.) We did drive through some lovely Hill Country towns before we headed off into West Texas and on up.