Keeping It Together

The live oak tree in the left hand side of the photo below is OLD.  If we were to give our trees names, I'd call this one Methuselah.  Methuselah in the Bible lived to the ripe, old age of 969.  No, I don't believe this one is that old, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn it is around 200 years old.  I want it to be around for many more years.  Twenty-something years ago, we almost lost her.  A hurricane blew through with tornados following and the old tree split!

Not one to give up, my neighbor (who is now deceased) and I devised a plan.  In that barn you see in the background above, he had every sort of tool you could imagine.  One of those were some drill bits that were two feet long.  He was in his early -70's at the time, I suppose.  We climbed up high into the tree with a drill and began drilling holes in four of the large branches.

Once the holes were drilled, we inserted some threaded rod with a homemade washer made from some iron plate and a big nut on the back.  To the other side we screwed an eye bolt.  Then we did the same exact thing on the other three and ran cables through to connect them.  We joined them using turnbuckles and tightened the turnbuckles until the tree was pulled back together.  If you look closely in the photo below, you can see our "shade tree arborist" handiwork.

Would you believe me if I told you it worked?  It did!  The tree over the years, pulled together by the turnbuckle and cabling, began to heal.  Notice the scar on the south side of the tree:

And here is the one on the north side.  Prior to fixing it, you could put your hand in the 'cut' and feel it pulse as the wind would blow.  But it is all healed up.

But earlier this week we had a problem brewing.  The weather forecast predicted very strong winds coming in. I had already checked on one of the old turnbuckles and the hook on one end was almost straightened out!  The winds and the weight of the tree had damaged the turnbuckle to the extent that I didn't trust it anymore.

So I found a different type of turnbuckle without hooks.  This one, hopefully, won't straighten out or break.  I extended a ladder and climbed way up into the crown of the tree with wrenches and the new turnbuckle in hand.  Tricia gets a little worried when I do things like this, but I wanted to save old Methuselah.  If I could accomplish that without falling, that would be a victory for sure.  I disassembled the old turnbuckle and replaced it with the new one.  I tightened everything up, too. 

The strong winds did blow.  I kept passing by the window as the winds howled to check on Methuselah, and you know what?  Everything held!  The turnbuckle and cable did its job.  Perhaps the old tree will make it another 200 years?  What stories this tree could tell if it could talk!

The Willow

 “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Saturday mornings are magical.  It is the weekend.  You are the captain of your own vessel.  Adventure awaits.  You can march to the beat of your own drum - or no drum at all.  After morning feeding and milking I walked into the pasture to inspect the grass growth.  The sun has started its ascent in the east, but the June rays still linger, filtered between the limbs of the live oak trees and allow a brief pocket of time to enjoy nature before the oppressive heat and humidity drives you to seek shelter.

As I survey the landscape, my eye catches a willow tree.  Can you see it below?  There is a lesson to be taught in the Creator's creation.  The willow is almost in the center of the photograph, just to the left of the live oak.  It started out growing straight and true, but is now growing at an angle toward the west.  It's almost pointing toward the upper left corner of the photo.  That tree was a mistake on my part.  I dug it out of the garden.  It had leaves that looked like a wild peach tree.  I thought perhaps it was from our compost and planted the "peach" tree in the yard.  Well, it was no peach.  It is a willow tree.

The willow is fast growing!  Except, it is being crowded out by the live oak tree.  As the live oak tree grows upward and outward, the willow tree fights for its very existence, changing its trajectory in order to survive.  The live oak battles the struggling willow.  It seems stronger, mightier, and more majestic.  But the willow adapts.  It bends but does not break.  It keeps reaching for the light amidst the relentless pursuit of the overwhelming oak and it stubbornly resists being swallowed up by the predominant growth of its rival.

You see, I want to be like that willow.  In a culture that wishes to envelope you, crush you into conformity of popular culture and incorporate your thoughts, actions, beliefs, virtues and values into the hive mind of prevailing thought and popular opinion, I want to resist, to bend, to flee from conforming.  I want to 'zig' when the world 'zags.'  

There is a phrase for this - Contra Mundum.  Translated from Latin, it means "against the world," in defiance of all general opinion.  One must be careful, however, as this can quickly become a prideful pursuit, one that forces you to walk a tightrope, but it is a worthy endeavor.  You see, as we see age-old truth under assault by moral relativism, and a culture that increasing loves wickedness and hates godliness, one must fasten your vessel to the moorings of Biblical principles to anchor you - to guide you.  It may not be popular.  It will not be easy.  It probably won't be pretty.  As time goes on, it may be lonely.  But time doesn't matter if you have an eternal perspective.

As worldly branches encroach and threaten to bring shade and darkness to our environment, we must fight.  We must bend and keep stretching upward toward the Light.

Remember the willow and its heart and desire and perseverance.

“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”   Romans 12:2

Resolving a Problem Around the Oak Trees

We are never going to win Garden Spot of the Month.  Our lawn is always overdue for being mowed.  With a challenging job and lots of chores at home with animals and gardening, we like to keep things simple.  We've always had a problem around our live oak trees.  Specifically, keeping the grass trimmed around the base of the tree.

Live oaks have large roots that come up above the ground making it impossible to mow close or you nick the roots pretty good.  We don't use Round-up and I'd rather have my toenails pulled out by the roots than weed-eat.  So what to do?  That's long been the question.  Well, last year we put the wood chip mulch around the base of the trees and let it compost down.  Then we planted Indigo into the wood chips and kept it watered.  Here is what it looks like this year:

Indigo apparently spreads by rhizomes and is taking off, covering the mulch, covering the roots and branching out.  When it grows out into the grass, I simply dig it up and replant it in a place closer to the base of the tree.  If you keep it watered, it quickly roots.  You can make many cuttings off of one plant.  In time, it will surround the tree like a skirt, and my weed eating dilemma will be solved. 

Another neat thing about the indigo is that they stay covered in flowers for a good, long time.  See how pretty they are?

The flower is almost like a wisteria in its shape.  Indigo appears to really like the shade or filtered sunlight in the understory of the live oaks.  We'll try to take cuttings and move around the other trees as well.  Seems like a perfect solution to a problem we were having and it's actually making our lives easier.  Win-win, they call it!

Planting the Anniversary Oak

In THIS POST FROM 2015 I talk about and show pictures from our engagement in San Antonio and anniversary almost 30 years ago, our germinating a live oak acorn from the Alamo and our ordeal with our 'Anniversary Alamo Oak.'  The story takes a tragic turn, but things are salvaged and good comes out of bad.  Click the link above to read it for background.

As described in the link above, the handful of Alamo Acorns (part 2) resulted in one of them germinating.  I nurtured it and now it is healthy and 3 feet tall.  We decided on a beautiful day this past weekend, to take it out of the pot and root it into good soil.  We loaded the wagon with all the gear needed for planting and walked out to find the perfect spot.

My Smiling Bride

We picked a spot in the lowest part of the yard where the soil will stay the dampest during droughts.  It is also close enough to the pasture where it will provide some shade to the farm animals as it grows taller.  I dug a nice hole, pulled the tree out of the pot, put it in the hole and put some good potting soil mixed with regular soil into the hole.

Tricia snapped a photo of me with our anniversary oak. 

And here is my wife posing with our anniversary oak.  Who knows how big the first one would be right now - 30 years.  It would be a nice-sized tree! 

The Queen and her tree

The little live oak is in a nice spot so that we can view it while swinging, sitting around our fire pit, or sitting on the back patio.  Yes, the tree just belongs here!

We fertilized it, made a 'well' around it with a berm and watered it in.  Each day I'll add water until we get a good rain.  It has been unseasonably dry in April, only raining 1 inch all month so far.  The spot we planted it in is close enough to the house where we can pull a hose out to it to water, if needed.

So now, we'll just let time tick on and watch our live oak tree grow.  Perhaps birds will eventually build their nests in the branches.  Maybe our great grand kids will climb its limbs.  Perhaps a grandchild will swing on a tire swing in its shade.  Maybe none of that will happen.  Perhaps the memory of the tree's meaning is the important thing - like the acorn growing a mighty oak, a marriage starts out with great hope and promise.  There are set-backs, droughts, rainy seasons, catastrophes.  But over time, if that tree is nurtured and the couple is patient and kind, a monument that stands the test of time can grow, blessed by God and built on the foundation of love.  And that legacy of love can be enjoyed by the couple as well as generations to follow.  Grow strong, little oak!

Checking on the Cows

Tricia, Benjamin and I took a ride out to Oberlin, LA on a beautiful afternoon to check on the cows that we recently purchased.  It is about a 30 minute drive north from our home.  We drove the pickup truck and Benjamin brought the Marlin lever-action .22 and had a good time shooting at things in the pond.  We had a nice visit.  It is always nice to have passengers with you for the conversation, but also for the passenger to be the "gate-opener."

If you have a gate-opener, you can stay in your seat and just drive on through, while your gate opener closes the gate up behind you.  Who needs an automatic gate opener when you have your wife with you?

The cows are real tame.  They come walking right up when you drive in.  I should have had some sweet feed or some range cubes to feed them, but we weren't prepared as we decided on the spur of the moment to go check on them.  The cows were all around one of the ancient live oak trees on the farm.  This tree is right in front of where the old Sonnier homeplace was.  The huge limbs of the tree are covered with Resurrection fern that greens up after rains and then turns brown and looks dead in dry weather.  Many times as a kid I climbed up into the crown of this tree and surveyed the countryside.  Beautiful old tree.  If it could talk, it would have many stories to tell.  There is a big hole on the east side of the tree that once was home to a den of foxes.

I don't remember the old Sonnier homeplace that was here.  I'm sure it was torn down before I was born.  I do remember attending family reunions around this tree and watching my grandfather and his brothers barbecuing while all the ladies set up tables with potato salad, baked beans, and cakes and pies.  Us kids ran around with the cousins playing while the food was being prepared.

Directly west of this photo is an old pecan orchard that my great grandfather planted.  They haven't produced pecans in a few years and are getting really old.  They provided shade for the cows (and for us) in many hot summers.  Standing in that pecan orchard brought back memories.  Even though it is winter and there are no leaves in the pecan trees, if I listened real hard, in my imagination, I could hear the wind blowing through the green leaves on a hot summer's day.  I could hear the "cawing" of the crows as they congregated on a fall day to eat pecans, to our consternation.  Directly west of the pecan orchard was a stand of bamboo against the gully that was planted to give the cows a wind break on cold winter's days.  The bamboo created a 'jungle-like' environment that, as kids, we'd run through and pretend we were in Viet Nam.  The cane break also gave us many cane poles that later became spears, or fishing poles, or walking sticks.  I can distinctly remember my grandpa cutting some tall cane poles from the bamboo stand, tying a newspaper to the end of the pole, setting it on fire and using it to reach high into the trees to burn the bag worm webs that filled the pecan trees.

The farm is truly a beautiful place with beautiful memories...

The Red Oak Borer Strikes Again!

There was a telltale sign sitting at the base of the big water oak tree in the pasture.  A big branch had broken off and fallen to the ground.

I looked up and saw more limbs without leaves on them!  Water oak trees without leaves in the middle of summer is a bad sign.

Looking over the canopy of the tree, there were leaves, but they were turning brown.  Not a good sign at all.

I walked around the tree and could see bark falling off the big tree in big sheets.  This tree is not dying.  It's dead.

At the very base of the tree, I could see holes.  This is evidence like you would find at a crime scene.  The holes are the fingerprint of the killer.  The borer beetle!  He strikes again.  He's killed several trees in our side pasture.

To give you an idea of the size of this tree, it measures 3 feet across.

This tree has some sentimental value.  Seventeen years ago when we moved into this house, we built a tree house around the tree using the wood from a pine tree from mom & dad's house that had been struck by lightning.  We fastened a cable around the tree about 15 feet up.  You can see that the tree has grown around the cable in places.

The cable runs down in a southward direction toward the barn.

It meets a horizontal crossbeam and there is a pulley and a handle that is our zip line.  Our kids, their friends and the neighbor kids have spent countless hours playing on the zip line, laughing, screaming, and enjoying themselves.

Here is a look from the bottom of the zip line back up to the dead tree.

The tree at the bottom of the zip line has completely grown around the landscape timber crossbeam behind the tubing of an old John Deere plow.

I'll have to call someone to take this tree down.  It is just too large for us to try to do it ourselves.  Bringing it down will be a sad time in many ways as I'll think about all the good times had under the shade of that old tree.  We'll get a lot of firewood from the tree, but we already have a pretty good inventory of firewood thanks to the work of the borer beetle on other water oaks we had!

Looking on the bright side, we were looking for a place to plant our Anniversary Live Oak.  I told Tricia when we take the old water oak down, we'll plant our Anniversary Live Oak right near where the old water oak stood.  Perhaps it can provide shade and fun for our future grandchildren and great-grandchildren one day.

Thinning Things Out

My hair is getting more and more gray with each passing day.  I'm okay with it and haven't considered hair products to color the grey.  On the bright side, at least for now, although it is turning grey, it hasn't started turning loose.  It is still thick and when I go get a haircut, the barber often pulls out some thinning shears like shown below to thin things out a bit.

Image Credit

I thought of the haircut analogy the other day when I started an undertaking in trimming one of our live oak trees.  It had a lot of interior growth that just needed to be cleaned up. A friend of ours had his live oaks trimmed and the price tag was way more than what I wanted to fork over, so I started trimming this tree and it will take me about a week or so of plugging away at it before I get it completed, but I made a good start.

Of course I did a lot of googling of how to properly trim a live oak.  Here's a little bit of what I learned:

1. Don't trim flush with the limb or you'll take off the collar that helps your tree scab over and heal,
2. Take off all the dead and diseased limbs,
3. Remove any lower limbs that are growing upward to the crown as this will help airflow,
4. Cut away branches that rub together,
5. Trim off 'ugly' looking branches. (Oh, I have one more thing I'll show you at the end that I learned by making a mistake!)

I used a big extension ladder to get myself up where I needed to be to trim with a chain saw, a pole saw, and and hand saw.  The ladder was equally effective in getting me up high as well as making my wife nervous.  I'm not afraid of heights.

Unlike my wife, the cows, goats, and chickens were pleased with my new project because I threw the limbs I trimmed over the fence and the animals ate the leaves and the chickens found bugs and such to eat amongst the leaves and branches.

In THIS POST and another post referenced in that  one, I tell of  how we repaired this live oak that had split down the middle by cabling it together.  You can see a cable spanning a two of the large limbs and pulled tight with a turnbuckle in the photo below:

After a recent storm I noticed that one of the two cables supporting the great weight of the mighty oak had come loose.

I quickly diagnosed the problem - the weight of the tree pulling against the turnbuckle had straightened out one of the hooks, allowing the turnbuckle to release from the eye bolt anchored in the tree.  I'll need t fix that as we are smack dab in the middle of  hurricane season and I don't want to leave the tree vulnerable.

Okay, back to the lesson I learned the hard way.  When you make a cut, you are supposed to paint the fresh cut with some black spray paint.  Newly cut wood is sweet smelling and attracts bugs that will bore into your tree, introducing disease. Painting the cut helps to reduce the risk of bug damage.

You can see my mistake at the seven o'clock position in the photo below.  Rather than doing what I knew to do and make my first cut at the bottom of the limb, I cut from the top. With no bottom cut, the weight of the cut limb tore some of the bark off of the bottom.  That could have been eliminated, but the tree will heal.  I'll just do it right from this point forward.

With the tree trimming about 50% done on this live oak, I think it looks a lot cleaner  and opened up the view under the expansive canopy that just makes the tree look better.  It should also allow a little more sunlight that will perk up the St. Augustine grass that grows beneath the tree's branches.  We all benefit from a little thinning out from time to time.

A 350 Year Old Live Oak Tree

This morning my work took me to Opelousas, Louisiana, a small town sitting on Highway 190 between Eunice and Krotz Springs and nestled right on the outskirts of the Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge.  Between jobs, we opted to visit the Palace Cafe for a cup of coffee.  Walking in was like stepping back in time to the 1960's.  A handwritten menu by the cash register announced the lunch specials on the steam table:

Fried Chicken

Chicken Stew

Field Peas

Broccoli & Rice Casserole

Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

Mustard Greens

Cornbread

We took our seats in a booth and spotted a waitress talking to another lady stirring food on the steam table and called her over.  With a stern look, she put her hands on her hips and said, "Can't you see I'm busy?" Then she burst into a big smile, walked over and said, "What can I get for you, sweetheart?"  Time slowed to a snail's pace as we visited and sipped on strong black coffee that you could stand a spoon up in.  The cup never got half empty before the waitress refilled it with steaming hot coffee.

As we exited the Palace Cafe and walked eastward about 20 feet, I spotted a huge live oak tree that created cool shade for a whole city block.  It was the Jim Bowie Oak with a historical marker.  The tree is 350 years old.  That means it began growing in the year 1667.  That kind of makes you scratch your head.  If that tree could talk... Jim Bowie likely sat under this tree and enjoyed coffee while he sharpened his famous Bowie knife and told tales of his adventures.  Sadly, he never returned from the Alamo.  Anyway, I copied the inscription of the historical marker below, if you can't read it.

Jim Bowie Oak

This giant live oak tree is over 350 years old and is named in honor of legendary adventurer and hero of the Battle of the Alamo, Colonel James "Jim" Bowie, who lived in Opelousas for part of his life.

The Jim Bowie Oak is a charter member of the Louisiana Live Oak Society. The Jim Bowie Courtyard, located behind the oak, is built on the site of what is believed to be a blacksmith shop belonging to Bowie.

I've watched both movies of The Alamo, the 1960's version starring John Wayne and the 2004 version starring Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thornton.  The bravery and valor of a band of heroic men (Texians and a band of volunteers from Tennessee) as they made a last stand against General Santa Anna's men always fascinates me. Those guys seem larger than life... Davy Crockett, William Travis, Jim Bowie...

I love this quote and its message of courage and conviction:

"I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country. VICTORY OR DEATH."  excerpt from William B. Travis's letter To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World

 In THIS POST FROM NOVEMBER 2015 I tell of our history with the Alamo.  Tricia and I were engaged in San Antonio and that post, if you click on it, tells the sad story of an oak tree we grew from acorns I picked up on the day we were engaged 25 years ago from one of the Alamo oaks and how we are trying again 25 years later with another.

Below is a photo of that oak.  While it's not quite as impressive as the Jim Bowie oak, and is only 16 months old versus 350 years old, it is a touchstone.  

Surrounded by a world in which everything is disposable, temporary, and fleeting, it is nice to have an oak tree or a marriage that stands the test of time.  Remember the Alamo, indeed.

Seeing the Full Cycle

Early Saturday morning I was awakened by loud sounds of rumbling thunder that shook the windows and walls.  It was incredibly loud and its vibrations were powerful.  Later that afternoon I walked around the yard and observed that the thunder must have caused a large rotten limb in one of our live oak trees to fall down to the ground.

The combination of the height from which it fell and the decomposed condition of the limb caused it to shatter once it hit the ground.

There's no telling how old this tree is - well over a hundred years old for sure.  While the tree lives on, limbs die from time to time and fall like this.  Before it falls, however, a metamorphosis is taking place up in the tree.  When the limb dies, it rots and the wood softens.  It becomes a haven for bugs and worms and those attract woodpeckers that come and hammer away at the wood, seeking the tasty morsels contained within.

These holes caused by woodpeckers and exacerbated by continued rot, enlarge and become nesting places for all sort of critters like squirrels, birds, rats and who knows what else.  They poop in the hole in the wood and speed the decay and decomposition of the wood.  Finally, it falls and if I was to kick this limb, it would pretty much turn to sawdust.  Actually, parts of it looks just like soil.

What's interesting to me about this is the cycle that this 'compost' that I'm holding in my hand has taken.  The compost in my hand is primarily rotten wood and (I think) some sort of fecal matter from some animal mixed in.  That's not very pleasant to talk about, I know, but it is nature at work.

This is a handful of fertility that I'll reincorporate into my garden soil.  It is interesting for me to think about the long trip that this handful of compost has traveled.  You see, it's not just people that recycle things.  God has created nature to do the same.

Many, many years ago this live oak tree pulled nutrients and minerals from the soil. This enabled the acorn to grow into a mighty oak, stretching its limbs skyward. Now many years later those nutrients and minerals are returning to the soil, falling downward and are broadcast around the base of the tree.  If I was to leave the remains of the rotten limb where it lies, the compost would create rich topsoil that would continue to nourish the tree from which it fell.  I think I'll move the rotten material into the garden to nourish my garden soil and grow some good vegetables for our table.

An Update to a Post from 3 Months Ago

A little over 3 months ago, I posted about trip to San Antonio, Texas that Tricia and I took to celebrate our 25th Anniversary.

Alamo Oak

You can read about more about the history of the Alamo Oak by clicking here: Alamo Oak.  There are times that I become cognizant of the fact that I'll ruminate about certain things and then I don't go back and update on progress. Today I'll try to remedy that with this update post.

For a quick summary: About 25 and 1/2 years ago Tricia and I were engaged on the River Walk in San Antonio.  On that evening, I picked up a handful of acorns from the big live oak tree right outside the Alamo and brought them home, planted them and one of them germinated.  I figured that it would be a really neat thing to plant that tree and one day be able to point to the big live oak tree while we sat underneath the sprawling branches and tell our grandchildren and/or great-grandchildren that we picked up the acorn from which that tree grew on the day that Tricia and I were engaged.

That little oak seedling grew into a healthy live oak tree and was about 3 feet tall. Sometimes things don't work out as planned.  At that time we lived in an apartment complex in Houston.  We came home from work one day to find that someone had up-rooted our Anniversary Alamo Oak and it had dried out in the sun all day.  I quickly re-potted it and watered it, but try as I might, I could not resurrect the oak.

Fast forward 25 years.  For our anniversary, we re-traced our steps in San Antonio. At the end of the evening, we happened to walk past the big live oak outside the Alamo.  Again, I picked up a handful of acorns and placed them in my pocket.  I figured, "Let's try this again."  I took them home and was able to get one to germinate.  You can see the healthy, vigorous little live oak popping up out of the soil in the photo at the top of this post.

We talked about how big the tree might be today if the first one had survived.  Well, it doesn't matter. We're going to try this again and hopefully this time, we'll meet with more success.  Landmarks and old things that have a story or interesting history are very interesting to me.  Because of the personal nature of this, it is even more special.  I researched a little bit on the Alamo Oak from which our acorn dropped from and found this article: Article on the Alamo Oak - or Heritage Tree .  The Heritage Tree - how fitting!  Perhaps I'll write an update when one of our great-grandchildren are climbing in the branches of our Anniversary Oak.

Twenty Five Years and Counting...

Twenty five years.  That seems like a long time.  In many respects it truly is when you stop to think about it, but twenty five years also feels like it passes by like the blink of an eye.  My lovely wife and I celebrated 25 years of marriage on October 20, 2015.  A little over twenty five years ago we were engaged in San Antonio, Texas. For our Silver Anniversary we wanted to retrace our steps of our engagement and journeyed to San Antonio while the boys held down the fort at home, milking cows and gathering eggs.

So where do you think a couple of people who have a small family farm would go to have coffee and a pastry when they go to the big city?  Well, Mi Tierra, of course! Mi Tierra, in Spanish means, "My Land"  Mi Tierra began as a 3 table cafe in 1941 by Pete and Cruz Cortez.  They served early rising farmers and workers at San Antonio's Mercado.  Sixty years later and their children continue the family business in the successful eatery.  We enjoyed some panes dulces (sweetbreads) and coffee, with Tricia having a mango empanada.

My sweetheart having sweet bread

I opted for a guava empanada.  Delicious!

Guava Empanada

While we were enjoying our panes dulce and coffee a group of three mariachis came around and serenaded us with a love song.  They chose "And I Love Her," by the Beatles, sung in Spanish.  Very fitting, I thought.  

And I Love her (I do!)

To add a little agrarian twist to the story, when they moved to the next table they sang the "Mexican Chicken Dance Song," complete with one of the singers doing an excellent impression of a chicken thoughout the song.  It made us feel right at home.

We moved on to the River Walk and proceeded to take pictures in the exact same place we did over 25 years ago.  We were a little more casually dressed this time!

My Wife Today

Here we are two and a half decades ago on the night we were engaged!

We're engaged!

And here we are today in the same spot...

The Happy Couple

San Antonio has picturesque stone bridges that cross the river and my honey posed on one.

Like a bridge over troubled water...

And here we are at the Alamo.  Twenty five years ago we walked by the Alamo and I bent down and collected a handful of big live oak acorns.  I thought it would be a really nice thing if I could get them to germinate and plant them in our yard.  I thought that one day when we were old, gray, and wrinkled, surrounded by kids and grandkids, we could look to the sprawling live oaks and I could point to the trees and tell the kids about the day I proposed to their mother and how our love and commitment grew just as the mighty oaks above us did.  That would be really cool.

Remember the Alamo!

I was successful in getting one of the acorns to germinate and it grew.  Let me tell you about the rest of that story, though, at the very end of this post...

We drove on to Canyon Lake, Texas.  We had camped out at this lake on quilts beneath a starlit sky many years ago.  We took a couple of pictures atop the dam at Canyon Lake.  Canyon Lake has a sign that always makes me laugh.  It says, "Canyon Lake - Drive Slow, See our Dam, Drive Fast, See our Dam Judge!"

Tricia at Canyon Lake

Canyon Lake dam overflows into the Guadalupe River that runs through Gruene, Texas.  Gruene is a small town that sits on the river that I posted about In this crazy post.  We later went to Gruene on our little pilgrimage and sat in the oldest Dance Hall in Texas and listened to some good old country and western and bluegrass music.  Then we ate at the Grist Mill Restaurant.  There was an old Cotton Gin sitting where the restaurant stands until it burned in 1922.  The only thing remaining of the old water powered-mill is the three story brick boiler room that stands today as the Grist Mill Restaurant, serving up some great Chicken Fried Steak with gravy!  

Kyle on top of the dam

Back to the "Alamo Acorn" Story.  Over the course of the next two or so years (1991-1992) the live oak grew in a pot outside of our little apartment in Houston.  It was about two and a half feet tall and healthy.  Unfortunately, we came home from work one day to find our Anniversary Oak had been pulled up by its roots and laid in the grass by someone.  It was withered and dry.  I tried to revive it by putting it back in the soil and watering it, but our beloved anniversary oak tree perished.  Our marriage, however, did not.

Alamo Anniversary Live Oak Acorns - Let's try this again!

Twenty five years later as Tricia and I retraced our steps on our Silver Anniversary pilgrimage back to where it all started, I bent over at the Alamo and picked up a pocketful of live oak acorns.  We're going to try this again!

Sometimes disaster strikes.  Sometimes things aren't easy.  Sometimes things don't go the way you planned it in your dreams or goals.  But love, like a live oak acorn, properly cared for and nurtured, can grow and reproduce itself, becoming a testament for future generations of something that started small, years ago and endures.

Twenty five years and counting...  Here's to many more happy years together. Happy Anniversary, Tricia.  I love you!

An excellent wife is the crown of her husband.  Proverbs 12:4