through the mind’s eye words & images © Jeff Abt

At the moment football is important in our little collage town.

Wed, 2 Dec 2009 07:33:50 -0600

“Go... Fight.... Win.... Ax’em Jacks!”

Leabeth biking her way to Java Jacks .

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:21:32 -0600

Leabeth biking her way to Java Jacks, the local roaster and coffee house in Nacogdoches, Texas.
It was Thanksgiving Day and She (in a holiday mood) didn't mind me photographing her.

The image was captured with a Leica M9 with an old noctilux f/1

One Shot. One Kill. One Beautiful Sharpshooter

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:55:30 -0600

I like
Bighollywood ... Very good stuff !

Veteran's Day Parade in Nacogdoches, Texas

Sat, 7 Nov 2009 11:47:21 -0600

"The age of consumer film photography was born in Rochester, at Kodak...So it is particularly satisfying that this new era of digital imaging was also created at Kodak”

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:46:09 -0500

Doctor of Science
October 2009: The University of Rochester has conferred an honorary doctorate on Steven Sasson, who invented the first digital camera while working for Eastman Kodak Company. Sasson developed the prototype in Rochester in 1975, as a 25-year-old engineer fresh out of college, and received a patent for it in 1978, along with his then-supervisor Gareth Lloyd. Sasson went on to spend 35 years working for Kodak before retiring in February.

"The age of consumer film photography was born in Rochester, at Kodak," said University President Joel Seligman. "So it is particularly satisfying that this new era of digital imaging was also created at Kodak, through the innovation and foresight of Steve Sasson and his colleagues. We are proud to recognize this important achievement, and we look forward to the ever-improving technologies that will continue to develop out of this work in the decades to come."
At the time of the invention, when the industry was centered on film, it would have been difficult for anyone to foresee a world in which Sasson’s large, unwieldy, low-resolution prototype would transform into a ubiquitous staple for households around the globe, but it has done just that.
“The entire multi-billion-dollar digital imaging industry traces quite directly back to this original innovation right here at Kodak,” said professor and former engineering dean Kevin Parker. “Steve knew that making this a point-and-click reality was 10 to 20 years in the future, but he and his colleagues saw the potential. Much of what we do in research universities today, from microscopic imaging to telescopic imaging, stems from Steve’s original work.”
University President Joel Seligman and Vice President Paul Burgett surprised Sasson with the degree at a banquet Saturday, during the PhotoHistory XIV symposium – a gathering of historians, collectors, photo experts, and dealers from around the world that is held every three years.
The 59-year-old Sasson was at the symposium to present the keynote address on his history-shaping invention. He brought the first prototype with him, an eight-pound contraption that looks like a sky-blue metal tissue box stacked on top of a grey metal tissue box and has a resolution of .01 megapixels (more than 100 times less than low-cost cell phone cameras today).
Sasson was born in Brooklyn, NY, and showed a knack for electronics innovation early on. As a boy, he would gather discarded TV and radio parts and use them to construct stereos, transmitters, and radio receivers, he said.
Sasson went to work for Kodak after graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1973 as an electrical engineer. In 2001, the company awarded him the prestigious Eastman Award, the company’s highest award for innovation. Since then, he has received widespread recognition for his work, including being inducted into the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, and earning The Economist Magazine’s 2009 Innovation Award in the category of Consumer Products and Services.
He joins recent University of Rochester honorary degree recipients Gen. Colin Powell, jazz legend Dave Brubeck, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, and many other distinguished awardees from the last century and a half.

Plants sometimes need an advocate

Fri, 9 Oct 2009 10:23:48 -0500

As I have been poking around Nacogdoches during the last couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that fruits and berries have begun to ripen on our trees and shrubs. Have you noticed?
The plant that really got me thinking was Cocculus carolinus. Cocculus referring to a berry and carolinus, of course, from Carolina, thus little Carolina berry. Well, I’ve planted a number of these plants along my fence where they’ve grown up and have begun to bear fruit. I’ve also planted one on a telephone pole. It’s now about twenty feet in the air and bright red berries have appeared all along the vine. Have I mentioned it is a vine?
Cocculus carolinus is a deciduous twining vine with attractive, heart-shaped, summer foliage. But, its real attraction is its bright red fruit or berries in the fall of the year. This brings me to one of the plant’s other common names. It is sometimes called Carolina Snailseed. Inside each berry there’s a tiny seed; and as its name implies, the seed looks very much like a snail or like some kind of miniscule, fossilized, prehistoric nautilus.
Now this Snailseed vine is a native to East Texas. It’s a plant that birds are attracted to because of its bright red berry. It’s not uncommon in our woods and periodically birds will ‘plant it’ amidst our shrubbery where the vine will grow and intertwine among our ornamental shrubbery. Under the right circumstances- running over an arbor or over a trellis or up a fence- it can be quite handsome, especially in the fall of the year. Like now.
Plants sometimes need an advocate. I’ve once considered Cocculus carolinus as a pest because some of my garden customers wanted me to pull it out of their azalea beds. I personally didn’t mind the vine, but they considered my carefree disposition towards it as laziness. There were, in my way of thinking, more important things for me to do. So, somewhere in the back of my mind I resented Snailseed because it got me into conflict and at odds with my clients.
Well, a number of years ago, I was walking around the historic district of Nacogdoches with Greg Grant. We were talking history and plants, of course, when we came across a large wooden fence with azaleas planted in front of it; and, somehow or another, Snailseed had worked its way up through the fence and that fall had covered itself in bright red berries. Greg grabbed a few of the little berries from the vine and promptly popped them in his mouth, sucking off the pulp and separating it from the seed (much like a baseball player separates sunflower seeds from its hull). He spit out the pulp and then spit out the tiny little seeds onto his hand saying, “Look.” There in the palm of his hand were little seeds that looked exactly like snails. “How cool,” I thought.
If you have children around and a few Snailseed vines, this would be a wonderful, fascinating way to engage a child’s interest in things botanical. Folks always need someway to engage with the natural world.This little vine was never the same in my mind after Greg’s demonstration. I was won over in an instant.
As the Snailseed vine climbs its way up the telephone pole by my house, I think of Greg’s horticultural demonstration and how in each one of those bright red berries lies a nautilus sleeping quietly.

Inventors of CCD honored with Nobel Prize for Physics

Tue, 6 Oct 2009 10:55:15 -0500

In 1969 Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith invented the first successful imaging technology using a digital sensor, a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device). The CCD technology transformed light is into electric signals. The invention changed the world: digital photography was born!

Painted Sports Fans

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:19:06 -0500

Forest Pansy: its color brings deep color into our sylvan world.

Thu, 14 May 2009 14:26:58 -0500

By this time of the year, most folks have generally forgotten our spring blooming Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis). In the springtime it is quite showy, producing clusters of rose-colored pea-like flowers along its branches. The spring is truly the time of the year for the redbud to show off, but after the blooms fade, the redbud is forgotten. Oh, it’s a nice enough tree in the summer months, growing from twenty to twenty-five feet with interesting branching patterns. During these summer months children play with the flat, beanlike seedpods that look a lot like snow peas. But besides all this the tree disappears inconspicuously in our landscape.
There is a cultivar of the redbud, though, that extends the tree’s ornamental value well into the summer months. Its trade name is Forest Pansy. This cultivar is much like the native version we have in our woods but with a significant difference. In the spring of the year along with the usual redbud blooms, the tree covers itself with beautiful purple-red leaves that shimmer with light as breezes move through the garden. This is accomplished because of the contrast between the top of the leaf, which is a deep maroon, and the underside of the leaf, which has more of a silver hue. I’ve always been envious of my fellow European gardeners who have the maroon foliage “Purple Beech”or Fagus sylvaticato bring these deep colors into their sylvan world. We’ve had few trees that would do the equivalent. Forest Pansy gets us part-way there.
In residential landscapes the redbud is known as a harbinger of spring, blooming along with azaleas, dogwoods and our springtime bulbs, and Forest Pansy is just as pretty and showy as any redbud when it comes to its spring bloom. I really like Forest Pansy. Its form is distinctive, as well. It has a bit of an umbrella shape that flattens out on top when grown under full sun, making it become more broad than tall. Forest Pansy, like other redbuds, is very good for an urban landscape. Because of its small size ( 20’ ), it works well as a street tree where large oaks and pines won’t do.
Along with Forest Pansy there are other cultivars of redbuds. Most distinctive are the white versions. There is an Oklahoma redbud and a Texas redbud that set themselves apart as white blooming cultivars. For some time now, Forest Pansy has been my favorite. It‘s showy even now as summer’s heat comes upon us, months after the other redbuds have finished their spring performance. Look for the redbud Forest Pansy in your local nursery. This tree has pushed Cercis canadensis, our old fashion redbud, into a summertime ornamental.

Sound on my website!

Sat, 9 May 2009 13:56:12 -0500

Try this link to the travel pages of my my website!
Work your way down to the Images of Istanbul. Two of the images have a sound file connected to them (a minaret and a cat). Hope you like them!

www.jeffabt.com/travelimages4.html

Ab and Twitchy

Tue, 5 May 2009 11:32:42 -0500

My neighbor “Ab” adopted a baby orphaned squirrel a month or so ago; they have since become inseparable friends. “Twitchy” crawls around on Ab as if he were an oak tree...often falling asleep curled up on his shoulder. Ab knows that one day Twitchy will not return to him after a session of exploring the trees outdoors, but go its own way back into the wilds. So, I took these portraits as a way of remembrance, just in case the “wild” side of Twitchy wins out over the domestic side of his nature .

Photographers..... Trouble Makers ?

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:14:09 -0500

A question from “a Photo Industry Blog”

http://blog.melchersystem.com/2009/04/15/the-trouble-makers/

Blue Pea Vine (Clitoria ternatea)

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 21:23:59 -0500

Blue Pea Vine (Clitoria ternatea). This little thing has the most captivating blooms and will easily cover fences and posts up to 10 feet high in a single season. And they will bloom continuously throughout the summer.

Photographer’s Humor

Tue, 6 Jan 2009 09:52:43 -0600

Thinking of Family

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:46:46 -0600

My mom in the 1940’s....... A classy young woman!

Dominiq Edison: You will see this guy in the NFL!

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:22:41 -0600

RECEIVING STATISTICS AS OF NOV. 15 2008
No. of Receptions 65
Yards 949 Avg 14.6
TD 17
Edison is SFA’s all-time leading receiver.

Taking Walks & Mossy Cup Oaks

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:33:22 -0500

I like folks who take walks. We live in a small enough town where people can get out of doors and walk on sidewalks for exercise and for getting out into nature. A couple of Sundays ago a friend of mine, Mark Dodson, brought an unusual acorn to me to identify. He said he walks by the tree all the time. We’ll get back to the acorn he brought me in a minute, but let’s first consider taking walks.
It use to be that life was slower. Before the advent of the automobile one got to really see things. Now we race by hardly noticing the natural world around us. If we notice nature at all, it is when it gets in our way- when the deer runs out in the road and we brake and dangerously swerve to avoid catastrophe. This is just about as close as we get to nature. I say, slow down get out and take a walk. These last few weeks have been a perfect opportunity to get outside.
The man on foot sees so much more. As he walks down the street, each house and its landscape can be slowly taken in. Trees that interest him can be studied, week after week if he walks certain areas with any regularity. He can watch the trees progress throughout the year from spring, summer, autumn and winter. Each season the tree takes on a new aspect. Shapes are discerned- texture of foliage, bloom and fruiting patterns. These are the things a man on foot can take in.
For a person driving along in an automobile to take notice of a landscape, that landscape has to be especially showy. I’m of the opinion that modern gardeners do most of their landscaping with the automobile in mind. Can it be seen and will it be noticed from 20 yards away in a car traveling a minimum of 30 miles an hour? (This sounds like one of those hated math problems, doesn’t it.) So, why don’t we just ignore the car and its passenger and think about the man on foot? Landscape with a view to the details. I say, put something interesting in your landscape that might only be noticed by the neighbor walking his dog. Plant a shrub or two a bit out of the ordinary that a visitor to your property might take note. I know people who have gardens that always have something interesting growing in them.
This brings me back to the acorn Mark brought to me a few weeks ago. He thought it might be a foreign introduction; the acorns were so unusual. The acorn itself was relatively inconspicuous but it was the cup that caught his eye. It looked like a little bird nest with a fringe around its edge; thus, one of this oak’s common names- Mossy Cup oak. Now, I suppose some folks when they see the acorns of this tree come at it a bit differently. They interpret the frilly edge of the acorn’s cup as if they were spines; thus it’s other name, the Bur oak.
One way or another the oak (Quercus macrocarpa) is a fine native American oak. It reaches a height to up to 80 feet. With leaves that are dark green and shiny above and grey/green underneath. The bark of the tree is deeply furrowed and attractive. The tree, itself, is found all the way from Canada to here in East Texas. In this part of the country, it often seen growing wild in areas bordering grassy lands. But surprisingly, it used to be planted as an ornamental in town landscapes. But not so today. Nurserymen offer a very limited palate of shade trees. A nurseryman that has, say, 10 different varieties of oaks is very rare indeed, and I bet the Mossy Cup is not one of them. No, if you want to see the Mossy Cup, you will have to take a walk and find it in the wild. You might even collect a few acorns, grow them in pots, give them to neighbors, and spread a few trees around town. Who knows, twenty years from now the trees may have matured, and some passer-by on foot will take note and find the acorns interesting, Even take a few home to the family and say, “Look what I found on my walk.”

The presses stop at The New York Sun.

Wed, 8 Oct 2008 10:52:41 -0500

It’s a sad time we live in!
When in “The City” it was always good to see “The Sun”. I’m sorry to see it go!

“Victory” The Greek Goddess Nike, Sports, & Shoes

Sun, 5 Oct 2008 16:12:02 -0500

Jeff’s New Italian -ABICI-Bike!

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:30:59 -0500

TCU/SFA Football

Mon, 8 Sep 2008 09:29:01 -0500

...and a bit of Mexican heritage as part of the halftime show!

Ashia & Jonathan - The Wedding

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:58:17 -0500

Santorini’s Caldera

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:40:47 -0500

With sunsets like this one on Santorini’s Caldera (or volcanic bay), it’s no wonder that cruise ships stop regularly at this famous Greek island. It is said that this is the location of the lost city of Atlantis.

Herbs & Spices

Tue, 3 Jun 2008 09:44:34 -0500

In Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar

Fri, 9 May 2008 11:27:33 -0500

Summer weddings on the way !

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:53:58 -0500

Resurrection

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:19:05 -0500

Few plants are more illustrative of the Easter season than bulbs. Among them all, few bulbs have created more passion than tulips. Tulips, you know, emerge from beneath the earth, where they are hidden in the fall of the year, to clothe themselves in glorious life during the spring. This is the great pleasure that a gardener has when he puts a bulb in the ground. He forgets it. Almost as if it had died to him and he to it, it passes from memory. But in the spring, in the Easter Season, it emerges. Just like in the Resurrection. Yes, when mankind looks on death, he has a primordial hope that death will not have the final say; and when the Resurrection comes, somewhere deep in his psyche, he perceives it will be glorious. The bloom of tulips in the spring are living pictures of man’s hope.
Just a single example-my older daughter Anna, then five years old, was in the car with us as my wife and I were driving along Starr Avenue one Sunday morning. We stopped at the light right there at Clark Boulevard where it dead-ends at Christ Episcopal Church. It was a beautiful spring morning as we waited for the light to turn green, and Robert Rogers (former head of SFA grounds) had planted tulips there on the boulevard in a great mass of color. They were absolutely perfect in every way. At the sight of them, my sweet little daughter gasped with delight. At that very moment, my daughter saw something more beautiful than she had ever seen before. The sight of those tulips literally took her breath away. That bit of gardening reached right down into her psyche and satisfied a need for beauty that she didn’t even know she had.
Somehow, I think the Resurrection will be like that. This drab world will be changed (much like winter turns to glorious spring and summer). Is the beauty of a blooming tulip a parable, a cipher for the Resurrection? Is there something so beautiful coming that, when we finally see it, we will gasp at its beauty?
I hope this Easter weekend you get out in the garden or drive about town to see the bulbs blooming- new life emerging. When the gardener laid the bulbs into the earth months ago, he did it in hope. We, too, when we lay our loved ones down, do it in hope as well.

More SFASU Basketball..............Southland Tournament

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:57:40 -0500

SFASU Basketball

Sat, 9 Feb 2008 19:37:06 -0600

Lumberjack Josh Alexander puts in two points on a fast break against Texas-San Antonio Saturday night at SFA's Johnson Coliseum.

Old photos-- a neat website!

Sat, 9 Feb 2008 13:07:24 -0600

Give it a look! The site is updated often, so use the RSS feed. www.shorpy.com

Studio shots....

Wed, 6 Feb 2008 08:31:21 -0600

Leucojum growing in my side yard

Sat, 2 Feb 2008 10:51:04 -0600

Photos: Hello Cupcake !

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:24:41 -0600

A little image snapped with an iPhone in a cupcake shop! (Tacoma ,Washington)

PHOTOS: SFA vs Auburn

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:12:46 -0600

PHOTOS: Alto vs Seymour FB

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:36:10 -0600

WORDS: Kissing is simply fun!

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:06:56 -0600

Poinsettias, Christmas trees and holly. These are the plants that come to mind during the Christmas season. Yule logs and chestnuts roasting over the fire. All these things have cozy and warm connotations. But among Christmasy plants, there is one that is the odd man out. We know it as mistletoe(Phorandendorn flavescens). Mistletoe is the odd man out because, to put it bluntly, it’s a parasite.
No one likes ‘hangers-on’ and that’s literally what mistletoe is. It’s a plant that grows into the bark of trees and robs nutrients from the trees to support itself. Now officially mistletoe is hemiparasitical, which means it doesn’t necessarily need all its nutrients from its host. Next time you look at a sprig of mistletoe growing in the branches of an oak tree, you will notice that it’s leathery leaves are green. Mistletoe actually carries on photosynthesis and can manufacture nutrients on its own. In other words, mistletoe is just lazy. It steals from its host (say the oak tree in your yard) because it just can’t be bothered to do “all” of the work by itself.
Now, let’s get to the name ‘mistletoe’. Mistletoe is an Anglo Saxon word derived from the word ‘mistal’ and the word ‘tan’. ‘Tan’ means twig and ‘mistal’ means dung. Not to go too far into etymology, the English Missel Thrush is a bird that spreads mistletoe around (to put it the most delicately that I can) by eating mistletoe berries and pooping the seeds out . So, next time you pick up a branch of mistletoe, just think of the English Thrush,trees and bird poop- ‘dung twig’.
The plant has other names, as well, like ‘kiss and go’, ‘chuchmen’s greeting’, ‘muslin bush’, and ‘herb-de-la-croix’.But we are a long way from Christmas at this point. I told you that mistletoe is the odd man out. It’s a parasite and spread about by bird poop. It is even known to kill trees when they become overly infested. So, let’s get to Christmas, the happy part.
Somewhere back in ancient history, folks back in Europe (Vikings, Druids, etc) thought mistletoe had all kinds of special powers. Some thought it was spontaneously generated in the tops of trees by lightning strikes. Gods and goddesses in ancient Rome messed around with mistletoe, as well. This was all because the plant seemed to appear like magic between heaven and earth high in the branches of old trees. Such a powerful plant was sure to effect fertility and have aphrodisiatic powers. So, somewhere in the 1800’s, people started kissing under mistletoe. It brought good luck.
The etiquette went like this. As long as there was a berry on the mistletoe, a young fellow was allowed to steal a kiss from any young lady who happened to be standing under it. For each stolen kiss a berry had to picked. At the end of the season when all the berries were picked and gone, so were the stolen kisses.
Mistletoe was also placed under pillows for good luck (something like kids putting a tooth under the pillow for the tooth fairy). Brides also threw mistletoe into the fire. If it burned quickly, the marriage would turn out well; but if it sputtered and burned poorly, then the marriage was in for hard times. And so this semi-parasitic plant carries with it special qualities associated with romance and fertility .
As many traditions seem to migrate to Christmas celebrations,so it was with mistletoe. In Edwardian England, mistletoe was sold in the market places during the Christmas season. Mistletoe and Christmas became thoroughly intwined. Dickens even refers to it. And so this little evergreen twig and parasite of a plant, hung in doorways during the holidays, is associated with cheerful expressions of affection- kissing. Anthropologists say ninety percent of world cultures do a bit of kissing (and the other ten percent probably do but don’t talk about it).
Leaving aside bird poop, lightning strikes, Roman gods and plants with special powers, kissing is simply fun, and we like to come up with occasions to do more of it. Mistletoe at Christmas is one of them.
But what about horticulture and the mistletoe up in your trees? Tim Baggett of Old Gappy Tree Service says that heavy infestations of mistletoe in your tree does indeed weaken them. But removing it completely is impossible. It can be manually removed and scraped away from the branches, but the mistletoe will reappear from its roots that have penetrated the tree’s bark. Chemical applications are available, but they are not completely effective either. Pragmatically, Tim says the best course is to just leave the mistletoe alone, unless you want to come to the aid of an old tree by physically removing the mistletoe every once in a while to give the tree an advantage over the mistletoe that is stealing nutrients from it.
I say the best course is to either bring mistletoe in from outdoors and get a few stolen kisses or you might even take your kids and family out under the trees during the holiday and give them a kiss and tell them you love them. Tis the Season.

Alto sprints to state title game

Sat, 8 Dec 2007 12:37:53 -0600

Arp High School Band “The Drummer”

Sat, 1 Dec 2007 09:22:09 -0600

PHOTOS: The Puget Sound

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:13:24 -0600

The world isn’t Camelot

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 06:56:35 -0600

At times I’ve secretly wished that things would be arranged especially on my behalf. You see, I generally take a Sunday afternoon nap, and I think it would be very nice if it would rain every Sunday afternoon between 2 and 5. Not a heavy rain, but a nice rain (an inch and a half or so ). Then the rest of the week the sky would be blue. Days would not be too hot or too cold but just right. I have imagined me and my garden thriving under such conditions. That has been my secret longing. Then this week I came across a prayer of a fellow gardener, and I said to myself I know exactly how this fellow feels. This is how Karel Kapek’s prayer reads:
“Oh Lord, grant that in some way it may rain everyday, say from midnight until three o’clock in the morning, but, you see it must be gentle and warm so that it can soak in; grant that at the same time it would not rain on the campion, alyssum, the helianthemum, lavender, and the other plants which You in Your infinite mercy know are drought-loving (I will write their names down on a bit of paper if You like) and grant that the sun may shine the whole day long, but not everywhere (not, for instance, on spirea, or on gentian, plantain lily, and rhododendron), and not too much; that there may be plenty of dew and little wind, enough earthworms, and no aphids and snails, no mildew, and that once a week a thin liquid manure and guano may fall from heaven. Amen.”
Now this fellow puts me to shame. He has very high expectations. I think he actually feels like he should live in Camelot. Do you remember the lines from the musical Camelot when King Arthur first meets his future queen, Guinevere, and he attempts to woo her with the good fortune she is sure to find in Camelot? This is how the song goes...
Arthur says,
“The crown has made it clear.
The climate must be perfect all the year.

A law was made a distant moon ago here:
July and August cannot be too hot.
And there's a legal limit to the snow here
In Camelot.
The winter is forbidden till December
And exits March the second on the dot.
By order, summer lingers through September
In Camelot.
The rain may never fall till after sundown.
By eight, the morning fog must disappear.
In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot
Those are the legal laws.
The snow may never slush upon the hillside.
By nine p.m. the moonlight must appear.
In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here
In Camelot.”
Guinever remarks, “And I suppose the leaves fall in neat little piles?
To which Arthur replies, “Oh, no my lady, the wind whisks them away altogether, at night, of course.”
Guinever replies, “Of course.”

No, the world isn’t Camelot, and our secret gardening wishes will never be granted. In fact, I think when our expectations for our gardens and our life are too high and irrational then the spirit of thankfulness is far, far away. Or to put it the other way around, the more humble we are in our expectations the more likely we are to be thankful when good things do happen, even when they are modest and seemingly insignificant.
So, when you walk through your garden or take a drive in the country, take a good long look at the beauty you find there. Nothing will be perfect. You may be tempted to imagine that things could be a bit better, but banish the thoughts and the desires for Camelot and just be thankful for God’s little gifts of beauty.

WORDS: Pecans 1 & 2

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:04:10 -0600

#1
I’ve been out gathering pecans lately. I’ve enjoyed it. Pecans are falling in great masses, and they’ve been falling from trees for which I have absolutely no responsibility. I feel a lot like my ancient ancestors. You know the ones...those hunter-gatherers who lived on the edge of a savannah somewhere. They owned no land, cared for no crops. They just hunted and gathered. There is something freeing about the process. I’ve picked up several five gallon buckets of pecans this season, and I didn’t have to pay a dime for all that food. I just had to expend the energy to gather it up.
There is also hunting going on this time of year. Now,I haven’t been hunting, but I know it’s going on all around me. Texans are famous deer hunters. There’s definitely a primordial aspect to hunting- like hiding in trees, whispering quietly to fellow hunters, waiting for herds of animals to come by.
Nuts and fruit from the trees and deer hunting go together. It’s been a good year for pecans, and they say it’s been a good year for acorns. The great oaks(Quercus sp.) in our woods have littered the forest floor with thousands of acorns. This will make the deer fat and happy, and the wild hogs in our woods will have plenty to fatten themselves with. So, all this food falling from the trees has made me feel especially close to nature.
It’s also been a good year for our pecan growers, those citified fellows who grow their trees in rows. It seems as if Texas will be the number one state this year in pecan production, passing up New Mexico and Georgia. Of course, pecan growers make use of hybrid pecans. Those native pecans(Carya illionoensis) out in our woods and along the creek banks and lowlands are too small for commercial production.
Now I’m not quite for sure whether the other nut crops out in our woods have done as well as the pecans and oaks. Dot Packard told me the other day that she and George (her husband) hadn’t noticed the beech(Fagus grandifolia) trees down in her bottom land as bearing anything close to a notable crop. But I do know that chinkapins(Castanea pumila) have born some fruit this year. You probably know that many of our chinkapins died in the last decade or so because of disease. Hopefully we will be seeing more of them in our woods. I have a handful of nuts given to me by a friend that I plan to ‘plant up’, and I hope to have chinkapin seedlings next year to set out.
I want to leave behind for a minute this primordial feeling that I’ve been reveling in and tell you about Robert Grogan who lives over on Laurel Lane. He has several pecan cracking machines. The machines make pecan gathering more pleasant. The machines he has in his garage crack pecans; and it doesn’t matter how many you pick up, you don’t have to spend hours and hours cracking nuts. Each year people bring in pecans, anywhere from 10 to 200 pounds at a time, and these machines will crack 81 pecans a minute. This saves a lot of labor that we gatherers don’t have to do.
Mr. Grogan says that if you gather pecans he will be happy to crack them for you. Remember, though, to sort them and keep them according to size. If you’ve been out in the river bottoms gathering little pecans, set those aside and keep them separate from the larger, modern pecans we have in our orchards and around our homes. His machines cannot handle mixed sizes. Mr. Grogan’s pecan crackers are amazing mechanical devices. One after one, pecans roll out of the machine perfectly cracked up, making them easy to pick through and get at the sweet meat of the pecan. And it’s that nutritious, sweet meats we gatherers are eager for. I’m sure if you ate pecans everyday this winter, you’d fatten up just like the deer and the hogs. Ah, getting close to nature!
More about pecan growing soon.

#2
There are few fruit trees that are able to put me in the holiday mood more quickly than the pecan (Carya illinoinensis). I can’t think of an American tree that has (in culinary terms) contributed more to the world. Think of it for a minute. Think of all the wonderful, holiday desserts that are created with pecans as a key ingredient; and of course around Thanksgiving and Christmas, pecan pie is a premier dessert.
If you would have pecan pie, you (naturally) need pecans, and to have pecans you need a pecan tree; and if you have room, you might as well have an orchard all your own..
Pecan trees are not hard to grow. They are native from Mexico all the way up to Indiana and east to the Atlantic Ocean. They make wonderful shade trees, give food for wild life and are drought tolerant. They are long lived and become stately, mighty giants in the landscape. And, I can not stress it enough, there is the fruit- those wonderful pecan nuts.
If you would plant pecans, there are a few things you might consider. First of all, you’ll need a bit of space. Pecan trees need at the minimum a 50 feet wide area in which to spread out. If you want to plant a mini orchard, plant the trees in a row at least 50 feet apart; or if you are just going to have one tree, make sure it will have plenty of space in the landscape. You don’t want it to have to compete with oaks or pines in your yard.
Then pick a good variety for your area. Our county agent can provide literature with lists of cultivars that are suitable, but let me suggest a few. Pick trees with Indian names like Wichita, Choctaw, Kiowa, Sioux or Cheyenne. Now, there is also the famous Burkett pecan which was found in the year 1900 by J.H. Burkett and his sons. The sons found the pecans in a squirrel’s nest; and on the urging of their father, went out into the woods to locate the tree the nuts had come from. From that tree, budwood was obtained, cuttings were made and trees were grafted. The famous Burkett pecans quickly became one of the most popular pecan varieties in Texas. This famous pecan is a good example on why it is a good to be careful when choosing cultivars.Even though it is famous state wide it’s only suitable for West Texas. Here in East Texas it is prone to Insect and disease problems. Choose carefully!
Once you’ve chosen the tree, you have to grow it. Pecan growing, as I said earlier, is not difficult, but there are some things worthy of study, and I think pecan growing is one of those things. The most important thing in growing pecans is planting them well and caring for them their first few years of life. Pecans have a very long tap root, so I like to dig a very wide hole for the tree. Then at the bottom of that hole, take a post hole digger, dig as deep as you can a smaller hole as if you were planning to put in a fence post, back filling the hole with mixture of pine bark and soil. Dig this smaller hole as deeply as you can. Then, finally, plant the pecan tree in the original, wider hole. As the tree grows, the tap root will go down into that narrow, post hole size opening, getting firmly established in the good soil you provided for it. Getting that tap root down good and deep those first few years of the tree’s life is very important. If you want to know the ends and outs of pecan growing and would like to have a pecan orchard- even one with just three trees (three trees makes an orchard), you might want to start by visiting our county Extension Service. They are a wonderful source of information.
Later on in the tree’s life cycle, pruning is important. The subject is very elaborate, but the shape and branching patterns of the tree will be established during the early years. And this pruning is really solely in the gardener’s hands. So study up, visit libraries, and read.
If you plant a mini pecan orchard of three or even just a single pecan tree on your property as a shade tree, you won’t be sorry. One day the tree or trees will be mighty and statuesque. Squirrels from around the neighborhood will come and visit your landscape. And if you have squirrels, you’ll have hawks and owls, and isn’t wildlife a wonderful thing to experience? You can experience it right here in town. Pecans make premier wildlife habitat.
Of course, when I think about pecans, I’m not thinking about providing food for squirrels and wildlife. I’m thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas- pecan pie and Christmas cake ( a special tradition at our house). Food for the holidays.

PHOTOS: S.F.A.S.U. Basketball 11-13-07

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:45:21 -0600

WORDS & PHOTOS: Places between two worlds

Fri, 2 Nov 2007 11:57:12 -0500

I happen to live very near a cemetery. This last week on The Eve of All Hallows. The cemetery saw lots of traffic. All night long (at least until 3 AM when I stopped paying attention) cars would drive through- sometimes very slowly. The lights would turn out, I’d hear car doors slam, and I visualized people walking among the tombstones. I’m sure it was all very hocus-pocus and ‘scary’.
But it hasn’t always been so. Cemeteries haven’t always had such a dreary and tawdry, horror movie reputation. They actually were our country’s earliest parks. At one time folks on Sunday afternoon would walk through the cemetery and promenade. Believe it or not, they were considered happy places to visit.
In our family, whenever and wherever we travel we try to visit a cemetery or two. Somehow it puts us in touch with the history of the area we visit. The tombstones often speak of faith and family, not merely grief and loss. Each stone represents history- stories to be told and retold. My wife and I have visited cemeteries from Connecticut down through the east coast, across the South and into East Texas. Each place has a special appeal and ambiance. They are living places with gardens and each grave represents a life lived.
The old cemetery in Savannah, Georgia is so rich with atmosphere and history it is almost intoxicating. Then there’s the little cemetery next to the Episcopal Church in St. Francisville, Louisiana. One doesn’t have to have much of an imagination to think back to the war between the states and envision Yankees shelling the place from the river.
Each cemetery, wherever it is found, is unique. The great Hebrew cemetery in Prague, shaded by mighty trees and bristling with stones from the Middle Ages, is one of the most mystical places on the planet. Each tombstone seems to speak sorrow, and yet there is a quiet and hopeful faith about the place. The Hebrew people put me in mind of the Pharoah of Egypt. Isn’t Egypt full of magnificent graveyards? When you think about it, the pyramids are mighty monuments to the dead.
Then there’s a little cemetery on Isola dei Psscatori in Laggo Maggorie, Italy. It’s a family cemetery, well kept and tended to with flowers about the place. That cemetery is like an island in the midst of an island. It testifies that even in a magnificent and beautiful place like the Italian lake district, there is another world even more beautiful and serene. And the people, even there, as they lay down their bones are hopeful about going to that other place.
I suppose the most far away cemetery my wife and I have ever visited was the cemetery on Stewart Island at the southern tip of New Zealand. Here is a place as far away and as isolated as a man could hope to be way, way out in the Pacific. When men bury their loved ones in the ground, each grave faces east and looks across the blue Pacific to the rising sun. Each grave and its individual story are unique, yet even this cemetery (so far away) is like all the others. Men lay their loved ones down in hope amidst beautiful and gardened places.
Now, I like to think of the Biblical account of the burial of Jesus and his subsequent resurrection. Mary, on seeing Jesus after the resurrection, did not recognize him at first (Christ’s resurrection was too fantastic to imagine), and she thought he was merely the gardener. You read the story for yourself. I like this account for several reasons. First of all, I like the idea of Jesus, our Lord and Messiah, being mistaken for a gardener. Let me just say, as a gardener, I like that. But it also says something about that first century Jewish cemetery; it was a gardened place! Where there is a gardener, there is a garden. Each cemetery becomes a little gardened paradises that prefigures heavenly gardens.
Cemeteries are not the ghoulish places we modern men have made them out to be. They are pleasant resting places between two worlds.

PHOTOS: The Metropolitan Museum of Art- N.Y. U.S.A.

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:23:44 -0500

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, 19th–20th century (executed ca. 1880; cast in 1922)
By Edgar Degas (1834–1917); Cast by A. A. Hébrard
Made in Paris, France
Bronze, partially tinted, with cotton skirt and satin hair-ribbon; wood base; H. (w/out base) 39 in. (99.1 cm)
H.O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, 1929

WORDS: Atlas Shrugged

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:51:52 -0500

Fifty years ago this week Ayn Rand published one of her greatest novels, Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand has always had a strong cult following. I can’t say I’m one of them but I do like her books, and this week’s anniversary of Atlas Shrugged put me in mind of my favorite Rand novel, The Fountainhead, published fourteen years earlier. I love the protagonist of The Fountainhead, Howard Roark.I have to admit that as a gardener I wish the book was about a landscape designer, but it isn’t; he is an architect. Still, the principles are the same: the creation of art that one can walk through and live in. Walking through a beautiful garden is very similar to walking into a well designed building.
So, I thought I might share with you some wonderful quotes in The Fountainhead that I think have relevance to you and me when we create gardens, and they have relevance as well when we visit gardens. To create a garden, if I’m not overstating the fact, is a magnificent enterprise. As I said last week, we take raw materials such as water and stone, earth and plant material; and we create an outdoor atmosphere. I’m convinced that a good garden actually enters your soul as you walk through it. We are bettered by the experience.
With this in mind, here is one of Roark’s clients opinion on living in a Roark house:
“I felt that when I moved into this house, I’ll have a new sort of existence and even my simple daily routine will have a kind of honesty or dignity I can’t quite define. Don’t be astonished if I tell you that I feel as if I’ll have to live up to that house.”
Don’t you want to be in gardens or create gardens that ennoble people’s lives? I do. Sometimes when I listen to a piece of music from Mozart, I want to be a better man. When things are good, truly good, then the world is a better place. I’ve walked into gardens, for example on vacations, and actually and literally sighed with satisfaction just by entering them.
Now, let’s think again about those raw materials that go into a landscape. At the very beginning of the book, the protagonist Roark considers the natural world around and “he looked at the granite. To be cut, he thought, and made into walls. He looked at a tree. To be split and made into rafters. He looked at a streak of rust on the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. To be melted and to emerge as girders against the sky. ‘These rocks,’ he thought, “are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them.’”
This is a great piece of writing, isn’t it. It expresses so much about the creative process of building a structure or even planting a landscape. When Capability Brown, the great English landscaper of the18th Century, came onto the landscaping scene, England was never the same. In many ways it was a violent process. Forests were cut and planted, creating marvelous views. Earth in great quantities was moved from place to place, producing undulating landscapes that are now almost iconic in England as the epitome of landscape design. But you don’t have to have great sprawls of land to be creative. An apartment dweller can fill clay pots and plant them in a myriad of creative ways. If it is done well, the doorstep is bettered by it. The point is gardeners use raw materials, as well, just like the architect, with one important, amazing difference. We take living things, while the architect manipulates mere inanimate material.
Oh, I could go on and on. I have page after page of notes from The Fountainhead, but I’ll stop here. I can only say Ayn Rand was a great author. Every time I read The Fountainhead I want to be more creative.

jeffabt.com

WORDS & PHOTOS Schoolhouse lilies

Sat, 1 Sep 2007 16:17:34 -0500

Schoolhouse lilies began to bloom this week in my yard. It means a new year begins, a new school year that is. As I look back on my youth, the New Year did not begin January 1st; it began the first day of school. Everything began all new and fresh- new pencils and pens, new notebooks, new blue jeans, a new football season. Glorious! The school year beginning afresh is wonderful. Who knows what will happen? Summer has worn on long enough, it’s time for a new beginning in the fall
It’s the same in gardening.
If you will, think about the gardening year with me for a moment. Winter is cool, wet and sleepy. Unappreciated by the world, its virtues go unnoticed in spite of the fact it’s the perfect time to plant trees, shrubbery etc. In winter, everything in the garden readies itself.
And then there’s spring… Springtime in Texas is pure youth- full of colorful, blooms and effervescent verdure. But in a moment it’s over, gone, and forgotten, leaving at our doorsteps Texas summer.
Summertime in Texas is surly. It drags on endlessly; pausing only to shout orders out at us like a drill sergeant, “Mow the grass!” “Weed the flowerbed!” “Trim the shrubs!” “Water the lawn!” (Though thoroughly bad tempered, summer at least stops and smiles at us in the midst of the wavy heat and tips his hat with a smile in the bloom of crape myrtles.)
Then there’s fall. Fall in Texas is… What can I say? It’s wonderful. Everything seems to change. The sun and its light shift to the southern part of the sky, and there is hope that the air will cool. Our summer turf grasses (St. Augustine, Centipede, and Bermuda) can be perfect this time of the year. Our summer perennials (phlox, salvias, roses, etc,) are preparing themselves for their last bloom cycle as if all that came before was the mere warm up act for that perfect time of the year- Autumn. Then come the trumpet notes of the chrysanthemums proclaiming autumn’s pageantry (how bright and cheery). And don’t the feathery blooms of the ornamental grasses look perfect this time of the year? No, fall is the perfectly splendid. To me it’s the beginning. As a school boy or a college student or even a gardener , for that matter, I’ve always looked forward to the fall.
I love the plants that come into their own in the fall of the year. Sweet Autumn clematis, spider lilies,etc. And then there’s the trees: hickories, blackgums, sweetgums sassafras,and maples. As you read this column, think of them out in the woods. They’re not tired out by summer. Producing summer’s greenness is nothing to them; it’s effortless. Ah, it’s the color of fall that’s tricky. That’s when the trees, talented showmen that they are can upstage the rest of the gardening year. The house lights dim (the green fades), the foot lights come on, and then the show begins. That great stage play “Fall’s Foliage in the Garden”. Gardening critics ask themselves “What will the show be like this year? ” Somehow in my mind, the greenness of summer is just merely a rehearsal for the beginning of the season- Fall.
So, when the little schoolhouse lilie began to bloom in my garden this week, I said to myself, “Ah, the year begins.” Literally, Monday the blooms sprouted, children tromped off to school, bands marched in preparation of the first game of the year, football players collided in practice. And though I’m old and all that’s past (I don’t get to play football anymore) and I think about new notebooks and pencils and pens with only a wistful smile, today I see time moving through my garden with the bloom of schoolhouse lilies. This week was the beginning of a New Year.

Caption:
Rhodophiala bifida or schoolhouse lilies bloom in the fall of the year. Originally from Argentina, they’ve made themselves at home here in Texas where they announce the beginning of each school year with their blooms.

PHOTOS: Blue Ceiling in San Antonio

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:57:18 -0500

PHOTOS: A Summer of Weddings

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 17:11:24 -0500

PHOTOS: Montana U.S.A.

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 09:32:35 -0500

PHOTOS: The Columbia River U.S.A.

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 08:18:51 -0500