Texas Ranch Photos

Craig and I spent some time out at my dad's ranch one afternoon in July. The "ranch" is a few acres with a pond, 40 cows and an unfinished house near Brookshire, west of Houston.

The speed limit at the ranch is 15 Miles Per Hour, but the roads are pretty bumpy, so you probably wouldn't want to drive much faster than that, anyway.

The horses ignored the water, but they couldn't resist the sweet feed that we had for them.

We thought that our neighbor's horses (which he sometimes keeps at our ranch) didn't have any water, so Craig hopped in the canoe and filled up a bucket for them.

That cowboy hat is too small for my head, but most of them are.

There is a wide variety of different wildflowers out at the ranch. I took a few pictures of some of them. This is the Meadow Pink.

Moth on a Black-Eyed Susan.

There's Craig, at the ranch, talking to his girlfriend, Bina, back in Vienna.

To me, this looks like it might be a variation of an Argiope Aurantia (aka Banana Spider). The spider's (Spinner) shape, the pattern on the back and legs, and the stabilimenta (thick zigzag) on the web also look like those of an Argiope. Argiope females normally hang head-down on their webs, as this spider is doing. The only problem is that most Argiopes are black, yellow and white (as you'll see shortly). I wonder if this is an albino version, or another variety altogether.

These are Black-Eyed Susans, which are pretty abundant in this part of Texas. Jo Spencer's site has some good photos and information on Texas Wildflowers. I used it to find the names of the flowers pictured in this post. The site's layout might leave something to be desired, but the collection of flowers with photographs contains a good number of examples.

This is a female Argiope Aurentia. They get pretty big. A grown Argiope would probably be about as long as my hand, if its legs were measured fully outstretched. If you're interested, I found a pretty good site with information about spiders and other wildlife that can be found near Houston.

This is what the sunset looks like from the back porch of the ranch house. It's really peaceful out there.

Just in case you haven't had enough of the Banana Spiders yet. These things build huge webs - sometimes between trees that are up to 12 feet (4 meters) apart! If you're running through the woods and not looking where you're going, you might end up covered in a giant spider web with the web's angry, hand-sized owner crawling somewhere on your person. I almost get the shivers just thinking about it. (it's happened to me before)

Last Banana Spider. I dunno... Something about the markings and shape of this spider make it appear very aggressive and creepy (to me). Despite that, it's actually not very giftig (venomous).

That's my dad's old (1953?) Packard. I found a ton of interesting info on the Packard automobile company while searching on Google. Packard sold a few aircraft engines to the German military before 1934. They also built warplanes for both world wars, including the famous Mustang, Hurricane and Lancaster. I found a PDF document with lots of interesting Packard photos and history. It includes some great copies of WWII-era and earlier print advertising.

This is a Passion Flower. Passion flowers are used in herbal medicines. I found a nice slow motion quicktime movie of a passion flower blooming, and a couple more movies Carpenter Bees gathering nectar from a Passion Flower. Everything you could want to know about Passion Flowers.

One thing I miss in Vienna is real, down home Texas barbecue (BBQ). The picture is a little overexposed - sorry about that. Here we have, from left to right, sliced beef, ribs, and sausage. Each plate has beans, potato salad, onions and pickles, to boot. Add a bottle of Dr. Pepper (originally made in Texas) and a bag of Bob's Texas Style Jalepeno Kettle Cooked Potato Chips (man, is that ever a long product name), and you have a real Texas meal. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. From the Bob's link, it looks like the same people who own Bob's also own TGI Friday's. Weird. I'm a Bob's fan, but not much of a TGI Friday's fan.