Hill Country Spring, a Beautiful Experience

In Fredericksburg one of our favorite drives to enjoy the bluebonnets and other wild flowers is the Willow City Loop, between Llano and Fredericksburg.  The loop is a winding hilly very scenic hour long experience at a creeping speed with many pauses to take pictures. It is not legal to stop and park or to walk on the sides of the road.  One day last week my daughter Cheryl drove and I snapped pictures for us to enjoy in our painting workshop going on at present.  Blue bonnets are stunning in life but not easy to catch in a little rectangle from our cameras. The color is past imagining and the scent heavenly.  But here goes anyway with a few of my 70 shots that day.

This morning I enjoyed a party in a great home built about 25  years back on 35 acres by David and Judy Bland. In addition to the main house there are also 7 bed and breakfast houses  plus numerous picturesque outbuildings, stone fences, windmills, a stone bridge and on and on.  Stunning grounds, not manicured exactly, but what I call "managed natural".  The present owners do a splendid job with it and have improved the gardens and terraces and such. I took a lot of pictures of the little log and stone outbuildings and backed dear Vanessa into a very sturdy tree and I quit at that point and drove her home.

The main house has a large wing at the back that greatly increases the size which is already bold.

This is the back porch looking toward the garage.

A small pool and a Lady Banks rose by the garage

A tree house!

Looking back at the porch

Beautiful seating groups are everywhere. 50 people would not fill them, our group was over 30 and it was sparsely distributed.

A Guest house

Another

Another guest house

 

   Explore the website to see more if you like. Settler's Crossing has been called one of the top 10 bed and breakfasts in the nation by Travel and Leisure.

http://settlerscrossing.com/
 In one of the guest houses you can see a rug I hooked, an early version of my Ohio Coverlet design in all blues and off white.  There are other hooked rugs both old and new.  The website is not very simple to navigate, but under accommodations the cabins are listed and a click on each gives more views.  e

Easter week

 I asked my oldest daughter today if she remembered coloring Easter eggs together when she was little. Yes!  Now my granddaughter is coloring eggs with my great grands.   

 

Sarah's four children

 

Hunting eggs is serious business, holding her mouth just right.

 

Found a good one at preschool egg hunt.

 

I painted a few eggs yesterday to go around my old hen in the kitchen. All but two of the painted eggs I used to have burned in our house fire, It has been 10 years this spring and I am just now getting around to replacing some!  The two large eggs are dated 1999. Amazing how time rushes by.  I hope I will paint some more bye and bye.

To glaze them (or a doll head) I use Liquitex medium, either gloss or matte plus Ceramcoat burnt umber liquid acrylic.  For inspiration I used to borrow pieces of my mother in law's lovely Quimper. Now I go easily to Google images and pull up hundreds of pictures. 

When Jack and I married, I had a nice small collection of old Staffordshire hens. He took a dim view of them as they were not old enough for our furniture and not American either.  I let all go but the one large one shown above. She lives behind a cupboard door out of sight except at Easter.  However Jack did later buy for me a red and white one at an auction in Pennsylvania, styled after the earlier Chelsea hens with peeps. I treasure these two Staffordshire hens, I would be afraid to buy more now because the date of manufacture varies so widely. There were a number made in the 1950's and 60's, sold at Adele Hunt's in Dallas for one example.  They are so good I would not be sure, particularly if they had been crazed in a dishwasher. 

 

Four Generations

 

 

 

 

Hinged basket handles cause lots of issues!

 

There were 12 of us to say Grace in a circle before a beautiful brunch. e