Thursday, April 23, 2015

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