Tricia Jumonville, EcoBroker®, ASP®

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you! And, in the words of the Irishman on being asked if he sees the glass as half empty or half full, "Are ya goin' ta be drinkin' that?"

It seems the countryside is also celebrating the saint, putting on its green array in honor of the day. Everywhere I look, green is peeking through the browns and tans, appearing on the tips of peach tree and Texas ash limbs, and glorying in the warmth we're enjoying here at the moment. The peach trees are blooming, as are the Texas Mountain Laurels with their luscious grape scent. "Green" (as in environmentally sustainable) expos abound. The horses are shedding, and telling us that Spring is here!

Enjoy your St. Patrick's Day, and have a pint on me!

Just about everybody who's heard of Austin has also heard the refrain, "Keep Austin Weird". While that's now been trademarked by latecomers (and NOT by Red Wassenich, the person who came up with it, for whom trademarking is is the antithesis of the meaning of the phrase, and who has a new book out called Keep Austin Weird: A Guide to the Odd Side of Town), it's still very much a part of what makes Austin the unique community it still is today.

While, yes, we have the Big Box development, we have "little houses made of ticky tacky, all just the same", we have the highrises that are going in downtown (what DID happen to the Capitol View Corridors that were established specifically to protect against this kind of loss, anyway?), we have the Domain (actually an interesting example of urban living on the edge of town).

But we also have:

Leslie (yes, he did run for Mayor, just as Max Nofziger, flower salesman extraordinaire and successful candidate, and Crazy Carl Hickerson-Bull did before him)

Eeyore's Birthday Party (which I will be attending this year, in costume, of course)

Hippy Hollow (clothing optional, but somewhat frowned upon - and, yes, this is now an "official" park that gets, evidently, about 350,000 visitors a year, a far cry of the few dozen who knew about and used it back in the day)

The Broken Spoke (been around since forever and a great place to do the two-step - plus rumor hath it that, while the land's been bought and apartments and development are about to loom all around it, the Spoke will remain the same, including the dirt parking lot)

The Austin Lounge Lizards hail from Austin, as well

Las Manitas, the downtown restaurant that just took on the Marriott and, to all appearances, won, albeit while having to move down the street a few storefronts

And much, much, MUCH more.

Hopefully, Austin will remain its own weird self for a long, long time to come. It is, after all, why people come here, and stay here, and what makes Austin not just another city. Without our weirdness, all those folks moving to town might as well move to Dallas.

So come to Austin, and do something, even if just a little, weird. You'll fit right in, and I promise, no one will look at you funny. In fact, be weird enough, and you might get a standing ovation!

We live in a flight path - a wonderful, beautiful, joyous flight path.

You see, our ranch is on a major migration route just east of Jarrell, Texas, so we get to see many of the birds as they pass through (and stop off for a snack and a drink) on their way north or south. Mostly, they are the same kinds of birds, though once in a while we'll see something different - like the Whooping Crane family who stopped off when their youngster pulled the "sit down on the sidewalk, I'm not gonna walk any more" trick. (They finally ended up giving up on him and going on their way, while he rested and waited for the Sand Hill Cranes to come through and give him a ride to the meeting grounds where they all get together and then take off their separate ways.) I've also seen a flock of about 50 hawks.(Didn't know hawks flocked? Neither did I until I saw it and called my friend at the Austin Nature Center to find out if I'd lost my mind or if I was living in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.) The geese are usuals, as are the pelicans that fly over so high that you have to use binoculars to identity them.

However, far and away the biggest flocks are of blackbirds - redwinged blackbirds, for the most part, though there is another kind that I haven't identified. In the last couple of weeks, we've had weird weather, either hot (90's) or cold (upper 20's/lower 30's) but very, VERY windy whichever it was. This discombobulated the birds passing through, who generally like to hang out in the cane brake next to our driveway - it was way to windy and they were all getting seasick perching on the swaying canes. So they came over to the trees in our front yard/pasture.

Here's what I saw. Remember, there are NO leaves on these trees at the moment - everything you see is a bird. I've seen larger flocks, with the trees AND the ground covered in birds, but that was on a still day - still except for the rustling of wings and the twittering of their conversation.

This coming weekend, March 8-9, on of my Meetup groups, the Central Texas Food-Centrics (we're all about all things edible in Central Texas!) is attending the 3rd Annual Austin Chocolate Festival, an annual event held each spring to not only celebrate chocolate, bur raise funds for the fight against breast cancer through Susan G. Komen For the Cure.

Not only is there chocolate galore to taste, and buy, but vendors will compete in various categories, with the festival attendees serving as judges (which means, of course, getting to taste chocolate), demonstrations of ways to prepare chocolate goodies, and there will be an advance screening of the movie "Death, Taxes... and Chocolate!". Tickets are sold for two hour blocks, with no more than 150 people in attendance at a time - contrast this to the usual crowds at festivals, and this sounds very appealing.

It's not often that you get to eat chocolate in such a good cause. I hope to see you there!

No, really. You might get a prize, you never know.

It's that time of year again. This Sunday, March 2, is the 80th Annual Zilker Park Kite Festival, a festival that's been going on in Zilker Park in Austin, Texas, for far longer than I've been alive.

I was going to write about it, and then it occurred to me that kite flying is not something that can be truly expressed or described in words (unless, perhaps, you're Andrew Lenza). But, surely, there must be a way to share this wondrous event with you. So, I betook myself off to youtube, and there I found them - videos that will share with you the sheer joy of going out on a beautiful March day, taking advantage of the wind, and being a child again, just flying a kite. (Sometimes after months of design, test, discard, design, test, discard - after all, it's a pretty fun way to spend a winter, right?)

Anyway, here's my favorite of the videos I found. Enjoy! And go fly a kite!