Thunderstorm Rain Rises Sikes Lake & Sprouts Texas Wildflowers

The predicted thunderstorm arrived last night, a little later than predicted, beginning booming around the time Trump babbled his embarrassing primetime address to the nation. 

The thunderstorm dropped the most rain that has been dropped in quite some time. This rain rose the level of Sikes Lake, which was quite noticeable upon arriving at my nature communing destination this morning.

As you can see, via the view from the rocky east shore of Sikes Lake, looking southwest, some wind action is making for some wave action, and for pleasant walking conditions, which appeared to attract a larger than the norm number of fellow nature lovers.

The precipitation the past couple days appears to have triggered some wildflower spouting.

There were patches of pink evening primroses sprouting in the greenery all around the lake. Such does not quite rise to the colorful landscape I would be seeing right now if I were at my old home zone of the Skagit Valley, with its masses of tulips, daffodils, and other bloomers. 

However, the Texas wildflowers are natural, whilst the Skagit Valley fields of color are commercial bulb farms, planted by man, not by Mother Nature.

Whether natural or manmade, seeing a lot of color brightening the landscape is always a pleasant thing to see....

A Walkabout In My Neighborhood Finds A Stuffed Recycle Bin Plus A Water Leak & Wildflowers

This 2nd Sunday of the 11th month of November I decided to forego my regularly scheduled drive to a hiking, biking or walking location to instead take one of my irregularly scheduled tours of my neighborhood.

A couple months ago the big Recycle Bin you see in the picture appeared at the Havenwood apartment complex on Boca Raton Boulevard.

Multiple times since this Recycle Bin appeared I have noticed it being filled to the bursting point.

In addition to being a littering eyesore this would seem to defeat the purpose of having a Recycle Bin.

I know several people who live in the Havenwood Apartment complex. This complex is on both sides of Boca Raton Boulevard, with a couple hundred units. The above is the one and only Recycle Bin, requiring quite an effort for many of the residents to get to the recycling location.

And now, today, one of the tenants, who I talked to whilst doing my picture taking, told me that the residents are being charged $1.95 a month for the privilege of recycling, which they are currently prevented from doing due to the Recycle Bin not being able to accept Recyclables.

Continuing on with my tour of my neighborhood I walked towards Albertsons.

I know here in North Texas we have no shortage of water, so leaks are no big deal.

Apparently.

The above leak has been leaking for weeks, maybe months. One loses track of time. This watery view is looking east on the aforementioned Boca Raton Boulevard. Albertsons is to the right, with the newly relocated Italy Pasta & Pizza restaurant straight ahead, with its Grand Opening balloon sitting on its roof.

The leak is leaking in copious amounts, at what appeared to be the rate of water leaking being at the level of a kitchen faucet wide open. This likely amounts to quite a few gallons of water down the drain per hour, per day, per month.

Not everything I saw on my neighborhood walk today was disturbing. There was nothing disturbing about the patch of orange wildflowers I walked by soon after leaving the stuffed Recycle Bin. Maybe Fort Worth's renowned horticulturist, CatsPaw, can identify this colorful  beauty....

Hiking The Not So HOT Tandy Hills Thinking About How To Spend My Google Settlement Check

This morning I was in a rare good mood, with that already good mood heightened when I checked the mailbox to find a check from the Hanson v. Google Settlement Administrator.

I did not even know I was part of a class action suit against Google.

I have not yet figured out what to do with my whopping 11 cents settlement.

Did it not cost more than 11 cents to mail this to me? Such a screwy world we live in.

It was a somewhat chilly 83 degrees when I took my good mood to the Tandy Hills today. The humidity of 62% and a wind blowing over 10 mph had the temperature feeling like a not so chilly 91.

But, I did not overheat, too much, in the steam bath today. So, I had myself my first actually good hill hiking experience in days.

Is that not an usual looking Tandy Hills wildflower in the picture? It looks like an ice cream cone gone berserk. There were a lot of these blowing in the wind. I had to use my camera-free hand to steady the flower so that it could calmly pose for a picture. It took 12 tries.