BIRTHDAY AND LBJ

Greetings!

The snow has arrived in Ottawa ... very early this year.

Here is our daughter's backyard: a Winter Wonderland for December.

Grandson H will be out there throwing snowballs at the Little Bebe ...

while his Mum has been digging the car out of the drifts because Dad was away working.

It happens.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend to all North Americans.

DD sent me these thanksgiving decorations, so I spread them round the fireplace.

The pretty leaves are made of various materials, felt, silk, and paper.

Added a few red cardinals for atmosphere..

The Cardinal nest may be a bit confused with all the theming around here..

We have Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a birthday going on simultaneously...

Long-term readers of this blog may remember I have an annual garden competition with myself, in which I attempt to keep pansies blooming, despite heat, droughts and floods, until my birthday at end November.

Two tiny little white blooms made it -

onto my birthday sponge cake!

Mr C's card: pink stuff with little red birds... clever man ..

Among other special items, he gave me this Paris themed, vintage silk scarf.

Well played, Mr Cardinal (Faux Fuchsia 2013)

Having watched, at least in part, many of the JFK docos this week, I had a look at one about his successor as President, Lyndon B Johnson.

His background was very different from that of the Kennedys..

They showed his boyhood home, in Johnson City, Texas, including the swing seat on the front porch.

Reader, I have sat on that seat!

This is Mr C's photo of the house, taken in 2006 during our visit.

You can just see the top of the swing seat in the porch to the left.

Johnson City is in the very pretty Texas Hill Country, West of Austin, and North-West of San Antonio which we were visiting.

This and the following: Google images

Here are LBJ and Lady-bird in the area.  She was very active in encouraging interest in, and preservation of, wildflowers.  The LBJ ranch was not far from his boyhood home.

The family home, while not impoverished, was certainly neither luxurious nor ostentatious, and his early life must have shaped his interest in social justice and welfare.

I can remember when he came to Australia, and our then Prime Minister, Harold Holt, declared that Australia was "All the Way with LBJ"!

The Garden of Neglect has excelled and thrown up this hippeastrum lily (amaryllis), which unfortunately will not last until Christmas.

But looks good near a Santa.

It's all happening around this nest!

Have a great week

XXXX