Farmers Branch Historical Park

A look at the community festival.
And a self portrait...see me?

S and I had the occasion to visit the Farmers Branch Historical Park last weekend. This city is northwest of Dallas, on the way to Denton. They were having an outdoor concert we took in. Before the concert, we milled around their little community festival and checked out the historical buildings. I took a few photos of those historical buildings, and, since it was dusk, the light is very nice in the photos. And, they are burning a hole in my hard drive, so I figured I better share them with you here.

The park itself is 22 acres, and houses several historical buildings. We did not see all the buildings on the property - for instance, there is a church, and a school...and another historical house from 1856...we certainly missed those. And maybe others. But, here is what we did see!

In one section they have this 1870's train depot and caboose.

According to their website, they have this to say about the depot building:

In 1874, to ensure the railroad would come to Farmers Branch, Dr. Gilbert and other local settlers sold rights-of-way through their land. Around 1877, the Dallas and Wichita Railroad built this depot. The rail line, which runs from Dallas to Denton, was sold to Jay Gould and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad in 1881. The Interurban Railway electrified the line in 1924 and until 1931 ran as many as 50 scheduled trains per day. The Depot was relocated to the Historical Park and restored in 1985. The Depot is used to display artifacts that demonstrate the impact different modes of transportation had on early Texas. The 1890s all-wood Caboose includes original bunks, sink, icebox, hardware and potbelly stove.

And a gas station from a few years back.

Check out the price of that gas!

Again, from their website:

This replica structure incorporates many of the architectural features of a Texaco gas station that was located on Denton Drive, just down the street from the Historical Park in the 1930s. Gas Stations were the first businesses in America to begin the age of mass marketing that we are all familiar with today. We can travel across the country and eat identical hamburgers, drink the same soft drink, and put the same gas in our vehicles, and that trend was introduced to America through gas stations such as the one that our building represents.

Then, we walked over to the "log culture" area.

This area had a few buildings that represented a homestead of the 1840's - "second generation" frontier homes. This would have been around the time that Farmer's Branch was being first settled.

You can see the concert area was near the log culture area.

This house, and the barn you'll see later, were originally located in nearby Pilot Point.

Settlers were coming to the area on 640-acre land grants.

And, according to their website, Farmers Branch was once one of the most well known established areas in Texas throughout Europe.

These homes were "second generation" because they had windows and lofts, for example.


The lady of the house happened to be out on the porch at the time of our visit.

I think that is a meat grinder.
Is that a meat grinder?

I'm pretty sure this structure is a replica of an 1840's land grant office.

It's of course similar to city offices today, with the budget shortfalls and all.

This building had the wagon out back.

The homestead had quite a garden growing.

It made me wish I had gotten busy and planted one of my own.

Ellie and Echo would have liked eating it.

Theirs was pretty nice, though, huh?

Last in the log culture area, the barn.

A blacksmith was demonstrating at the side of this building.

He drew a crowd of interested parties...not right when I took this shot.
But, he did.

It's a lovely little park. If you're in the Dallas area, I highly recommend checking it out. S and I will have to go by again to see what we missed. That's it for today. See you tomorrow!

Prague Orloj

(Information about the clock in today's post came via Wikipedia.)

The Prague Astronomical Clock or Prague Orloj is a medieval astronomical clock located on the southern wall of Old Town City Hall in the Old Town Square in Prague, Czech Republic.

There are three main parts: the astronomical dial, representing the position of the sun and moon in the sky and displaying various astronomical details; "The Walk of the Apostles", a clockwork hourly show of figures of the apostles and other moving sculptures; and a calendar dial with medallions representing the months.

The eastern wall of the same building.

The oldest part of the Orloj, the mechanical clock and astronomical dial, dates back to 1410 when it was made by clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaň and Jan Šindel, the latter a professor.

Around 1490, the calendar dial was added and clock facade decorated with Gothic sculptures.

The Orloj stopped working many times in the centuries after 1552, and was repaired many times. Some speculate that the government purposely gouged out the original maker's eyes in order to prevent him from making a similar clock for another country. Legend has it after this he died touching the clock, at which point the clock stopped working and remained unrepairable for a number of years. In the 17th century moving statues were added, and figures of the Apostles were added after major repair in 1865-1866.

The Orloj suffered heavy damage on May 7 and 8, 1945, during the Prague Uprising, when the Axis forces tried to burn the building. The hall and nearby buildings burned along with the wooden sculptures on the Orloj and the calendar dial face. The machinery was repaired, the wooden Apostles restored, and the Orloj started working again in 1948.

Of course, across from the clock - Starbucks.

The astronomical dial is a form of mechanical astrolabe, a device used in medieval astronomy.

At the outer edge of the clock, golden Schwabacher numerals are set on a black background. These numbers indicate Old Czech Time with 24 indicating the time of sunset, which varies during the year from as early as 16:00 in winter to 20:16 in summer. This ring moves back and forth during the year to coincide with the time of sunset.

The calendar, below the clock, was added in 1870.
You can hardly see it, but around the edge is a slot for every day of the year.

When we were there, it was the start of the Easter market and also the start of Spring Break for the teenagers of Europe. The square was crowded with people - mainly teens - and, of course, the clock was a main attraction. I'll tell you more about the Easter market another day.



The four figures flanking the clock are set in motion at the hour, these represent four things that were despised at the time of the clock's making. From left to right in the photograph, the first is Vanity, represented by a figure admiring himself in a mirror. Next, a figure holding a bag of gold represents greed or usury. Across the clock stands Death, a skeleton that strikes the time upon the hour. The fourth figure is supposed to represent the infidel and wears a turban.

There is also a presentation of statues of the Apostles at the doorways above the clock on the hour, so of course, we took a little video for you. This way, you can save that pesky airfare and jet lag to see it. The video is 45 seconds long. Enjoy!

I have more to tell you about this magical city of Prague, and I promise I'll get around to it soon!

Pretty Pictures of the Park

I love alliteration. Don't you? Today's post will be of some pretty pictures of the park. I'll put all the rest of my post ideas off another day to get up the photos I took last weekend. Imagine.

So, I was driving through White Rock Lake Park on my way home from getting my toes painted and I was struck by this little niche of the park - a little tree grove, mostly, that caught my eye.

So, of course, I went to get my camera! These are the photos I took.

This "grove" of trees was the first thing that mesmerized my view.

I'm such a sucker for nature.

Heck, even this boggy, stagnant creek looked pretty.

And, the flowers growing in the creek were pretty too, no?

The near-evening light was casting a nice reflection of the nearby trees onto the water.

Everything is still so green.
The heat hasn't zapped it yet.

The only "burn" evident right now are these washes of light on the grass.

Even the weedy grass was pretty to me at dusk this past weekend.

Don't you just want to walk on through there?
Or, sit a while at the tree's trunk?


Look at this interesting weave of roots with the sun looking down on them.

Ahh, I love the park at dusk.

The native grasses were also very pretty.


As was the setting sun.

Then, I was very taken by this Great Egret. I followed him for a while. (Aren't you proud of me that I actually researched and found out what kind of bird he was? Small miracles. Baby steps.)

He was minding his own business when I started casing him.

He was just so graceful looking to me, I had to get a closer look.

But then I saw this flowering bush, near the egret.

I was unable to locate it's species on my Internet search.

It caught my eye nonetheless...

...and distracted me from the bird for a second.
The bird was thrilled at this development.

Oh, but then, over there - there he was again.
I followed him.

Again, he was minding his own business.
I crept in closer.

He was hanging next to this marshy waterway -
a continuation of the boggy creek we saw earlier.

Pretty bird.

But, then I got this look...
the "hey lady, can't you take a hint and scram?" look.

And then he did this...I tried to capture him flying away.
They are a little blurry, but not bad on the fly.
No pun intended.

So, there you go, after a brief hiatus, a post all about my enjoyment of taking photos of pretty things. I loved my little walk at dusk in the pretty park. Hope you liked it too.

Monday Update

I have several photographs of various and sundry items that I shot this past weekend. It'll take me a while to get them up here, as you know. I mean, really, we're still visiting Europe on the blog, and we arrived home from that little trip two months ago.

Today, however, the first day of June, I thought I'd show you the progress Steve made on the treehouse, courtesy of the photographic art shot by his lovely wife Terri, I presume. And, I have some photos I took with my camera phone on a bike ride we took yesterday.

I hope you were sitting down for that. It's so exciting it might have caused you to fall over with complete abandon otherwise.

There's Steve, at a break in the progress, and showing off the "new" ladder.

And, a photo of what has to be ALMOST the finished product.

And the kids...either sunning themselves...or worn out?

So, progress continues! Maybe Deacon was right when he said it would be finished, "Sunday or Tuesday."

Now on to the camera phone photos of our Sunday morning bike ride - we rode about 22 miles Sunday morning. We didn't get up as early as I had hoped, given the heat that was going to set in for the day, but we did pretty good. We were on the road by 9:30. Only about 1.5 hours after my intended start time. That's pretty good for us on a Sunday. This also means we did get some sun, but not too bad.

The idea of the ride was to "make sure" we could ride 20 miles. Because, next Saturday, I want to do the Mesquite Rodeo Bike Race 33K. And, that's approximately 20 miles. S wasn't sure we could do it. I knew we could. You'll notice, if you follow that link, that the 33K, barring the "family fun ride", is the shortest distance. We're still very much in the novice category. The cool thing to me though, is this time, S can ride with me in the real thing. It's co-ed. How nice.

Last week, we drove out to Mesquite and went around the course in S's truck. There are a few hills once you drive out of town and onto the "rural" roads - but it's at least half completely flat. And there is a rest area half way through. So I figure we can do it, and it'll be a good challenge for us to keep our butts moving in the right direction. That is, to move towards the goal of having less butt to move. ;)

For those of you with more delicate sensibilities, I'm sorry to have used the word butt in a Monday morning post - not once but now three times - but, it had to be done. And, I'm sure if you've been coming to my blog for any length of time, your sensibilities were already worn thin way before today. Welcome to Monday. Wake up people - look alive!

We took a couple of water breaks on the ride yesterday morning. And, when we stopped, I was struck with how pretty the lake looked. All I had with me was my phone. So, I had to try to capture the prettiness with the camera phone. You know, the camera phone can take some pretty good shots under the right conditions. I'm not sure it captured exactly what I saw - the sun was getting pretty close to high noon, and the photos are a little hazy and washed out for the most part - but it was a fun experiment so I thought I'd share.

That's S's bike and helmet taking a rest.

Here's one pretty view of the lake.

I thought that reedy grass would make a nice shot.

It sort of did, I guess.

But, by far the best one is this one of the flowers.
Pretty darn good for a camera phone, no?

We did complete the 22 mile ride. We smelled really good at the end of it. Too bad the Internet isn't scratch and sniff. Heh heh.

We kept an even pace throughout, though, and we're going to try our hand at the Rodeo Race next Saturday. Of course, I'll re-cap it here for you next week. Bad photos and all.

For the rest of the week - I've got another "cooking basics" post I hope to get up, as well as some photos from Prague and from a trip we took to Farmers Branch. And, of course, those photos of the park near the lake at dusk. And, who knows what might happen between now and then that might stop me from posting any of that because I've come up with another plan. Who knows. See you tomorrow.

I do promise to post some photos I took that I actually think are good sometime soon -
you know, in the spirit of the blog and everything.
I promise.