ADVENTURE TIME: JOBELL

 
Remember when I first moved up here full-time, and was always yammering on about our great little wine bar called Clifford's? Well, the young lady who ran it was a woman of many talents, and eventually gave up the wine bar to concentrate on yoga and music. It went through many incarnations after that then, sadly, sat empty for several years. But now it's back!

A family from New York bought it about a year ago, and transformed it into a bistro called Jobell. At first they were only open for dinner a few nights each week, and we held off trying it until they worked out all their new-restaurant-kinks. Somehow we let almost a year go by, but now that they have had plenty of time to find their sea legs, and are open for lunch as well, I knew it was time to give it a try. So, when Nurse Nellie called and asked me to meet her and her friend Ranch Woman there this week, I said "Heck Yeah!"

This outdoor deck will be the perfect place to dine, if the temperatures here will ever drop below 90F!

The Roasted Brussels Sprout Appetizer

Nurse Nellie's Chicken Salad Special

I'd say the food was pretty good for a little town like Wimberley -- about on par with The Leaning Pear, but not quite moan-worthy -- and I love it that they are utilizing ingredients from local growers and producers.

Roasted Tomato-Potato Chowder

Autumn Harvest Cobbler

All in all, I think it is definitely worth a try, as long as you understand that the portions are on the small side, while the prices are on the large side, and it most certainly is not the place to go when you are in a hurry!

HE PUT ON HIS THINKING CAP

Hubby's solution to the glare coming through the windows during brunch at Hays City Store last Sunday...

Next time I'm bringing one of his caps for myself!

LOTS TO LOVE

OK, let's be perfectly clear. This year's fall weather sucks, even for Texas! 96F here on our hill yesterday, and close to 100 in Austin, according to my hubby. In mid-October! Nevertheless, I still managed to find lots to love on my not-so-fallish walk this morning.

At the top of my list are my little "Halloween" lanterns (aka Physalis, Chinese Lantern, or Ground Cherry -- a relative of the tomatillo plant) which pop up at the entrance to our neighborhood around this time every year. Who knows how they got there? Everything that was intentionally planted in that bed has died, but these guys just popped up out of nowhere.

At the bottom of my list was the dead deer not far behind me when I was snapping those pics, the smell of which almost made me lose my breakfast. 

But, back to more positive things...there was this tiny bit of fall color framing the upended red canoe that washed down into our section of the creek during the Great Halloween Flood a few years back, and has been there ever since.

Then there was the sound which the giant sycamores make when their leaves have gone papery and are flapping in the breeze.

Plus there was the light coming through these moss-laden branches...

the huge oak that uprooted itself and fell over, but just refused to die...

and getting to visit with my neighbor's chickies and goats.

Last but not least, there is my little "grotto" that faces the road in front of our house...

and which goes all drippy after a rain. Looks like Hubby has started adding rocks around the base whenever he goes by.

All it needs is a statue, right? Well, that and some rain.

Yep, there's always lots to love, if you just look hard enough!

Hmmm...

Wonder what would happen if I planted some of these little Chinese Lantern seeds in one of the big pots outside my front door?

TIME FOR TEA

For some reason, autumn always puts me in the mood for a tea party. I was just thinking about calling up the gal pals when I got a call from my old friend Nurse Nellie, whom I met when we were both newlyweds living in Bahrain, and who now lives right down the road from Salt Lick BBQ.

She and her hubby just got back from touring Ireland, where she became addicted to hot tea and scones. Luckily, our own Sugar Shack Bakery makes fabulous scones (especially the toffee one!) and she told me that if I had a teapot or two she could borrow, she'd like to host a tea party.

Do I have teapots? Duh!

The men were sent off to play golf, but sweet grandson Wyatt was allowed to stay and entertain us, wearing his new Irish cap.

The least blurry shot I captured of him, as he is not one to stay still!

I ask you, is there any better way to spend a lovely autumn afternoon, than sipping tea and nibbling scones with good friends?
 

AN ARTY AFFAIR

Wednesday evening was a really big night for our Arty Woman (a.k.a. Julie Underriner or Paint-Pouring Woman). After months of hard work and planning, she and two other Wimberley artists are having a month-long showing of their art in Austin, and Wednesday was the opening reception! The Muses turned out in force to support her, except for Spirit Woman, who was off on an adventure of her own in Santa Fe.

We began the evening with dinner at the original Chuys on Barton Springs Rd., where we met up with daughter Alexis, then it was just a short hop down the block to Dougherty Arts Center. Julie works in everything from enamel and inks to encaustics, but she's best known for her ginormous "pours" (center, above) where she drapes unstretched canvas across chairs and stools, then pours on layers of paint, tilting it this way and that (back wall, below).

Outdoor Woman and Outdoor Man

Fiber Woman and Outdoor Woman, Next to One of Julie's Paintings

I did my best to get a good photo of Arty Woman and her Opera Man, but...

that dang shiny bicycle in the background thwarted me at every turn!

The show will be up until November 8. Do go see it, if you get the chance!
 

FICKLE PHOTOS & SELECTIVE PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography is a funny thing. You can take ten photos of the same thing in the same spot on the same day, and every one ends up looking completely different. Take these selfies for instance, which I took a few years ago when I needed a profile picture for something.

Same hair, same make-up, same everything, but in the second one I took a picture of myself in the mirror, which gave it a little bit different angle and, woah! Needless to say, the first picture never saw the light of day, ere now. In the olden days, we gals could snatch a photo like that out of the packet and trash it, as soon as we picked them up from the developer. Nowadays, with everyone snapping photos right and left using their i-phones, and posting them to Facebook and Instagram before you can blink an eye, well, it ain't so easy!

We bloggers, on the other hand, have an edge. We get to pick and choose just which photos go into each and every post, and we utilize "selective photography" at every opportunity. For example, if I were going to post a picture of the big pot out on my patio, I would be sure to photograph it from this angle, focusing on that beautiful Dahlberg Daisy in full bloom...

rather than this one, which shows that all the other daisies in the pot are dead, dead, dead, and have been for weeks!

And, if I wanted to show you one of my beautiful succulent pots, I would choose this one...

instead of the one right in front of it, which the deer took a liking to.

And of course, both inside the house and out, I make sure that stuff like this...

is always just outside the viewfinder!

All of this is just to say, don't believe everything you see on the internet. Despite all appearances, no one actually lives in a perfectly decorated, perfectly clean, perfectly organized house. Or, if they do, it's only because they live there all alone, for they have surely driven their friends and family away, with all that obsessive cleaning and organizing!

MORNING HAS BROKEN

There are times when it gets to be too much -- when our water keeps cutting off for some unknown reason, and we have no idea who to call, since it seems to be a pump issue rather than a plumbing problem. When the asphalt driveway needs to be repaved, and the gravel driveway is no longer even navigable. When not only has the dang cinder block wall been sitting half-painted for at least five years, but now the entire house needs repainting, inside and out. And all the metal porch rails too! When the attic over the garage is still chock-full of stuff that was crammed up there 10 or 11 years ago (including a precious cradle handmade by hubby's father), has never been opened since, and can only be reached via a precarious extension ladder, which neither of us has any business climbing up or down -- especially with a heavy cradle in our arms! It's at times like these that I start wondering what it would be like to live somewhere in town, or where all the maintenance chores are taken care of for you.

But then, something like this happens...

 

and I wonder how I could ever possibly leave.

(All photos were snapped, first from our balcony, then on my morning walk around our own driveway, with my handy little point and shoot, in the sequence in which they occurred.)