“Hill Country Flowers”
In the early morning silence the John Deere Gater motor explodes to life last Friday morning as John Kammerdeimer backs it out of the shed on his ranch a few miles northeast of Bertram, Texas, in the Texas Hill Country.
The Gater is one of those small four-wheel-drive all-terrain work trucks that are so popular now with the ranchers and hunters in Texas. They are kind of like a golf cart on steroids. I got in and we started bouncing down the muddy ranch road to take a tour of his ranch. It had rained the night before, and by the looks of the low dark clouds, it could rain again at any moment. The ranch road is muddy, however the Gater has big balloon type tires with a heavy tread so we won’t get stuck, I hope. It is the middle of April, so the spring wildflowers are in full bloom.
As we slowly drive along the winding ranch road, John points out all of his projects that are under way. Such as brush along a fence line that needs clearing out, dead oak trees being cut down and the dam for one of the ponds that needs repairing. Around each bend, he slows down to see if there may be deer or turkey in the next clearing. We are also looking for his longhorn cattle. He has brought along some corn for them.
As we slowly drive along, I can’t help but remember so many similar times that I shared with my dad when I was growing up in Uvalde, Texas. One of his business partners, John Nance Garner, owned three very large ranches in Southwest Texas. When Mr. Garner got too old to check on his ranches, my dad would make frequent trips to those ranches to report to him the condition of the ranch. I got to go along with my dad when he would visit one of those ranches. He would slowly drive around on the ranch checking on fences, roads, ponds (we called them “tanks”) and wildlife. My dad’s nickname was “Tio,” the Spanish work for uncle.
I brought my camera along on this visit to John’s ranch. From time to time, we would stop and I would take a shot of a scene that had the potential for a watercolor painting. This painting was made from one of those shots.
Cheers,
Acree
<< Back to Email
Archive Page >>
|
