Seating for two? Lakeside view? Lunch will be served shortly. Would you care for a little birdsong or sunlight glinting on the waters while you wait? Short of jumping in the frigid waters, we tried to experience the full lake as much as possible on our last visit. This patch of open ground near the water's edge is mostly rock, and the slope is steeper than it appears in the photo. It will make a nice place for casting a line some future spring, and it did a good job of providing ideal seating for a ruminative lunch when we were there. Our lunches have grown more minimalist in recent months ("grown more minimalist" -- there's a contradiction in there somewhere), but mine always includes iced tea (unsweetened, of course).

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I was looking at some statistics for this humble blog and was astonished (astonished!) to learn that I have written more than 700 posts. Seven hundred posts! Granted maybe a third of those are worthwhile, but even so, I'm really surprised with myself. If you say the average post is 250 words, that comes to . . . just a sec . . . 175,000 words. A big, fat novel. I realize I'm only a neophyte compared to many bloggers (like Fragments from Floyd - I think Fred invented the internet, didn't he?), but I'm no less pleased.

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The Bioblitz has begun!

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Hal over at Ranch Ramblins has made a discovery. He's found that when you leave a comment on Blogger sites, if you leave your own address as "http://www.roundrockjournal.com" rather than simply "www.roundrockjournal.com", Blogger will make your name at the end of your comment a clickable link. This is unimportant to those of you who have Blogger IDs, but to the rest of us, it's a helpful discovery (though I'm certain it is a plan by Google to get everyone in the world to create a Blooger ID so it can complete its world domination).

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The Festival of the Trees is still looking for submissions for the next edition. If you have a tree-ish post, or if you know of one, consider submitting it to Xris over at Flatbush Gardener. Use the email address festival [dot] trees [at] gmail [dot] com. Consider being a future host of the Fesitval as well. If I can do it, you certainly can! Thanks to one and all for the kind words about the now full Lake Marguerite. It's been a week to the day since we were there, and I'm sure it has diminished a bit, but there are strong thunderstorms forecasted for the rest of the week, so maybe the gods are finished toying with me and will let me have my lake. What's next, a weekend cabin?

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#1 Son Seth (who, you'll remember, is over in Kenya with the Peace Corps) has next month off, and he's going to spend some of the time exploring Tanzania as well as Zanzibar (where he intends to go scuba diving!). The life of the selfless volunteer, eh? Actually, his tour is up in December -- he'll have completed more than two years in country -- but he's hoping to extend it for another year. It seems that some of his students will be taking important qualifying exams the year after he leaves, and if he leaves, they won't have a math/physics teacher at all. So he feels it is right to stay with these students and help them prepare for the test. Sure, his mother misses him, but I get warm fuzzies when I see my children growing into decent human beings. (There is also the future doctor, the future teacher, and the perpetual graduate student artist and web mogul.)

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I left this somewhere, intending to pick it up the next time I was by, and now it's sitting in at least ten feet of water.

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Some weeks ago I hosted a nature book swap over at Swap-Bot. The book I received is The Lost Woods, by Edwin Way Teale. I've not read any of his books before, but I'm looking forward to starting. (A couple of other books in the queue ahead of it though.)

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Still no shortleaf pine trees, but I remain hopeful.

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I finished The Power and the Glory in time for the book discussion with the social justice types (mentioned here at the bottom), but the meeting was cancelled the night before because too many regulars had to cancel. On to something else.

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Missouri calendar:

• Earth Day
• Oaks bloom.

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