October 10-14, 2018: The "Four Realists Show" at Art Gallery Prudencia
	August 22-23, 2018: Visiting Larry and Denny in Leander, Texas
	Return to the Index for 2018

Our friends, Larry and Denny, moved to Leander, Texas (about twenty miles north of Austin) over a year ago when Denny retired. They have been anxious for Fred and I to come and visit them, and we have finally been able to work in a stop at their new house as we are traveling down to San Antonio for Prudence's birthday.

Getting to the Ruckman's House in San Antonio

You have probably seen an album page where we visit San Antonio, but in case you haven't, I want to show you the route to San Antonio from Dallas and where Prudence and Ron and Guy are located. Actually, if you've seen the previous album page, you know that this time we made a stop in Leander, and then dropped Denny at the Austin airport, continuing on to San Antonio from there. So our route was a bit different, although I'll use the same maps I usually do.

On the maps below, you can see the normal route to the Ruckmans' house. But on the left-hand map, we are actually going to be coming from the Austin airport east of the city, so instead of looking at the route all the way from Dallas, we will rejoin that route just south of Austin, using the bypass to get to it from the airport. From the Austin airport, it took us about 90 minutes to get down to San Antonio. In San Antonio, we continue to follow I-35 into the city, eventually exiting onto San Pedro Avenue. We take that north about two miles, and either hang a left on Ashby and a right on Breeden or just a left on French to get to the Ruckmans' house on the northeast corner of Breeden and French.

In case you have not seen them, I have put below first an aerial view of the Ruckmans' house (it is the house on the corner and the garage/apartment building north of it where Guy lives) and a front view of the house (taken in 2010).

In addition to helping Prudence celebrate her birthday, we plan to spend some time at the gallery and, if the weather is nice, go over to the San Antonio Botanical Garden to see the new section that has just been opened.

Dinner at Nancy's House in San Antonio

On the evening of the 25th, the day before Prudence's birthday, her sister Nancy and brother-in-law Karl had us out to their house in north San Antonio for supper; Karl and Ron did grilling on the patio.

Grisette and Cole at Play (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

We had brought Cole down for the trip, and we took him out to Nancy's so he and his sister could have some play time- which is what they are doing in the movie at left. Fred took a few pictures out on their patio (which fronts the golf course behind their house) and a little later on I took some pictures of Cole and of Nancy's other cats:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

At the San Antonio Botanical Garden

The day of Prudence's birthday, Sunday the 26th, the gallery was closed, so we took the opportunity to head over to the San Antonio Botanical Garden to tour the new area that they have just opened up.

It was a warm Sunday morning, so after Jax had gotten his walk, we dressed lightly and headed over to the botanical garden. Getting there is quite easy; it is about 2.5 miles from Prudence's house, over on the other side of Brackenridge Park:

We have been to the Botanical Garden a number of times, but today we want to see the new Family Adventure Garden that has been constructed to the south of the existing gardens that we have visited so many times before. In addition, the Sullivan Carriage House (12), which has been the entry to the gardens for many years, has been replaced with the new Halsell Entry Pavilion (1-2-3-4) that has been located at the southwest corner of the gardens property- right next to some new parking areas. The Gift Shop has been moved out of the carriage house and over to the Halsell Pavilion, freeing up space in the carriage house for the Carriage House Cafe.

Halsell Welcome Building

The new entry complex is another legacy of the Ewing Halsell Foundation given to the San Antonio Botanical Garden; the Lucile Halsell Conservatory, which you have probably seen before and which we will visit again today, was the first.

(L-R) Lucile, Helen Campbell, Ewing, Grace Rider

Born in 1877, Ewing Halsell was a prominent cattle rancher in Texas and Oklahoma during the early 1900s. He was raised in the Cherokee town of Vinita, Oklahoma where he met his wife Lucile Fortner. Lucile was a member of one of Vinita’s most respected families and was also of Cherokee and Scottish descent. Together they lived on ranches in Oklahoma and Texas and in their later years, at the St. Anthony Hotel in downtown San Antonio.

Mr. and Mrs. Halsell both led privileged lives, yet remained grounded, generous individuals exemplifying values of hard work, strong moral character, and social compassion. The Halsells, having both inherited and built their wealth, considered this good fortune to be a blessing, not a right. An integral and fulfilling part of that blessing, they felt, was the ability to share it.

Ewing and Lucile Halsell did not have children of their own and wished to leave the bulk of their fortune to benefit those less fortunate than themselves. They established a Texas-based charitable trust on June 29, 1957, to foster their philanthropic mission, values, and vision.

While the bulk of the financial backings for the Ewing Halsell Foundation came directly from the Halsells, Lucile's sister, Grace Fortner Rider, impressed by the good works of the foundation in her later years, allocated a large portion of her estate to be gifted to the Foundation upon her death in 1971.

In the picture at left, we see Lucile and Ewing, along with Lucile's sister and a family friend, as they arrived at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu in 1952. Oddly, based on the location of the cars in the background, I stood on almost this exact spot during my first visit to Hawaii in 1971, as I walked down Waikiki from Fort DeRussy to see the iconic hotel (which is still in its original location having opened in 1927).

The entry to the Botanical Gardens, which used to be in the small carriage house, is now the expansive Halsell Entry Complex:

The Lucile Halsell Entry Plaza

We walked through the entry plaza, using our Dallas Arboretum memberships to get tickets (the two gardens having a reciprocal membership agreement) and made a quick stop to look around these new buildings that have just opened.

Prudence and Fred at the Entry

Off to our left as we passed by the ticket kiosk is the gift shop; Prudence and Fred would stop in there on the way out. To the right are the facilities and a classroom/exhibit room. On the east side of the classroom there are some small garden plots that seem to be designed for kids to wander about.

Back near the ticket kiosk I took the picture at left of Prudence and Fred, and then we walked in to the Botanical Garden.

At this new entrance, when you get a hundred feet or so into the garden, the path diverges. To the right is the new Adventure Garden, and to the left is a broad walkway that leads to the rest of the garden.

In the picture below, I am standing at that intersection looking back towards the entry on the left and down the walkway to the gardens on the right:

Family Adventure Garden

The new Family Adventure Garden was designed to encourage families and kids to come to the gardens, enjoy the space, and learn a few things in the process. The rest of the Botanical Garden is largely focused on adults who want to actually explore the variety of native and non-native plants kept here. But the Family Adventure Garden is focused on fun.

The Entrance to the Family Adventure Garden

A sign near the entrance (shown at left) sets the tone for visitors: "Play outside and get the wiggles out! Experience 15 fun spaces that encourage unstructured play and exploration. Run up and roll down Tumble Hill, find your way through the kid-friendly Muhly Maze, and trek through Thunder Ridge and listen for a clap of thunder."

We headed up the walk into the Adventure Garden to see what it was like, passing under the artificial trellis that arches over the walkway. Just beyond that trellis, I stopped to take a picture looking back towards the entrance.

Wandering along the pathways through the Adventure Garden, we passed by many of the new features designed for fun and education. Most of the water features were operating, but No Name Creek, an artificial stream where kids are encouraged to walk in and spash around, was off. Among the features we saw were Tumble Hill, which kids are encouraged to climb, and the Watering Hole, a courtyard with prickly pear cactus, native grasses, and colorful seating.

A major structure in this new garden is the Prickly Pear Pavilion- a facilities building adjacent to a kids maze. It has a green roof planted with native cactus, and rainwater from the roof is channeled into an elevated Acequia Tank. Near this structure is the beginning of an artificial dry creek bed, which is used to show how an aquifer recharge zone works.

There were lots of little features that we passed as we walked and took pictures- so many that I can't remember them all. So let's just look at a selection of the best of the pictures that Fred and I took in the Adventure Garden:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Eventually, we found our way back to the entrance to the Adventure Garden, and this time we took the pathway into the rest of the Botanical Garden; this pathway takes you first to the Lucile Halsell Conservatory.

The Lucile Halsell Conservatory

The Lucile Halsell Conservatory complex features plants from around the world in the five exhibit rooms which encircle a central courtyard. The courtyard which features a garden pond with a display of hardy and tropical waterlilies, as well as hardy outdoor plants and a rotating group of sculpture pieces.

The exhibit rooms are really five multi-story glass greenhouses that rise from the courtyard level to varying heights. At five stories above ground, the Palm and Cycad Pavilion is the tallest of these. Three of the greenhouses allow the visitor to enter at the courtyard level and exit at ground level. We have wandered through each of these structures many times before, so like many of the places we return to often, the number of pictures we take seems to decline each time. Today, we took no pictures inside any of the greenhouses, but took a number of them from the level above the courtyard, where there are spans that take the visitor over the courtyard from one house to another. Here are the best of those pictures:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

A Few More Pictures

Walking around today, neither Fred nor I took many pictures. In the heat of the San Antonio summer there weren't many colorful blooms, so most of what we saw were succulents, tropical plants, and cacti. But here are just the best of the pictures we did take here in the Botanical Garden today:

This picture shows the walkway coming from the Adventure Garden; it was taken from one of the bridge spans over the Conservatory courtyard.

Often, we go up to the gazebo lookout, the highest point in the gardens, but today it was too hot.

One of the many restful seating areas in the gardens, this one overlooking an area near the rose gardens.

Sadly, there were very few blooms on any of the roses here in this section of the rose garden area.

By one or so in the afternoon we were pretty much done with the heat and humidity, so we made a stop at the gift shop and then headed back to Prudence's house for a bit of lunch.

Celebrating the Sister's Birthdays

Prudence's birthday is today, but Nancy's will occur in ten days or so, and thus Fred and I decided that when we picked up a cake for after our dinner at the Palm Restaurant, we would put both their names on it. You don't need any real detail for how the afternoon and evening went, except to know that during the afternoon we took some pictures around the house and before dinner, and then some when we returned:

Cole in the sunroom.

One of Prudence's birthday flower arrangements.

Me and Fred Before Dinner

Returning from the Palm, it was time for the traditional birthday festivities.

Prudence and Nancy Cole Wants Cake

Fred and I got out the cake for Prudence and Nancy, they cut it, and we had our dessert in the sunroom while Prudence and Nancy opened the gifts they'd received.

Fred and I stayed on into the next day before heading back up to Dallas. For the umpteenth time, we have to thank Prudence profusely for her hospitality- she has offered it to us more times than we can count.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	October 10-14, 2018: The "Four Realists Show" at Art Gallery Prudencia
	August 22-23, 2018: Visiting Larry and Denny in Leander, Texas
	Return to the Index for 2018