Saturday Rodeo

It's the season of deer in the Hill Country

Will and I drove to Llano to meet Veronica and Elena warming up Yancy, the horse.  It was a most unusual rodeo event.  Instead of roping and yelling, the riders very quietly herded cows from one pen to another in numerical order.  (If the riders yelled, they were disqualified.) Veronica herded--impressively--while the gatekeeper, her teammate, attempted to keep the wrong cows from getting into the pen too soon. I'm pretty sure this event is called Western Traditional.

Due to my current episode of "fibro" (and the steroid shots expired in my knees), I could only get onto the bleachers with Will's help.  But as we watched the horses and riders and cows, Elena made string art animals from a kit I'd brought her and we made a little pillow out of fabric scraps.  Since the rodeo went on for hours, Will and Elena and I took a break in the late afternoon and visited Llano River Park and watched geese line up on the water for flight and bass swimming, Will wishing he had his fishing pole.

I reminded him that Granddaddy was never without his pole.  We'd be riding around on a Sunday afternoon and he'd pull off beside a pond and say, "I'm just going to cast for a minute."  He'd get his pole and tackle from the trunk, and Carlene would begin reading or cross-stitching or crocheting.  We knew his minutes. An hour or so later, he'd come back to the car grinning, holding up a few bass on a string.

Will brought us good barbecue from Cooper's and we saw the lively little town of Llano, me for the first time.  I got home at eleven last night, and we were lucky not to add to the staggering population of dead deer on that long two-lane stretch between Llano and Fredricksburg.  Until meeting another car, we drove with high beams and had to slow several times to allow a deer to prance across the highway.  We breathed a sigh of relief when we missed each one.