Forgotten Cemetery Angel in Batesville, Texas (Picture a Day May 14, 2009)

Forgotten Cemetery Angel in Batesville, Texas (Picture a Day May 14, 2009)

Image by mlhradio
Batesville is one of several dry, dusty, faded communities located in the "Winter Garden" region of south Texas. While some towns like Catarina, Asherton and Big Wells have mostly died off, others like Crystal City or Carrizo Springs hang on. Batesville is somewhere in-between - it used to be thriving city of over a thousand people around the turn of the century, and was even the county seat for Zavala for a few decades. But a prolonged drought and the Great Depression took their toll, and Batesville dwindled to a few hundred souls - but in the past two decades has experienced a growth boom as the population exploded by over a thousand, with a major demographic shift from mostly Anglo residents to almost entirely Hispanic.

Batesville is now little more than a waystop on the highway halfway between San Antonio and Eagle Pass. Not much of note in town - there's the gazebo in the (former) courthouse square, the abandoned movie theater, the abandoned one-room schoolhouse, a couple of businesses along the main highway. On the road out of town is the cemetery; on one side are the old graves of the original settlers, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. But most of the cemetery is more modern, graves from the past two decades - all of them very brightly decorated with festive multi-colored flowers and displays, little statuettes, dioramas and more, really quite impressive. This picture is one of the angels from an older gravestone, mostly hidden in the untended weeds, picture taken May 2nd, 2009.

You can view more photos from my 2009 'Picture a Day' set at: www.flickr.com/photos/matthigh/sets/72157625855768121/

And the fun continues with a Picture a Day through 2010 at: www.flickr.com/photos/matthigh/sets/72157620610035860/

Bel-Asher Mansion in Asherton, Texas (Picture A Day June 19, 2009)

Image by mlhradio
Every once in a while I run across some grand, impressive building in the middle of some tiny, fading Texas town. Usually the big-wig with the most money gets the idea to build the biggest, most modern (for the era) house possible, to show how 'cosmopolitan' and important they are to their uppity friends out east. One fine example is the Bel-Asher Mansion in the Winter Garden town of Asherton. A hundred years ago, Asherton was a bright young star in far southwest Texas, growing fat and rich on the underground springs and year-round agriculture (at one time the nation's leading producer of Bermuda onions). The town's founder, Asher Richardson, constructed a beautiful mansion, the most impressive for a hundred miles around. But a couple of severe droughts, the Great Depression and a drop in the aquifer water table turned this thriving community into a fading flower. It still has over a thousand residents, but only one business, the school closed down a decade ago in a funding scandal, almost everyone living below poverty and serving as laborers for the nearby farms and ranches. Except for this neat mansion on the edge of town, still owned and occupied by an elderly descendant. Picture taken March 2009.

You can view more photos from my 2009 'Picture a Day' set at: www.flickr.com/photos/matthigh/sets/72157625855768121/

And the fun continues with a Picture a Day through 2010 at: www.flickr.com/photos/matthigh/sets/72157620610035860/

The day before

Image by tigitogs
The solstice rose (previous picture) yesterday, on the first sunny day for a week due to the Storms

夜の金

Image by gullevek
Epson R-D1s / Nokton 50/f1.1
2009/12/27
日本、東京都、大田区、多摩川

See where this picture was taken. [?]

IMG_0232

Image by Bludgeoner86
The bush thing in the back yard started flowering (in winter) so I took a picture of it.