The Caregiver’s Tales: A Blog

There’s a fine wind blowing this morning, with rain. But it’s only a tad. Nary enough to lift the red ring on the rain gauge that’s shows me the level. Still, cool air and moisture is a fine spring combination for the plants and trees and they’re all having a good time. The scarlet sage I transplanted has settled into its new ground in the north fence garden beneath the Chinquapin Oak. The Mealey Sage in the same garden is strong, tall and healthy as are the two Gregg’s Mist Flowers.

I couldn’t sleep at all last night, and I can’t really say why. I wish I was mulling over some huge philosophical issue of great importance to humankind, but it was just my brain refusing to disconnect. It happens occasionally, and I just let it ride and try to catch up the next night, and as I’m going through the following day I try to keep important decisions to a minimum because I’m probably tired.

The Two Day Two City Tour 2026 is in the books. Life on the road is a grind, and I’m glad to be home, he said with tongue firmly in cheek. Yesterday’s event was held inside because of rain with no amplification, which meant I didn’t get to use my new tremolo pedal, but it felt just like home because mostly I play in picker’s circles in people’s front rooms.

Day one of the 2026 Two Day Two City Tour (TDTCT) is over. My friend Rob McDonald joined me on stage at Folkfest in New Braunfels to replace the friend David Pagan originally planned. David threw out his back. The three of us make up a group when we play together that we’ve come to call the Withered Roots, because we’re all old. Yesterday’s show went on without much of a hitch and we even had a good crowd, mostly made up of friends, but there were some strangers who stuck around to hear us play and sing.

We’ve had days of rain and might have a few more. But the creek beds are still dry, and the lake levels low so no one’s celebrating. I think the storm to turn that tide will have to be epic, and even then, it might still fall short. Methinks it will be hard to overcome decreased rainfall and a population of thirty million people who like to drink water. That’s a lot of straws in the aquifer, and more are coming every day.

I stood on the porch yesterday and watched the rain start to fall. The leaf litter on the drive twitched with memories of life as the raindrops fell until the drops became a torrent and the leaves began to float. Then they huddled together to begin their journey to becoming organic matter, sending nutrients back to the parental trees who once bore them, decaying into a new life. A virtuous cycle.

It’s nice when you can get back to nature by simply walking into your yard. I suppose it’s nice to have a yard. Lots of people don’t and some that do, don’t really care that much about getting back to nature in them. It’s mostly ornamentation. But I’ve always found refuge in my yards. It was me and my plants, and it was fairly easy to figure out their wants and desires and keep them mostly happy.

Thoreau wrote about his trips down the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, Twain wrote about the Mississippi, John Graves said goodbye to the Brazos. It seems we’re always saying goodbye to our rivers as they ran in their natural states before industrialization and civilization swallows them whole. I feel fortunate to have canoed the Guadalupe in an almost natural state in the 1970s before it became a lazy river with wall-to-wall tubers.