Friday fabulous flower - the color purple

 TPP has been traveling to spend time with some friends and the game plan was sound, go south to out run the polar vortex, and so we headed to palo duro Canyon.  And our warm weather sojourn was a magnificent failure as all of Texas turned fridgid and nearby Amarillo got 9" of snow.  But before this we had a good time, saw a good sampling of wildlife and birds, and got home safely.  

Here is one of many prickly pear cacti (Opuntia not sure what species), showing its winter coloration,  undoubtedly caused by plant pigments called anthocyanins coloring these stems with a rather lovely purplish hue.  Can't do much better in the desert in February.  Although the desert was covered in crystalline white hoar frost, a frozen fog.  Beautiful.   

Cleared out of Texas on Friday last and back to Tulsa, where dire weather forecasts helped the Phactors decide to drive back to Lincolnland on Saturday, on dry roads (very important), before snow and severe cold arrived. Just in time so to speak.  

On the move again - the Alps

Flat landers like ourselves always try to head for either beaches or mountains, things that just don't exist in Lincolnland.  So today's travels were great, mostly.  Starting from Munich, our route took us by train to Innsbruck, Austria through Liechtenstein to Zurich, Switzerland, and that means a route through and over a portion of the Alps.  At any given moment today more relief was visible than exists in the whole state of Lincolnland, which by the way is over three times bigger than Switzerland.  How nice!  And of course the mountains were nicely covered with snow, and snowboarders had noticed and kept trying to swack people in the head with their ungainly luggage to call attention to themselves.  If the train had actually had as many 1st class seats as tickets they had sold, then they would not have had to close the dining car to handle the excess.  TPP would recommend comping us some drinks too because you didn't offer a refund.  Fortunately that was only for the Munich to Innsbruck leg and after that travel was via a real train.  Someday perhaps the Phactors will do the Glacier express across the Alps, but not this time. Which brings up another thing. Is your bloody dog, no matter how well behaved, enjoying a train trip?  Did you buy them a ticket?  What is this deal with everyone and their dogs? OK, that was a bit cranky, but your dog may not join us at our table, sorry.  Elsewhere the F1 was having travel woes due to the nasty winter weather in North America that caused a flight from Madrid to Chicago to disappear, fortunately that happened before bordering (saw that movie once).  Now this really complicates the rest of the travel.  It will be a few more days before the Phactors head home, so will all you North American readers please get out there and shovel?  Also, warm up a welcome home for us. The predicted low temps could bring some sad garden news come spring because -19F is rock bottom for zone 5 and anything not quite that hardy will be damaged or killed.  Sure hope that Magnolia virginiana is really, really hardy.