Bragg Family South

  Early April and I haven't posted a new blog update since late January...my excuse:  spring fever, or the lack thereof!  This spring is still haunted by a global pandemic, which is (hopefully) lightening up for Bragg Family South with vaccinations starting to happen.  We are doing our part to embrace what we can as the world around us starts to emerge from emergency shutdowns and other pandemic measures.  We went to the Little Rock Zoo for the first time in a long time back in February...the crowds were thin, probably more due to the cool weather than anything. The weather has been typically weird (again) this year in Arkansas.  We started out 2021 on the warmish and relatively dry side, enough to start bringing the daffodils out in early February (fairly typical for us)...and then winter returned to south Arkansas with a vengeance!  First, we got hit by an ice storm: Mercifully (for us, at least) this was just enough ice to make things kind of pretty...

Well, the 2020-2021 holiday season was about as different as Bragg Family South has ever experienced, as so many others also experienced.  We counted our blessings for a healthy and safe holidays this year, and hope for that to continue until this pandemic subsides.   The pandemic has led to many changes in how we live our lives, some rather trivial--like spending more time at home for school or work, as can be seen by Stephen having to do more of his classes at home (this is him practicing with his baritone, something he'd done at home regardless of the pandemic): We were also able to take our time around home over the holidays to do a few other things, too.  Out of our 20 holiday seasons since moving to Arkansas, we've actually only spent 1 or 2 in the state--usually we're up north visiting family and friends.  This year, since we didn't go north, we spent some time exploring some interesting corners of the state, such as this long abandoned concrete weir on a...

Draco sums up this late fall season well--time to find a box and curl up, awaiting the heat of a warm fire!  We started the month of November with big Thanksgiving plans, including a road trip to Wisconsin to visit my folks and see Kenny, who would come down from Houghton for the week... Until then, we were satisfied (well, not really, but had to live with) connecting with Kenny via his participation in some Zoom calls we've been on (that's him in the center of the image below): I was also able to take advantage of some nice weather on Halloween and Veteran's Day to make a couple trips to western Arkansas to look for an old experimental forest on the Ouachita National Forest that's been closed for decades.  If you look closely in the picture below, you should see a small concrete structure called a "weir" that is used to funnel streamflow through a measured opening to gauge how much water is flowing down that channel.  There is also some stonework along the ba...

My apologies for being so slow to post a new Bragg Family South blog...It is not that nothing has happened since the last one, when we dropped Kenny off at college, but rather we have just been in our typical fall grind.  Above, Beth and Stephen await their school bus in a morning rain shower... Since dropping Kenny off, we've had a couple tropical weather bouts...The first was Tropical Storm Laura, which had hammered Louisiana as Hurricane Laura before weakening to a pretty strong Tropical Storm when in came through the Monticello area a few days after we returned from taking Kenny to school.  And just in past few days, Louisiana got hit again by Hurricane Delta, which wasn't as strong (thankfully) and passed through southeastern Arkansas as a weaker tropical storm/depression before quickly moving on.  We got through these tropical systems in pretty good shape; pray for those elsewhere who were not so lucky! Actually, most of this fall has been fairly dry, and pretty ple...