Lavender Leisure

Tuesday of my conference gave me another break surrounding lunch, so I headed to the north hill country as the locals call it because -believe it or not - just north of San Antonio are lavender farms that constitute the lavender center of the US. THey grow mostly French lavender for all the uses that one has for lavender. Who knew that Texas is the capital of the US lavender market? The lavender farms were actually not open to tourists - the season was too early just yet - but I made my return to work through a town called Groene - prounounced Green - which claims to have the least amount of modern development of any town in Texas. Most of the buildings are from the 19th century or earlier. I had lunch at the general store which has really becaome mostly a tourist shop. Groene also has what it claims is the oldest dance hall in continuous operation in the US. It is a bar by day and you can dance in the evenings with a juke box. There is an old grist mill that is a restaurant now, but the structure is well-preserved so you can see how it operated. And there was evening and morning the second day.