Features

Early Saturday morning October 2, a 10K/5K run is scheduled to be held. It’s a 10k, 5k, Family Fun Run, with the start and finish at the First Baptist Church parking lot in Wimberley. “It’s a road and trail race. And we’ve got a team competition going on,” Samantha Lingamfelter said.

Cheer practice, UIL tournaments and taking classes sounds like a regular schedule for any high school student. And it is for WHS sophomore Paige Merriman, but there is also an added element to her life. Many young women dream of the opportunity to have a modeling career, and Paige is living that dream of walking the runway while balancing the ever persistent schedule of a high school student.

Martha wrote about the Liatris or Gayfeather plant last week and I would like to add a few more wildflowers you might have noticed around town in September. The rains we had early in the summer and periodically thereafter helped our wildflower population.

What’s the big flap about in Wimberley? Wings Over Wimberley (WOW), a twoday event celebrating the Mexican free tailed bats, is flying into Wimberley Friday October 1st and Saturday the 2nd. It will be held on the spacious and shaded property of Ozona Bank overlooking the Cypress Creek Bridge where the bat colony resides.

Anthony Shaffer’s first-class mystery thriller, Sleuth, opens on the Wimberley Players stage September 30th and runs through October 17th.

Photographer Rodney Bursiel opened his new Basecamp gallery in a historic home on Old Kyle Road last May.

Wimberley provides home, community, and inspiration to a remarkable variety of artists, from the internationally renowned to emerging talent. Seven of these artists will open the doors to their creative inner sanctums, as part of the Wimberley Valley Art League’s annual studio tour. The tour will take place Saturday, September 25th, 10-5 and Sunday, September 26th, 11-4.

The Wimberley Valley Big Band is back. Honoring current and ongoing CDC health guidelines, the Big Band will play a free outdoor concert, inviting folks to bring their lawn chairs and snacks and socially distance, all while enjoying the uplifting and toe-tapping blend of big band, swing, Latin, and light jazz music from the decades.

Just when I thought our wildflower season was over, I noticed gorgeous long plumes of small, rosy purple flowers blooming along the roadside of Spoke Hollow on the way to my house. They are scattered along both sides of the road. This flower is botanically known as Liatris mucronata but the common names are Gayfeather and Blazing Star. These gayfeathers tolerate well-drained, average to rich dry soil. They start blooming in late summer, that is late August and early September. They can bloom through October. We are very lucky as they can be found in the eastern twothirds of the Hill Country area.

ProjectART has spent time cultivating the talent of the Wimberley youth, and this weekend, they had the opportunity to show off that talent in a gallery show for middle and high school students.

There’s a lot going on around town.

You don’t have to live in Texas long to learn that we Texans are proud of our state flower, the bluebonnet. If you grew up here you likely learned that the state tree is the pecan and the state bird the northern mockingbird. But you might not know that in 1971 the Texas Legislature designated a state grass, sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula).

In 1986, a few valley residents got together and decided that socially, having events to bring the people in Wimberley and the area together, establishing Bluebonnets Balls, a monthly event.