Golf out West

My Tom is an avid golfer. For years we belonged to a Golf Club in Houston. We dropped our membership when we started living in Colorado almost half of the year. Most  golf clubs do not offer a part time membership. He has discovered though , that a lot of the public courses are just as nice as the private ones.

I am happy to report that he has found a golf buddy (in our new town of Ft. Worth), and on Sunday, they played a public course  in Weatherford, which is due west of Ft Worth (about 30 miles).... Ft Worth has had the motto for a long time: Fort Worth..Where The West Begins....and I agree, west of here looks a lot like the Texas everyone pictures. We drove back out to the course yesterday, to retrieve a forgotten item...and I started noticing a very common  west Texas tree.

 

There are parts of Texas, where this is about the only tree that will grow. It is called a Mesquite Tree. A native of the Sonora Desert...it takes very little water. You will find many pastures filled with just cactus and these trees. Many Spanish Missions were constructed of this wood, along with Colonial Haciendas. The tree produces and edible bean...eaten mostly today by wild life.  Indians used all parts of the tree to make tribal medicines. Despite their usefulness, most ranchers hate this tree that spreads easily, and is virtually  impossible to get rid of. They also have a large thorn. I can remember vividly pulling one out of my four year olds foot! Mention Mesquite trees to a Texan, and some will immediately  think of barbecue. We say there is nothing better than meat roasted on a fire made with Mesquite wood.