The location of this home is about 7 miles west of Bastrop and 14 miles East of Austin. It is in the Cedar Creek Area about 300' from Cedar Creek itself. The area is a farm that was cut up for sale in 1982.  It is surrounded by un-developed land and enormous ranches in nearly all directions. Access here is by highway 71 from Austin or Bastrop or Highway 21 from San Marcos.  I can get to the airport in almost exactly 20 minutes during peak commuter drive-time (cars are on the road) and as little as 15 minutes other times (it's real quiet).  We rarely have to deal with Austin traffic. Air traffic is about the same as Austin's....planes sporadically at about 3000 feet...hardly noticeable.

I picked this area years ago because I wanted to be in the country, have soil that I could garden on, have good and plentiful water, dark skies and quick access to Austin. Even after living here over 20 years, those conditions have continued on and it was indeed the right choice. There is no other direction you can go from Austin and be in the real country in 20 minutes. For the same reason, it is also the only direction where you can live and not have to drive through traffic to get there. 

Our area's deed restrictions prohibit excessive density and are designed to protect  the value of our property. Since we are the maintainers of those restrictions, we gather whenever we need to make a decision on proposed building in our area. 

Our weather systems are slightly different from Austin. For some reason, we seem to get a bit more rain. We also are up on a ridge and get a sweeping breeze from the southeast (gulf air). In winter, the northern breezes come from un-populated areas above us. This means we never get Austin's air. There is almost always something lovely to smell in the air here...and we've added some of our own fragrant plants around the home's edge.

The grounds are a mix of Hackberry, Oak, Elm, Chinaberry, Osage orange, cedar and mesquite. The area is "Blackland Prairie". This is primarily dark topsoil which with the addition of some sand and organics- is perfect to grow things in. To the east start the pines of Bastrop and to the west, the edwards plateau. Our elevation is 550'.

Although in times past, much of the local wild animals were hunted by teenagers with 22's, now that this is not the case, they have re-populated fully. We have- Raccoons, squirrels, possums, armadillos, birds of all types and just a few snakes and dear. In the evenings you can hear hundreds of coyotes baying in the valley. We are also on the bird's routes to and from the city for foraging. During parts of the year, literally thousands of birds cross overhead every evening on their way to roost for the evening.