In The Glenn Again

Mimi Cavender

“Got a minute? Let’s go relax in Patsy Glen.” In 2014, I’d just moved to Wimberley, and a new friend’s invitation was irresistible. A glen, or glenn from old Gaelic gleann, is a small, narrow, secluded valley, forested, sometimes with a stream running through it. I figured Patsy was the local name on such a charming place—and right here in downtown Wimberley! I’d just explored King Feed and Brookshire Brothers (then the only game in town), and now we were driving past the historic Winters-Wimberley house and a shiny new Community Center. At the far back end of that long parking lot, there was an unimposing trailhead with an information kiosk. This was Patsy Glen? Ohhhh, Patsy Glenn Refuge!

The trail gently descended a hundred or so yards to a low spot, where a comfortable little cabin nestled in a grove of live oak and cedar elm. Bird feeders hung from the branches of a craggy grandfather elm, and water dripped soundlessly into a small rock pool. Not exactly Scotland, but cool and woodsy on a hot day. The area was bounded by a venerable dry-stacked wall running northeast, and to the south by rough cedar woods. Beyond was ranchland or its remnants. Seasonal rain runoff from the higher northern elevation had long eroded this little wooded depression and now threatened the trail and bird refuge. But it had all the romantic elements—narrow, wooded, secluded, water running through it—a glen! Patsy Glenn’s glen. Her legacy to the people and other precious wildlife of Wimberley, Texas.

Wimberley has changed and is changing. The challenge is to protect and enhance what is good, what remains of the authentic Hill Country we grew up in or moved here for. Patsy Glenn, an extraordinary woman, met that challenge in her own way, and the Refuge is her gift to us. An enhancement project is in progress to ensure that her gift is one that keeps on giving.

Let’s look at Patsy, the Refuge, and the Project.

Patsy Glenn was the force behind creation of the nature trail and birding station now bearing her name. With vision and gentle persistence, she worked to preserve 1.8 acres of native habitat as a bird sanctuary in the city center of Wimberley. Through her efforts with the City, an unused wedge of land next to the proposed Community Center was turned over to the Wimberley Birding Society for development as a bird sanctuary. In October 2001, Patsy enlisted 60 volunteers to create the nature trails, wildflower meadows, feeders, and water drip to attract birds. A past co-president of Wimberley Birding Society, Patsy was in 2002 the first winner of its Golden Eagle Award, now an annual award presented by WBS to the person doing the most for birds and birding in Hays County, Texas. She guided numerous improvements, including a Chimney Swift tower, bird blind, rainwater collection, and pollinator gardens.

Cancer was the only thing that, in 2007, would stop Patsy Glenn, but her husband David energetically continues her work, focuses the vision. Click on this May 2021 interview with David Glenn by University of Texas journalism student Donovan McCann. And an article by Colton McWilliams in the April 28, 2022, edition of the Wimberley View renews our appreciation of the life and contribution of Patsy and David Glenn.

Seed feeders, hummingbird feeders, and water drip pools are enclosed by a 150-year-old stone wall and brush shelters. A cedar post barrier keeps out deer and protects the wall.

An adjacent meadow is being transformed into a seasonal wetland--nature's way of holding and filtering runnoff, which can be erosive and polluting. Photo: Lee Ann Linam

Patsy Glenn Refuge encourages and protects birds and all wildlife. It also educates visitors, including area school children. Hays County Master Naturalist provides trained volunteers to help maintain PGR’s gardens and grounds, and its education outreach program, Wild About Nature, provides pop-up learning activities for Hays families. As improvements to the Patsy Glenn Refuge continue, we’ve been seeing the area’s Resident and Migrating Birds in this list. When you visit the Refuge, use this checklist and the handy picture guide in the bird blind to spot some yourself!

American Kestrel
Bewick’s Wren
Black-crested Titmouse
Black-throated Hummingbird
Carolina Chickadee
Carolina Wren
Cedar Waxwing
Chipping Sparrow
Clay-colored Sparrow
Eastern Meadowlark

Lark Sparrow
Northern Cardinal
Painted Bunting
Red-Shouldered Hawk
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
Western Scrub-Jay
White-winged Dove
Eastern Bluebirds, in boxes built just for them.

Butterflies such as Sulphur, Queen, Red Admiral, Monarch, Black Swallowtail, and Tiger Swallowtail visit the nectaring plants. Small animals among the brush piles and in the old dry-stacked stone wall are prey for hawks and owls in the surrounding woods. As the habitat restoration continues, we expect to see increases in all types of animals and insects using the Patsy Glenn Refuge.

Native plants and trees already growing in the Refuge include wildflowers, such as Prairie Verbena, Texas Bluebonnet, and Blue Sage; shrubs, such as Agarita and Possumhaw; and trees, such as Mountain Laurel, Texas Persimmon, Escarpment Oak, Red Oak, various White oaks, and Cedar Elm. Volunteers have planted Yaupon, Redbud, Prickly Elm, Desert Willow, Evergreen Sumac, various cacti, and other native plants chosen for their ability to attract birds, butterflies, and other wildlife. In October 2008, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center established an online Special Collections Database with 112 native plants that have been identified in Patsy Glenn Refuge. This valuable resource makes available the common and scientific names, complete information, and color photographs of each plant. Take it with you on your trail walk through the Park.

Cypress Creek in Wimberley near Blue Hole Regional Park Rebecca Belcher, Wiki Commons

Patsy Glenn Refuge also improves the watershed of Cypress Creek, only a few hundred yards to the south, by slowing and naturally filtering the occasional rainwater overflow from streets, parking lots, and the new commercial development abutting the Park’s north side. Current improvements to control overflow include creation of a native landscaped seasonal wetland, which will attract wading birds, frogs, dragonflies, and other water-loving species. Eventually, plants and fish will join the frogs who have already found the new wetland.

Wimberley resident and Master Naturalist Jerry Lunow contributed his design for the new Patsy Glenn Refuge wetland, which will evolve with the Refuge and is part of a much larger environmental effort.

Site drawing for Patsy Glenn Refuge seasonal wetland improvement project — Jerry Lunow

From paper to park! Jerry Lunow will oversee the new Patsy Glenn Refuge wetland through its first spring and summer, 2022. The sun was setting as we took this picture—and sure enough, frog song!

Jerry is a landscape architect and has designed very large-scale wetlands in the Houston area. He’s got a smaller one now in his Wimberley back yard. He and his wife Diane spent their honeymoon in the Florida Everglades, Jerry recalls, so “I guess I have a thing for wetlands!” Asked how he imagines the new wetland at Patsy Glenn Refuge ten years from now, he smiles. “Walden!”

The Project. Patsy Glenn Refuge is not just a great birding spot. It’s important in the City of Wimberley’s protection of Cypress Creek and Blue Hole Regional Park—natural resources in which so many private and public interests have a stake. Stakeholders are creek-side businesses, homeowners, landowners, tourists, the natural world, you, me and our grandchildren. Here’s the City of Wimberley Parks and Recreation Department announcement of the Patsy Glenn Improvements Project :

The Patsy Glenn Refuge (PGR), sponsored by the Wimberley Birding Society (WBS), was the City of Wimberley's first public park. The Refuge has been operated as part of the historic Winters-Wimberley tract for nearly 20 years as a nature sanctuary. Recent storm water runoff has increased and threatens an 1800s dry-stacked rock wall built by the founding [Winters-Wimberley] families. The increased runoff also hampers educational operations on site and damages existing trails.
Wimberley Birding Society proposed a creative and multi-faceted proposal to help mitigate the increased runoff. More than $14,000 has been raised/pledged for funds or in-kind donation of service hours by WBS and its three project partners: City of Wimberley Parks and Recreation Department Cypress Creek Project; The Meadows Center for Water and Environment at Texas State University; and Hays County Master Naturalist.

Bob Currie reminds us that $5,000 of the Project budget is a grant from the Burdine Johnson Foundation.

Mulch brigade: Katie Simoneaux, Sandy Fleming, and Doray Lendacky load, hike, dump, hike, repeat.

Workday Report! The Project partners have come out in force. On April 2 and 16, 2022, volunteers under the direction of project coordinators David Glenn and Bob Currie enjoyed breezy spring workdays.

Bob thanked “a record number of volunteers, who came out with their batteries fully charged.” There was weeding, planting, and mulching in the pollinator gardens and on the new wetland perimeter.

For a quick look at the difference a year can make, click on Tom Jones’ article, Working the Brush Piles at Patsy Glenn in the June 2021 Hays Humm.

This spring, there have been major structural improvements. Deer had been jumping the pioneer families’ rock wall and surrounding brush piles to gobble seed under the feeders and drink from the drip pool. To save seed, to keep those hooves off the historic dry-stack wall, and to keep large accumulations of deer manure from finding its way into Cypress Creek only two hundred yards to the southeast, volunteers built on site a 6-foot barrier of native cedar (Ashe Juniper) posts. A series of berms and the new seasonal wetland created in the previously flood-prone meadow will retain and filter runoff water instead of allowing it to erode the Refuge and pollute nearby Cypress Creek.

Now, as a last word, and to justify all that new work in an already beautiful Patsy Glenn Refuge, let’s remember where dirty runoff water, if allowed to run through the park, would have strayed. From The Meadows Center at Southwest Texas State University, here’s an excerpt from The Cypress Creek Watershed Protection Plan (Bolding is mine, showing relevance to Patsy Glenn Refuge):

… Located in central Texas and part of the Edwards Plateau region of the Texas Hill Country, the Cypress Creek watershed has recognizable features of the region; rugged terrain, narrow canyons, and springs dominate the landscape. Cypress Creek flows through unincorporated portions of Hays County and the cities of Wimberley and Woodcreek. It meets the Blanco River near the Wimberley town center.
The creek and surrounding watershed offers habitat to a diversity of species, including fishes, water fowl, reptiles and amphibians, mammals, and insects. The climate is also typical of central Texas, with hot dry summers and rainfall that ranges from infrequent and sparse to heavy downpours and flash flooding. Urban development has been concentrated in the lower third of the watershed around Woodcreek and the City of Wimberley.
Therefore, the highest risk for excess sediment flow in the creek due to high slope comes from agriculture (primarily grazing) activities in the upper and northern portions of the watershed, and in bottomland areas the primary source for excess sediment flow results from development activities and land clearing. Due to the population increases in the past two decades, land use in the Cypress Creek Watershed has shifted from predominantly rangeland and undeveloped land uses to residential land uses. This trend is expected to continue in the future as formerly large acreage holdings are subdivided for high-density residential (5 acres). In 2010 the Meadows Center worked with the Stakeholder Committee to develop a future development scenario that depicts a full build-out of existing and platted subdivisions in the watershed. … Despite rapid population growth, neither Wimberley nor Woodcreek are subject to Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4) requirements, which include a stormwater management program and “ditches, curbs, gutters, storm sewers, and similar means of collecting or conveying runoff that do not connect with a wastewater collection system or treatment plant.” Such infrastructure is required by EPA and TCEQ to transport polluted stormwater runoff in larger communities.
None of these surface and source water protection strategies currently exists in the Cypress Creek Watershed. … The [Meadows Center at Southwest Texas State University] Cypress Creek Watershed Protection Plan … is meant to help guide decision makers and citizens to keep Cypress Creek clean, clear, and flowing for future generations.

Cypress Creek at Blue Hole Regional Park—summer fun 500 yards downslope from Patsy Glenn Refuge in Wimberley center.

The Hays Humm will follow local and regional implementation of the Cypress Creek Watershed Protection Plan with reports in future issues.

So, got a minute? Let’s go relax in Patsy Glenn! It’s a Texas Hill Country glen, a slice of the natural world right here in the small-town heart of Hays County. It’s an island of native habitat thoughtfully preserved and still evolving as a calm, nurturing retreat. A refuge for life.

Susan Evans, President, Wimberley Birding Society: “It’s such a gift to Hays County. Get the word out.

I just worry that nobody knows where it is!”

In The Glenn Again

In The Glenn Again

Mimi Cavender

Let’s look at Patsy, the Refuge, and the Project.

Schulle Canyon Natural Area

TPWD Advisors to HaysMN