Goin' & growin'

Lawrence started off the day by apologizing for going to four football games in the past six weekends.  But I don't care if he goes to TWELVE football games in six weekends!!  This is OUR time now, time to do what we WANT to do, rather than what we HAVE to do.  We partially renovated two houses and built a third, which we then partially renovated after we took possession of it.  This process has paid handsome dividends, but it ate up much of our free time for the better part of two years!  Now is playtime!
:-)

Myself, I'd rather die than sit and watch the Houston Texans play ball, but I've finally, finally got time to indulge an interest that has been on the back burner for years now: growing things. 

It's actually not a development of  a new interest so much as a return to roots, pun intended.  I grew up in large part on my maternal family's extensive acreages.  Gardening and living off the land to the extent possible were ways of life.  There was no such term as "eco" this, that, or the other thing in those years - what is considered "eco" now was "normal" then.

Of course, that was one country, forty years, and eight climate zones ago, so I've got a hell of a learning curve to climb if I want to re-establish any part of that lifestyle!  I began the ascent yesterday by picking up both a composter and a rain barrel at an outreach event orchestrated by the City of Houston, in which they sold the devices to citizens below retail cost.

Y'all line up now for those barrels and composters.  I got there early and there were still at least a hundred people ahead of me in the line.  Downtown Houston skyline and a gorgeous fall sky in the background.

THE COMPOSTER:

The Earth Machine (made in Canada, eh?) was designed to sit directly on the ground, for maximum involvement of insects and worms in the composting process.  However, sitting anything the slightest bit edible on the ground in greater Houston usually attracts an organism that could never be described as beneficial:

One of at least a dozen rats I've killed in my Texas houses over the years, this one from 2005.  Heh heh... I used to post this photo on internet dating sites.  Cleared out the squeamish guys really fast.  Joking aside, we have an intense rat problem here. 

I lined the bottom of the Earth Machine with hardware cloth. That way the worms and bugs can get in, but hopefully rodents will be excluded.

I don't yet know what conditions will result in the optimal composting in Galveston County Texas, but here's how the learning process is beginning.

After getting the composter leveled and staked down, one is supposed to add a "carbon" layer.  Because we have few leaves or straw here in brand-new suburbia, I'm crossing my fingers and using hardwood mulch.

OK, here's the pre-mixing addition of all the scraps that have been stinking up my kitchen counter for a week while they waited for me to acquire this thing.  All scrap foodstuffs can be added except anything that contains meat, fat, or oil.  You're supposed to shoot for an approximate ratio of 1:1 "nitrogen" components (rotting food) and "carbon" components.

Once the scraps are added, the top goes back on until the next load needs to be added.  It was only at this point that I realized my greatest adversary might not be rats - it might instead be our dog, for whom a rotten banana constitutes culinary nirvana.  I attempted to weight down the hardware cloth and sides of the Earth Machine using my "carbon" buckets to deter her from scratching around the base. 

THE RAINBARREL:

The earth will not be saved through the use of 55-gallon Systerns or anything remotely resembling them, but one has to start somewhere when one is fiddling with conservation-minded endeavors.  At prevailing costs, this thing could be made to pay for itself in potable water savings over its lifetime, but just barely.

I raised it up about eight inches to give it a little more head, and to make connecting the hose easier.

You just hacksaw off your downspout and reposition the elbow above the top of the Systern.  Aesthetically, the thing almost looks like it was installed here when the house was built. The color is exactly the same as our house trim.

Because I put this on a house corner, I angled the overflow hose toward the existing splash pad for the twin downspout, but I will block the twin so that the run-off from both roof sections goes into the Systern.

After we installed this baby-step, The Engineer got a wild hair and started considering what would be involved if we were to install a REAL cistern.  We calculated that, because our sprawling one-story has such a huge footprint, just the rear two-thirds of our roof sheds three times as much rainwater as we consume annually via municipal supply!  So he's now investigating the costs and benefits of actually installing an underground tank.  We'll see how that goes. 

We finished the day with happy sunburns similar in color to the western sky:

Six months of momentary oddity

Because of <insert long, miserable, screw-the-microbusinessowner story here>, I'm still using a Palm Treo phone with a Windows Mobile operating system.  If furniture becomes an antique after 100 years, and cars attain antique status after 25 years, I think a 4-year-old cell phone is definitely a qualifier in its asset class. 

Anyway, because this technology is more than obsolete, I'm never in a hurry to download the photos that I take with it, all those photos I snap wishing I had my REAL camera with me at the time.  Then it's sorta like Christmas when I finally DO download them and see all those moments that I'd forgotten we'd experienced, like these, which hopefully offer in substance what they lack in technical quality:

Lawrence participating in a magic show in March of this year.  Notice the magician tapping the other guy on the shoulder, an act that was almost impossible to observe in real time, as he was holding the audience's attention strictly upon Lawrence with his abracadabra gestures.

Cayley and her friends at the Justin Bieber concert, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, in March of this year. After five years of kinship, these guys are so in sync that they often pull the same facial expressions without even monitoring each other.

My fish tacos in The Aquarium restaurant, Kemah, Texas.  Notice the tin-foil tails!

 

Art shot of Cayley grinning at a fish tank.  Oh, to have had my DSLR at that moment!!

A dead guy in the Benedictine Abbey known as Ottobeuren, near Memmingen, Germany.  That's an actual corpse in there; they had several on display, and I believe the assembly included a couple of saints. 

Canada oddity #1:  When you pay for your restaurant meal by credit card, they don't temporarily remove your card from your possession as they do in the U.S. - instead, they bring a hand-held scanner to your table.  The technology is branded by Chase, which happens to be my principal bank here in the U.S., but which does not have a banking presence in Canada, but which DOES have a major presence in the U.S., except they don't use this technology here (uh... all this makes logical sense how??)

Canada oddity #2:  Instructions on handwashing in a public restroom including pictures of the various steps, just in case you never learned this skill in your life.

Another art shot: a linear Cayley captured in a linear frame.  Cayley asked, "Why did you take that picture?!"  I replied, "Because it's a wonderful composition."

Lake Jackson Wilderness Park

I had passed by it many times before, never knowing it was there, but this book brought it to my attention and I seized 57 post-work minutes yesterday to explore part of it.

This is the type of density I like to see in hiking trail parking lots:

A little Texas history thrown into the mix doesn't hurt either:

A typical upper Texas coast bottomland, the trees were a cathedral of Spanish moss:

I had slow-going, however, because of my visceral dislike of these things, which web across trails and about which I've written before:

Buffalo Camp Bayou above the spillover associated with the regional surge-control levee:

Unfortunately the bayou is choked by this plant which appears beautiful individually but which is highly invasive and devastating to area waterways:

I was struck by the diversity of plants on this trail, some familiar such as the ubiquitous native yaupon holly, which is one of my favorites:

And palmetto, although this is the first one I've ever seen actually fruiting:

But there were trees there that are not as commonly seen:

One of which produces this brain-ball type of seed thing:

I found these remains near the parking lot and couldn't decide whether it was animal or human that had rendered them.  I'm thinking perhaps feral hog due to the stoutness of the bones, but I don't know much about mammalian biology:

Because I had limited time and because it's banana-spider season, I only got about a half mile down the trail, but I intend to revisit this spot in the future.

Scenes from a Sunday

Texas Wax Myrtle remained in twilight...

...as the first rays of sunrise caught Nyx snuggling into a bed of new mulch...

...next to Loropetalum coated with the morning dew.

We've only got a few hours of work left on the main landscaping, which means I'm adding new projects.  The 800-square-foot garage made our house unusually wide and, unfortunately, the house adjacent-west is a two-story that towers over our comparatively-humble rambler.  This left Cayley with a stark, ugly view of the fence just five feet from her window, plus the imposing McMansion behind it. 

So I'm hoping that I can get this trio of vines to climb and thrive in this inter-house swale. Cay wanted some flowers here, but we can't install anything that blocks the gate access.  This vine puts out a pretty purple flower, so if they can be encouraged to live here, they should improve the view considerably by giving it a bit of courtyard-ish feel. 

And hurray for Houston Garden Center and their continuing 70% off sale - this little vine job cost me all of thirty bucks. 

Musings on a milestone

I confess to having something akin to a midlife crisis. For all these years, I worked to build the relationships and assets that I wanted out of life, such that I now consider myself to have the:
- Perfect child
- Perfect man
- Perfect friends and family
- Perfect education
- Perfect career
- Perfect house
- Health that is as good as can be expected for my age group (I stop short of using the “P” word mostly out of superstition)
- Not independently wealthy (never wanted to be) but have adequate financial savings / retirement trajectory (ditto on the “P” word)

SO WHAT NOW?? My entire life up until this point has been geared toward remediating the type of deficiencies that naturally characterize the experience of youth. In the context of that original directive, I've got nothing left to do!

That means I either have to expend my forward energy on improving perfection (which seems dull to me - I'm at the point of diminishing returns) or on choosing some new mountain to climb.

If new mountain, which one and for what reason? 

Even if I pick a mountain, there are still many variables and pathways to the top.  For instance, do I devote more effort to making social contributions, which I would actually like to do?  If so, which one(s)?  Do I pick one of those I would find most rewarding but maybe wouldn't be that good at, or do I go for greatest bang-for-buck by either exploiting myself or making the type of financial gains that could be leveraged by others who are in a better position to do it?

Ultimately, I'll figure it out, but it's an interesting headspace - a new type of predicament for me. 

 

Dogged determination

Now that we've gotten over last week's stomach virus, work continues on the landscaping.  L and I are both getting stronger and smarter at this, which means that the pace is accelerating.  It sorta bums me out, because I feel like we'll soon run out of outdoor work to do, and outdoor work is so much more fun than indoor work of any kind!

The dog proved herself a most useful contributor in the form of a grub cleaner-upper - you can see her head down, hard at work in that photo above.  She's only 18 months old, which means that many phenomena are still new and unprecedented to her.  You could see the lightbulb come on as she realized, "Damn, these things taste pretty good!!" 

Cayley said, "GROSS!"  I replied, "There's probably more nutrition in those than in that junk that comes out of the bags and cans we buy.

Maybe after we get this stuff done, I'll actually put in the small vegetable garden that I've wanted for years now.

Collective consumer consciousness

There may not be any such thing as Intelligent Design in the Christian fundamentalist sense of it, but there sure as hell is in the consumer market!  For instance, there is an international agency that specifies exact colors and color combinations for all consumer goods.  *ALL* of them.  I know I read about this, and yet when I search for it on the internet, I can't find it again (I hate it when that happens). 

This stuff is so computer-interlinked by this time that when I bought a wool rug made in Europe, I marched straight out to Bed Bath and Beyond and bought drapes made in China that contained the same four shades, without even trying to search for a match.  The exact same shades, and with stripes to boot.

When I had to cover Cayley's cheap Walmart-bought, Georgia-made shag rug with a towel to catch the dog slobber, I bought a Swedish number at Ikea that is so exact in color that half the time I can't see where the rug stops and the towel starts, and so I trip over it.

Sometimes the specificity of the matching totally takes me by surprise.  Last week I found that the only WEPC-available Smartwool sock that fit my tiny feet was this godawful baby blue color, which would really show stains.  Initially I was bummed about this but I'm addicted to Smartwool so I bought them anyway.  It wasn't until I got home that I realized these socks had specifically been intended to go with my New Balance running shoes.

In fact they are so closely coordinated that, when both are donned, it's difficult to see what's shoe and what's sock.

Who needs nanobots when we have the "Design Borg" like this?!  It's a bit unnerving at times.  They do it to encourage the consumer to BUY, BUY, BUY.  Like there's a subliminal message in there:  "Look, it's an exact match!  We made it just for you!  We KNEW exactly what you needed even before YOU did!  Trust us!  This purchase was MEANT to BE!" 

Resistance is futile.
:-)