Black Gumbo

It was always said, since the 1960s, that over in Seabrook they had a colony of Monk Parakeets living at the end of Nasa Road 1. I had seen these little green fellows once or twice sitting on wires in the area. But recently, two days in a row, I saw a small flock of them flying speedily by while driving along I-45 between Edgebrook and Monroe. There must be a colony living nearby these days.

In Houston, the common birds are typical - Boat-tailed Grackles (loud, wonderful birds), Mourning Doves, Starlings, pigeons, and the ever-present House Sparrow. Because these birds either flock or live in high concentration in urban areas, we see loads of them. Other common sights in Houston are the Mockingbird, gulls, herons and assorted songbirds depending on the season. Parrots and parakeets are not the average fare. Since I'm sort of a bird nut, I thought I'd mention it.

Off to the ditch!

My daughter is doing a science project in which she will raise frogs. To raise frogs, we need frog eggs. This called for an expedition to the local ditch to see what we could find. Its about the right time of the spring that amphibians do their egg-laying, and our informal expedition set off on the short walk hoping to come home with either eggs or tadpoles.

Caleb dunking for tadpoles

Caleb was enlisted to help, and being first over the lip of the drainage ditch he spied a large snake. Just what we needed to see as we walk along the water's edge, huh? Being brave, Caleb did the scooping for Callie, but all we caught were minnows.

We returned home defeated, but discovered soon after that we would be receiving frog eggs from a friend who has African Clawed Frogs. As I write, we have the eggs in our possession, so the experiment is on!

A suspicious Yellow Crowned Night Heron kept his distance

I grew up for the first 9 years of my life on Sagegrove street, the actual house isn't in the photo (but its shrubs are). I had this photo my parents took when they moved in back around '65 or '66, and drove by the old place today for a snapshot. Pretty nostalgic, side by side.

I'm down and out. Not long ago, after coming to the realization that pet hedgehogs were no fun, my son turned over the care of his last hog, a sandy cute thing named Polly, to me. It was sort of sad, he spent his own money on a pair of hedgehogs a couple of years ago, only to find they require a lot of time to tame, much like a bird does. He even said "The only animals that really appreciate me are my dogs." The male, who was named Caesar Hedgehogustus, indeed had the disposition of a imperial despot. Like many Roman emperors, he died in his youth mysteriously, succumbing to an odd disease that made him go insane. That was last year. Polly, our fat female, took a liking to me since I spent time with her every evening feeding her. She liked belly rubs. Even last night I caught a couple of juicy June bugs for her, and she happily pounced on them and crunched away.

But today, Polly was given away. They didn't even ask me. I received a phone call from my wife, who was having a yard sale at the house, and I was informed the guy down the street with lots of parrots, dogs and fish has taken Polly. Its almost like she was sent out to the driveway to become one with our accumulated junk, old books, too-small 25 cent shirts, busted scooter and old TV set.

Poor Polly, I'll miss her. I was quite attached to her, but alas, the rest of my family did not like stinking hedgehogs at all. They rightly realized they are little more than rodents without buck teeth. Since they were technically my son's animals, and since I had agreed to try to sell Polly to a good and caring owner (but didn't do so whole-heartedly), I guess it worked out, huh? Still, though...

OK, so its not really that bad. We're happpy the little spiny critter will have company of another hog, a larger cage, and an animal lover to care for her. We're happy that the pine bedding is no longer going to get kicked out of the cage onto the floor, tracked all over the house, and clogging up the vacuum cleaner. No more smell, no more 'ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka' at night waking us up thinking someone is messing with the doorknob. Lesson learned - Hedgehogs should be left where God put 'em.

My wife and son have more wisdom about these things than I.

Man, I knew I was a pack rat, but never realized how bad it was until today. We headed into the garage, the store-all for everything we can't fit anywhere else. Our garage was the object of much shame, I tried with great difficulty to keep it closed off from view from the street for the last year or two. Today, it was as if the garage disgorged itself into the yard.

We threw out so much junk, old garage sale junk that never sold, and prepared for a yard sale next weekend, weather permitting. Located among the mess were pieces of furniture I never knew I had, a fishing reel I had thought was lost, and my old bowling ball. My back aches, my garage is now half-cleaned, and my mother-in-law can now stop asking me to post something on Black Gumbo for once because now I have! Heh...

In the three months (three months!?!) since I posted here last, there has been no gardening news (yet) and no fishing successes to speak of - the traditional fare for posting is just not as quickly paced as it used to be.

For a family update, our new little youngster will be born in a couple of months, Caleb and I are going to clear the giant brush pile off our garden (which is still laden with leeks and that's it) so we can get some tomatoes transplanted, and the exterior of our house was painted last month with much help from our church family. My daughter just collected some gigantic earthworms from the veggie garden, they were very enthusiastic worms I might add. She had a science experiment and the worms cooperated quite well before being returned a few days later. She's reading music now too, and playing her new piano. Cool, huh? We had an airbag deploy for no good reason (and Dodge doesn't care what so ever that it deployed on a pregnant woman), I scored some nice computer equipment at work, my son can ride a Ripstick, and we are still looking for a Hedgehog lover who needs a healthy used hedgehog. We had two miniature weenie dogs move in next door (they wear miniature clothes too) and with our weenies, it can get rather intense in the back yard when the four of them assert themselves. When the baby arrives, my wife has made it know that the dogs may have to meet Mr. Winchester if they wake the baby. Ditto with our loud, ear-splitting cockatiel. Notice has been given to neighborhood cats that Suki the bird might permanently move to the front porch if she wakes the baby. At least hedgehogs are quiet.

And finally, we've lost an old friend. The free lawn mower that Angie drug home and that had served us well for many a hot afternoon has been placed out by the curb again. The guy who picked it up and hauled it off will probably not be as fortunate as we were when we did the same thing.

Found a picture of my original garden, which used to be where the new garden is today. This was a pretty strict square foot garden that had a large yield of beans, tomatoes, turnips and cucumbers. It gave us a year supply of basil as well, and the corn, well, one meal was all that little stand of corn could possibly grow, but it was fun!

The new garden is still pumping out bell peppers, but any day now I expect a frost to kill it off. I've got some leeks that have decided to sprout, but I don't think they are going to make it. Everything else is shutting down for the winter, and I'm going to wait for spring to get going again.

It's forty five outside and the wind is howling, we just ate a nice Thanksgiving dinner and the sky is gray. It's not typical gardening weather for beautiful red bell peppers, but hey, ignorant gardeners like me don't know any better. I just too those two ripe reds off the plant yesterday for my dad, and have more ripening now.

Likewise, its not every day you find a snake in November, but I'll admit this little fellow wasn't out and about. He turned up in the compost pile as I turned it, as usual. There's a whole mess of these little snakes in our garden. He's a large one, as earth snakes go. Technically, this is a "rough earth snake", and they spend most of their time underground or in organic debris. They like the compost piles because of the abundant food supply and the heat generated by the decomposing matter. On a day like today, I can't say I blame him.

Well, we tried. No guts, no glory, don't they say? We arrived at the first of the incoming tide, the wind was whipping the sea into a frothy brown soup. Other's had the same idea, and the roads along Pelican Island had cars everywhere. Die-hard waders were out in the protected flats around Sea Wolf park, but I didn't see anyone catching anything. It was cold too, mostly wind chill, but it numbed hands quite fast.

We hit the rocks on the Selma-side of the point ("Selma" is the WWI concrete shipwreck right off Pelican Island) and then moved to the slab on the channel side. No room at all. We went on the pier and fished a bit, but no one was catching anything but a cold. We wrapped up early and headed back to the warm house. For you duck hunters, I saw some red heads flying.

Well, its been a few months since we felt that exciting tug of a fish on our line, so Caleb and I are going to brave the holiday crowds and the cold front and head down to Galveston to catch some flounder. Word is they are stacked like pancakes in the passes.

I'll post the pics (think positive, right?).

What wonderful weather! How great the evenings have been! This weekend my kids and I ventured to the Armand Bayou Nature Center to wander around a while. We visited the old farmhouse and talked about the way things were back in the day when electricity was for city folk and lights were filled with oil. We looked at the wood burning stove and the various household items that made such living not only bearable, but pleasurable. Man, how I would love to build a little house like that!

We were told that next weekend is their harvest festival where all sorts of activities and demonstrations will be on the ticket. We may go.

At our own humble abode, the garden is waning in the cooler temperatures. My late fall crop of green beans looks like it might produce a small bounty before the cold kills it off. My leeks didn't take off at all, and my bell peppers, still holding on from the spring, are still laden with big, juicy peppers just now beginning to ripen. We'll be planting some sort of cover crop soon, and not messing with a winter garden, and preparing for the spring with the intention of being on time this year.

Suki, our cockatiel, is troubled. She's a 'special' bird, having been rescued from an abusive situation several years ago, and apparently she's not all there. The light is on, but we wonder if anyone is home. Yes, she's nuts. As an example, occasionally she simply falls off her perch for no apparent reason, she worries a lot, and has some odd characteristic behaviors that would make a guest ask "what's wrong with that bird?"

We this week my son cried out to me "Dad! Suki's caught in a rope!". I ran down to see the commotion and sure enough, she had managed to get her head between the strands of a rope that was part of a bird toy we've had in her cage for years. She couldn't get out, it was firmly cinched up on her neck like a noose.

I had to get scissors to cut the rope, and she's fine now. But with her mental state (if you can even call it 'mental'), I wonder if she had just decided to end it all. Heh.

We've got a half dozen or so bell peppers ripening on our four little plants that I planted... LAST SPRING. It took them that long. I just let them be since they seemed to be trying to grow over the months. Finally, last month, they began to take off.

These are a gold variety heirloom, its been so long since I bought the seed that I don't even remember their name. I'd have to look it up.

With the price of bell peppers being so high, even a half dozen is welcomed.

The rest of the garden in doing fine. I planted some Contender bush beans to replace the Palapyes and they are growing well. I hope there will be time to get a harvest. I planted leek seeds not too long ago too and they are sprouting. Hundreds of Palapye seedlings have sprouted in my newest compost pile, I may just let them grow. My tomato cuttings are doing well and are vigorously growing but I don't imagine there will be time to get a harvest of these either. Still, better to have something growing than not.

Being a gun owner, and past gun blogger of a fairly large and well read gun blog, I occasionally get overwhelmed with the need to visit the issue again.

Recently I read of an acquaintance who was turned away from a job at Gander Mountain's firearms department due to his belief that the second amendment doesn't insure the hunting sports. Quite frankly, it doesn't, and the Gander Mountain guy was plain wrong. Let's look and 'exegete' the Second Amendment.

"A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Being practical and succinct in the meanings of their carefully chosen words, if the founders had meant guns to be only for sporting and hunting, they would have made sure the 2nd Amendment justified the means with the need.

As it is, the need for the right to keep and bear arms to remain irrevocable stems from the principle in mind that propelled this basic issue into our government's list of rights protection - that principle is Liberty, which is clearly stated in the clause "security of a free state". The militia term, which many detractors will use to justify their incorrect opinion that the military is the proper jurisdiction for gun ownership in defense of liberty, is irrelevant to the principle of the amendment. The fact that the second amendment justifies itself in the clause "security of a free state" rules out any other purpose for firearms as being a protected, irrevocable right.

What does this mean for those that claim the second amendment is a valid defense for hunting and sporting arms, or even self defense to a degree? It destroys this claim as groundless and indefensible. Though debate can and does rage over the term 'militia' and its application to a military force of citizens, a standing army, or the ready militia of citizens at large, the principle is solid and cannot be denied rationally.

While the militia clause, in its day, was largely understood to be a non-standing army of citizen soldiers, or minutemen; and the idea of a standing, professional army an aspect of totalitarianism, the plain meaning is clear even today - a "militia" is not, and never has been, properly applied to a professional force. Thus, a solid argument can be made that the citizen's right to keep and bear arms of an appropriate usefulness to a militia force, if called upon, is valid. Further, the "well trained" modifier clearly states that the citizen must have command of his weapon at all times and experience in fielding his weapon in concert with others, in an orderly and methodical fashion - 'well trained'.

If we take the second amendment's purpose and principles in the context of the authors' period, including events, political environment, and motivations, we can clearly deduce from period writings that the second amendment was an insurance statement against tyranny and oppression. It was never, as context clearly shows, insurance against hunger or boredom as the hunting and sporting heresies promote.

Considering the careful treatment of the English language and the context of the writing of the Constitution, we would expect something else to be clearly stated if the heretical opposition were, in fact, correct. We might expect something like:

A well stocked smokehouse being necessary to the sustenance of a citizen, the right of the people to trap and hunt game shall not be infringed.

Yet we see no evidence that hunting, sustenance, individual sport, family providence or environmental exploitation were even remotely considered as worthy of a defense clause in the nations highest code.

As basic and necessary as hunting is, and as pleasing and enjoyable as sporting firearms are, no grounds for their existence as a protected right exist in the second amendment at all. The second amendment is about national liberty from oppression and tyranny by means of individual firearms ownership, practice and preparedness.

The guy at Gander Mountain is what we shooters call a "Fudd". Ask Jim Zumbo about that.

As usual, the garden is out of synch with any real gardener's schedule, or even the extension service suggestions for planting times. But even so, I planted some beans, Contenders, in one of the cleared beds and some leeks in part of the other. According to what I have read, the leeks should be fine, if they sprout. No sooner had I sown the little seeds, a harrowing downpour blew in, and rain pounded the bed through the following day. I'd be surprised if my leek seeds were not all washed into puddles or piled up along the edge of the garden retainer. Since they are small and black, I can't find any of them to tell me if my fears are valid, but if they all sprout in clumps, I suppose I'll have my answer.

Ive got several bell peppers ripening up right now on the plants that were not supposed to make it past summer. These little sad seedlings were started way back in February from seed, and they just didn't take off in our rainy, then hot and dry spring. They held on through the summer, slowly growing ever so stronger, and have finally taken off. I was tempted all through the summer to pull them up, but something kept me from doing so. I'm happy I didn't.

Gardening. Even when you do it wrong, it is fun!

Few flowers are more beautiful than the simple Morning Glory. I love the vibrant, bold, solid ones best, their rich colors seem extremely pure and powerful. This year I planted several varieties around the garden to color things up a bit, and they have taken to our garden fence. While the vines aren't particularly lush and full of vigor, they flower with much enthusiasm. I snapped some photos this morning before the sun wilts them, and noted that tomorrow's bloom will be quite spectacular as well.

In front of our house, we've had some wild morning glories growing among our hibiscus for years. I don't pull them up each fall or clear out the vines when they emerge each spring because I like them, I think they are attractive. Though you see these pinkish purple blooms growing as weeds all over the place, they are pleasing and strong annuals that keep my work in the front bed down to a minimum. I love them!

Here are some of the blooms from today.

"Flying Saucers", Heirloom	A close up
These small 2" blooms are the wild ones	My favorite "Clark's Heavenly Beauty", 4" across

The two heiloom varieties, "Flying Saucers" and "Clark's Heavenly Beauty", are available at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. You can find the other one in any local overgrown field in the south.

Is no fun. These cowpeas, yummy as they are and as vigorous as they grew, were SO vigorous that they grew high off our trellis into our neighbors thorn tree. Now I don't know exactly what kind of tree this thing is that lurks on the other side of the garden fence, but it has needle-like thorns that rip flesh. Pulling down the vines of the cowpea jungle brought a whipping of thorny branches upon this hapless gardener, and I confess, I did not have neighborly thoughts about my neighbor about then.

So the palapyes are gone, reduced to compost-fuel, and the bed is ready for a late fall planting. Not sure what we'll put in there yet, maybe some lettuce. We've missed the prime planting time for most of the fall crops I really wanted, but that's sort of the story of this year's gardening mishaps.

So we'll try late planting and hope for the best. Living on the edge, huh?

When I was a kid, we never saw Geckos, just the standard lizards, green anoles. But since the mid 1990s, we've got geckos. Loads of them. These cute little fellows are Mediterranean Geckos, a transplanted species from, well, the Mediterranean area. According to the really slick site linked, they originate from the Mediterranean and Red Seas, East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and east to Pakistan (Check out the nifty viewer to inspect the little guy they have pictured)

Tonight we let one accidentally, they hang out by the front door and chirp all night long while snatching bugs attracted by the porch light. When we opened the door, he scurried the wrong way. Now he's hiding out under the crock pot shelf, much to my daughter's dismay.

The wild crawly things around our home are quite varied, and as sort of a closet nature freak, I love to see them. Our toads and frogs are often obnoxiously loud, but during this summer heat they seem to be less enthusiastic. Recently we've rounded up a blotched water snake from the back yard, seen a dead Broad-banded Water Snake out front, and messed with a couple dozen rough earth snakes in the garden. And what yard is complete without a ribbon snake? They are exceptional creatures, very handsome and for anyone who grew up around here, nostalgic.

I find even the most common backyard critters wonderful. For a good resource on local Houston reptiles, check out the Visual Key to the Snakes of Harris County, TX. Its a directory offered by a local commercial business, but has some of the best pictures for identification.
For a species list of all reptiles and amphibians in Harris County, A&M U has it here. Our local Audubon chapter has a good resource for snakes as well.

The garden is doing good, all things considered. My son and I have not been tending it much since the heat of summer is stunting everything. All but the cowpeas. They have grown like wildfire and there is currently a crop awaiting harvesting. The Roma's in the compost pile have been producing like mad and I sometimes wish I had more reason to eat tomatoes. I pulled up the various heirloom tomatoes in one of my beds that have not produced due to the late planting and heat. Taking cuttings from them, I've successfully started six new plants for a fall crop. Our bell peppers, which were started from seed, have managed to get over the bad soil of the spring and one of them has fallen over under the weight of a big pepper it produced near its apex. Since the took off late, the plants are not mature enough to support the weight of a crop, so I'll have to stake them.

I'm going to be pulling up the majority of the garden for fall crop planting time is just about over for the stuff I want to grow, so hopefully this weekend will not be too late. The tomatoes at least are off to a good and timely start.

Surprisingly, weeds have not yet been a big problem despite just a thing mulch layer of dried grass clippings. I keep on top of them at least weekly if not just by pulling them as I see them when wandering aimlessly about the raised beds swatting mosquitoes. I have really enjoyed the garden this year, but its time to pump some more anticipation into it with new crops.

Man, who blogs about beans!? I'm officially a nerd, square, geek, whatever your generation calls it, because I am actually about to blog about the lowly cowpea.

Gray-Speckled Palapyes has been taking over the garden. The Palapye is a cowpea, like the black eyed pea or the purple hulled pea. My wife loves both Black eyes and especially purple hulls, so I thought I would try a different cowpea. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds sold me this rare variety from Botswana, Africa and they have done amazingly well.

The plants took off strongly and when the heat set in around July they really went wild. They have taken down two tomato plants that were in vine-reach (though the tomatoes don't seem to mind) and have completely choked out my yellow beans and climbed all over their trellis. They began setting pods pretty early, and have been consistently producing since July.

My son and I harvested all the pods today, both those I left on to dry and yellow a bit and the green ones. We wanted to try the beans out both ways. When shelled, the drier pods yield nice little brown speckled peas with a tiny eye, while the green ones yield a green to grey plump bean. Ideally, harvesting only those that have just begun to turn from green to yellow would have been best, but I don't have enough of the plants to pick and choose.

Both batches are simmering in a little water, with maybe a teaspoon of bacon grease to give them that southern touch. The brown ones plump up real nice and thicken the water slightly like a gravy (they are supposed to do that if you like southern food). The green and grey ones are looking as good too.

I had thought that we had missed the prime picking time while we were on vacation, but the drier, brown peas seem to be doing just fine. The only thing that seems to be different is cooking time, and of course the drier beans will have a little less flavor.

Taste testing
The beans turned out exceptionally good! The greener beans taken from the green and light yellow pods indeed retained a little more flavor, but the brown ones are good too. They taste like purple hulled peas, but I think these are better, probably because I grew them myself!

My son has begun a new photo blog. He's sort of taken the idea from my 1000 Words blog. These blogs are of course generally aimed at our fellow family members and close friends, but hey, if you really like looking at other family's photos, who am I to stop you? Whatever floats your boat.

Its pretty funny if you ask me, because what I find to be a good snapshot or photo for 1000 Words is completely different from that of a young man.

Check it out at Picture This.

Exceptional summer flavor!

I finally coaxed some heirlooms to full ripeness. The huge yellow beauty is a Golden Queen Heirloom, and it was exceptional! It was so irresistible I ate it like an apple. There is one other on the plant, but its not looking like it will be setting any more fruit due to the intense 100 degree weather lately. I wasn't expecting much from my heirlooms so this is a treat!

The little dudes are some sort of mystery cherry tomato, they are darker than most but don't qualify for being any other color than red. They are prolific and don't seem to mind the heat. Loads of little tomatoes are ripening, and so far the birds haven't discovered them.

The bright one is one of a dozen of so Romas that have been doing well in my compost pile, excellent and tasty, this tomato is simply the best!

So there we have it. Its time to start planning for fall tomatoes and I'll be starting new plants. These guys can play out in the heat and I'm pleased I got any fruit at all with the lousy start, so I'll chalk it up to a learning season with some rewards despite it all.

Our family just returned from a family gathering at a lake house on Texas' famous Lake Travis. We went to celebrate my wife's dad's retirement from NASA, where he worked for 41 years! That's an amazing run, and "Pa", as my kids call him, deserves all the respect he gets as an accomplished participant in the Nation's space program since, well, before we put people on the moon! While I still don't grasp the scope of his work, what little I do understand about it is quite amazing. Congratulation, Pa!

While we were celebrating on Lake Travis with our family, everyone just relaxed most of the time. We had a chance to do some boating yesterday, and everyone but me went out on the tube or skis (I've got a "recent surgery excuse" to keep me from making a fool of myself out there). Caleb and Angie loved it, even Callie went out on the tube for a while.

We were also blessed with seeing Angie's aunt and uncle again, they flew down from Minneapolis and we enjoyed their company greatly. Angie's uncle is a pilot, and he and I always gab about aircraft and the latest technologies. Its pretty cool having a fellow with a airplane in the family!

Our weenie dogs traveled along with us and managed to discover a wasp nest underground, both of the poor little dogs were stung, and so was Angie's brother before we located the nest. Cousin Emma, the German Shepherd, managed to escape the stinging bugs. Emma learned to swim - no matter what they say, dogs swimming is always kind of funny.

Fishing Report
Caleb and I got to do a little fishing for a change, along with Callie and Uncle Dave. We caught a few bluegills and I caught five Blue Catfish, eatin' size, but we let them all go. We haven't been fishing in a while, and especially freshwater. I didn't quite know how to fish the water because of it's depth. Thanks to Caleb's new fish-finder gadget he got for his birthday from his Aunt and Uncle, Caleb gauged the depth at 20 feet off the dock. I dropped my $36 Surefire flashlight in the water and all we could see was a faint glow. It was deep, but catfish responded to some really vile stinkbait fished under a bobber at 6 to 8 feet. Slow, lazy man fishin', but that was what the weekend was about.

Thanks to "Mimi and Pa" for inviting us on such a great weekend!

Caleb swings out on the tube as Uncle Dave pilots the boat

Do they work? Are they a scam? I don't know. I have purchased what was hailed on a gardening forum by many as a great little pheromone-baited mosquito trap for cheap, not one of the multi-hundred dollar systems that, after research, do pretty much the same thing but with less upkeep. I'll try it out.

This little device is little more than a jar with a easy-in and difficult-out opening. The pheromones are egg-laying marker pheromones which tell the little bloodsuckers "this is a great spot to procreate". They are supposed to go in, but can't find their way out. Eventually they drown.

I'm skeptical.

The mosquitoes in my garden and back yard are typical of our region - doggedly bold little devils of several varieties. There are the little annoying, swarming kind that itch like crazy and descend upon a gardener like a Biblical plague, then there are the giant tiger mosquitoes that sneak up behind you and plunge their giant sucker into your back where you can't reach them. These big, scary looking parasites strike fear into all, for when they are seen, all other activity stops and panic ensues as the warm-blooded frantically swat and slap.

We have all kinds in our garden, and with the torrential and unrelenting rains this year, there are plenty of hidden breeding grounds and lots of breeding going on. I'm sick of them.

Here's the trap, the gardener folks say they work and there is no need to drop a couple hundred or more for a fancy trap, but we shall see. I have a hunch that my $14.99 might have been better spent on a can of Off and some Raid.

Mmmmm, can't wait!

So last week I picked the first of my accidental Roma tomatoes that jumped up out of the compost pile because the sad little plant didn't care to die when I thought it should. This plant is amazing, it is putting on more and more fruit. The first juicy Roma ripened over last week despite the lack of sun and the birds didn't discover its red goodness peeking out from under the foliage. I picked it just to say I had gained a harvest from my tomatoes.

Monday before I left for a short trip, I decided to eat the thing, just to see, you know? Wow, it was the most excellent and tasty tomato I have ever eaten, hands down, no contest. I ate the thing like an apple after the first few slices, and now can't wait for the dozen others to fill out and turn red.

So the garden didn't go as planned this year, but still, that was the BEST tomato.

Not a scare from some Sci-Fi flick or the latest disease discovered in the darkest regions of the Amazon. This is local.

Every now and then we have a case or two of Vibrio vulnificus infection from the surf in Galveston. Unfortunately, this fellow has it bad. He's a friend of a co-worker who alerted our company to the danger a few weeks ago. As much as the authorities try to placate folks by saying it isn't a threat to healthy people who do not have a compromised immune system (or open wounds), I don't know that I want to head to the surf when its so hot. Higher water temperatures are said to encourage the growth and spread of this naturally occurring bacteria.

While its been out there all along, and we've been to the beach sevral times this year, stuff like that makes me leery of surf fishing, which we were going to do tomorrow if the weather permits.

Ignorance is bliss - I wish I hadn't read the news yesterday.

I like to just stand in the garden. Its almost a daily routine. I drive up from work and get out of the truck, enter into my house where my kids will greet me, my wife greets me, and the weenie sisters will yelp and bark in happiness at the back door. We usually sit down for dinner as a family about then, but before dinner I often find a few minutes to walk out back. Sliding the gate of the garden fence, I walk in and usually just stand there. After a wandering aimlessly around my tiny three raised beds, looking at this or that, I usually smile. Its simple, and gardens tend to do that.

There are critters on the tomato plants. These little clearish-green wormy devils enclose themselves on a leaf by wrapping the leaf over itself and spinning a thread of silk to hold it shut, thus making themselves a cozy little leaf-envelope. There aren't many of them yet, but hunting them down and squishing them is gratifying. They've munched holes in some of my tomato plants, as one would expected of little clearish-green wormy devils. If I had a bunch of heavily producing tomatoes that had been planted at the proper time, I'd be angry.

I've also been pleased with the home grown mulch. Dried yard clippings have been excellent at keeping the weeds down to a few. While I'd prefer to mix some brown mulch in with the grass clippings, I haven't. I've heard tell that grass can form too much of a mat, keeping water from penetrating to the soil. So far, with all the rain and my thin mulch layer, we've had no problems. I will be using some shredded newspaper to supplement the grass clipping mulch in the future, just for a better mix as it breaks down to add compost to the soil. Earthworms love newspaper.

The garden, even with its initial startup glitches, has proven to be a very pleasant endeavor. It seems there are always surprises - a new bud here or there, fruit that appeared overnight, interesting visitors to the garden of the feathered or six legged kind, and just the pleasant sense of being close to God's earth. Tending the garden is almost therapeutic, and despite my mistakes and ignorance of how it really should be done, it is a pleasure!

Golden Cherries waiting to ripen

After a long time flowering, dropping flowers and then flowering again, our tomatoes are finally bearing fruit. At least some of them. The gold cherries have a few dozen green fruits, the almost appeared over night! Can't wait until they are ripe.

The radishes continue to produce but are about done. The middle garden plot is bare where the peppers didn't take off too well, I'll be putting in some okra there perhaps. I have some Star of David okra that I've been itching to try. Now is the time to plant okra, so says the extension office schedule.

Strong summer growth

The Grey Palapyes are going strong, taking over the trellis for the yellow beans and spilling like mad. They were sold as BUSH types, so much for that. They are flowering like mad and setting pods. Going to be some good eatin'!

Palapyes

Lovely lavender blossoms on the Palapyes

I bought some bird netting for the tomatoes, especially the compost pile accidental Romas which have 5 nice sized fruits about to ripen, and more coming in. Composted yard clippings, Hedgehog bedding, Parakeet and Cockatiel bedding seem to work wonders! You can't get closer to organic than that.

Lush Growth

After weeks of rainy weekends, we were finally able to cut the grass last Saturday. It was tough, all that rain had left our back yard looking like a jungle. Imagine my surprise when I took a load of grass clippings to my dormant compost pile (the one we don't look at much) and found a Roma tomato plant bearing fruit! I had tossed a few of the sad looking seedlings in there long ago, apparently one of them liked it enough to thrive.

Our Compost Pile Romas

Our garden seems to have adjusted to the soil problems we had, but the delayed growth stage seems to be over for the tomatoes - they are going to be filled with fruit if they can endure the coming heat. The palapies (cowpeas) are setting pods, lots of them, and the Italian yellow beans have some pods as well. My green beans are disappointing, they aren't handling the soil well, so I will have to wait until the next round for beans.

Cowpea Jungle

Though the pics make it look like we have a lush farm going, really the garden is not that impressive. But if the tomatoes make it to fruit before the summer heat, it will be a success!

Radishes for a salad

Some of our tomato plants seem to have recovered or adapted to the too-rich soil and are greening up real nice. I should be eating tomatoes by now. you know.

This post was originally made on my old gun blog on September of 2005, 24 hours after we returned to our home after a very trying experience. I thought I would revisit this post as a reminder of what we don't want to experience, ever, again. With wisdom gained, we're not delaying any evacuation plans when the next killer storm rolls around, but for the benefit of reminding friends and family of what surely can degrade into chaos, here's our story.

September 26, 2005

Hurricane Rita passed us by, thankfully, but I do not want to diminish the impact on those it did hit directly. One look at the devastation along the Louisiana and east Texas coast puts it all in perspective- those people are suffering serious calamity. Our family is grateful we were spared that ordeal, but our prayers go out to those in the hurricane's path.

Had this come to our neighborhood as it was predicted, I wouldn't be writing this right now, and I am thankful that we were virtually untouched by the storm itself, only some downed lines and fences, twisted signs and some occasional downed trees. The difference in damage between our area (about 35 miles from Galveston directly beneath Houston) and 10 miles up the road is amazing- virtually no damage up in Houston proper, but it is obvious a large storm passed through here. Had it landed at Galveston or 50 miles either way, it would have been a killer.

The storm itself was not the catastrophe for us in the Houston-Galveston area, it was the botched evacuation. My wife is still suffering from stress and fatigue 24 hours after we came back home. I learned a lot, but am grateful for what preparations we made before hand. It was a bungled deal, and I freely admit my own failure in providing prepared protection for my family. We made it through better than many, but not as well as I would have liked. Here is what we experienced and what we should have done better.

Lead up
Rita was not a "dud" as some foolishly claim. Those who decided voluntarily to "ride it out" in town are doing just fine today, nothing happened and their gamble paid off. Had the predicted path been accurate (and they never are), these very people would have been the ones on the news being pulled out of rubble by a UH-60 or standing on their roofs waving a shirt at the Fox News helo. Fools get by most of the time, but the one time their gamble fails, they always change their ways - if they live to do so. Having experienced a category 3 hurricane, gauged the distance our walls "breathed" in and out, seen a roof ripped off from overhead, and had widows (yes, even boarded windows) blow in on top of family members, I can attest to the unrelenting terror of a hurricane's 10 hours of constant fury, like being under a freight train- noise, vibration, motion, sound, and no escape. Even an eye of a storm is frightening. I've walked in the eye of a hurricane, even the eerie calm is terrifying. Those who have never had this experience can not comprehend it.

I will never experience this voluntarily again.

So we planned to leave. Leading up to the storm, the path was prjected to hit somewhere near us. As a category 5 storm, and the 3rd strongest in history, no sane person would dare ride it out. Even our neighbors, who normally board up, were not bothering. No boards could do any good against a category 5. It was simply a mental resignation that all would be lost and we would survive with our lives. My lovely bride and I decided on Tuesday prior to the storm to evacuate. People were already filing out of town. Mandatory evacuations had been called all up and down the coast, and Galveston residents were already jamming up parts of I-45 north near our home. We began to pack our vital things- irreplaceable photos and papers, important documents and smaler valuables that could be sold later to help start a new life. We packed as much clothes as we thought would get us through while we rebuilt and then loaded up. We took several of the guns, the ones that were of high value, and locked the rest away. While most were expecting a traffic jam and a couple of extra hours added to their commute, I sensed trouble. We packed food for a couple of days, and enough water to see us and our animals through a couple of days on the road. We fueled the vehicles early Tuesday and lines were already growing. I fueled the extra gas tanks as well and placed them in the truck. While not expecting to need them, it turned out that I did need them, they were absolutely necessary, and I could have used 3 or 4 times more. Fuel became like gold during the chaos, I'll touch on that later.

We planned to leave on Wednesday, and we should have, but we were both just physically exhausted from spending the entire day securing the house and packing. We moved potential projectiles from the premises, secured some of the larger windows (in case the storm just glanced us), loaded the vehicles, and worked and worked. We had to have some sleep, it was simply not an option to leave at that point. Waking at 3:30am Thursday, we watched the news, it was bleak. We mentally prepared to leave our home for good, expecting it to be washed and blown to smithereens. Preparing mentally is an unexpected drain, as much as preparedness folks harp on unforseen effects of mental stress, it wasn't planned for. We were emotional of course, and handled it pretty well, but it did hamper some decisions and caused us to forget some minor details in the preparations. As we locked our door, we gathered as a family and gave thanks to God for these 12 years of comfort and bounty in our home, and we asked for wisdom and provision on our trip, endurance for the future and protection for our friends and family. We locked the door on our home and left, fully expecting it to be the last time.

Some might say that "there is always hope" that the storm will turn and spare us, but if you live where we do, you must resign yourself to the worst result, and expect it, and if there is mercy in a miss we can rejoice then. Staring at a category 5 monster heading directly at us is serious, no matter what miraculous or unforeseen twist of mercy may come.

Hell
We left at 4 a.m. Thursday morning, our plan was to make it to Dallas where we had family. We never arrived there. We surveyed the traffic reports and the freeway, all was clear in our area. In fact, it appeared that my hope had come to pass- that all the Galveston evacuees had already come through. So we made the most fateful mistake of all- we trusted the traffic reports and entered I-45. This was a huge mistake, and I beat myself up for days over it. We hit traffic just outside the south loop (610) in Houston and stayed in that traffic for 23 hours.

The freeways were channeled by the authorities, no exits allowed onto any other major roads, and like the over-used cliche "sheep to the slaughter", we joined the ranks of those I swore I would never be among. We were now at the mercy of God alone, we couldn't go back (to face a storm like that? No way) so we decided to tough it out. Immediately, I had visions of thousands of people running out of gas and overheating, clogging up the traffic even worse. And sure enough, this came to pass. As the day broke, we were still south of downtown Houston, just inside the Loop. Traffic was slow, we measured progress in feet rather than miles. People started having car trouble immediately, and as the sun came to 30 degrees above the horizon, the temperature began its typical morning climb to the 100s. We rationed our air conditioning to save fuel, which proved to be a good move. I kept mine off most of the trip, but my wife and kids were in the van behind me with two dogs and two birds and couldn't go without air conditioning after 10 a.m. or so. We plodded along.

As the day heated up, people began dropping out. Cars overheated, flat tires and steamy engines began jamming up an already bad situation. When an RV or big rig would croak, it stayed put, cars were manhandled of the road. Families began to get a panicked and frightened look in their eyes. Water became vital. We creeped to the University of Houston area and had our first major slowdown. By slow I mean people began to mill around on the freeway for 20 minutes at a time, only jumping back into their cars to move 10 feet forward. Men and women alike were relieving themselves on the roadside seeking any privacy around, bushes, dividers, stalled cars, whatever. Drug dealers from the surrounding projects came onto the freeway to seek buyers among the captive crowds. We made it into Downtown, and traffic moved just a bit better. Funneling down a 5 lane freeway to 2 lanes through the elevated portion of downtown was a major bottleneck. Any time an emergency vehicle came through the sound was unbearable. Having a siren wailing beside you for 20 minutes is no easy thing, but no one, not even emergency vehicles, could make any quick progress.

Movement was slow. We scoured maps for alternate routes but were told by the constant radio traffic monitoring that all routes were jammed, even side streets. As the heat of the day baked millions of people, the sight was apocalyptic. I make no exaggeration here, no one that was there could describe it any better. With 105 degree heat index wreaking havoc on people, and carbon monoxide poisoning from constant exhaust fumes making people delirious, judgment was impaired and tempers became short. We witnessed babies lying limp in desperate mothers' arms as they frantically fanned them. Sweaty adults and dry babies means critical dehydration- people stop sweating when they have precious little fluid left. We did see coroners trucks from time to time. Reports of babies dying came from the radio, then abruptly stopped. The traffic jams and the horrible plight of the masses were top news until roughly noon, then on all stations, it changed - it was a noticeable shift in news, from desperate people and a huge bungled catastrophe to simple traffic reports and occasional reports of government gasoline trucks coming to the rescue of those running dry up ahead. The obvious conclusion was that authorities were squelching the reporting to help keep panic down.

Ahead in Huntsville, where I never passed through, my good friend 'Rusty' was stationed with the National