Rain! Yes, actual wet stuff from the sky.
All yesterday I was pleading with the clouds, “open up, let it go… slow at first please or it’ll all be wasted as run off…”
& lo, for once the contrarian CenTex weather god took pity on gardeners.
We sure could use more tho…
*looks up hopefully*.
I saw a cotton tail on my way to get the mail yesterday & we smelled a skunk last night. Where they are finding food, I don’t know, but the bunny looked sleek enough.
Bunnies & skunks & coyotes , oh my… & I wonder how long this little bit of quasi country will stay country.
They are already talking about a Central Market for Pflugerville (for those of you readers who don’t have Central Market yet– they are a competitor with Whole Foods). It’s a sure sign of the sooner rather than later gentrification of Pflugerville (soon to be the Pfluger neighborhood of NE Austin, I bet).
I have mixed feelings about this.
It’s unavoidable– the toll road, the cost of gas, the booming population of the CenTex corridor & the fact that Pflugerville is closer to Austin than Round Rock is, all just mean development.
& hey, I can’t bark too loudly since I’ll be at Central Market myself in future picking up whatever I didn’t get from my Greenling order that week.
Also, I still believe the more dense walkable neighborhoods connected to city hubs by public transit we have, the less energy we’ll use & the more undeveloped land outside of urban areas we can keep somewhat un-messed up– which is good for birds, bees & watersheds & so is good for us.
Still there’s something I’ll miss about what’s been preserved ’til now of Pflugerville’s unique character that makes it not Austin & certainly not urban.
Oh & speaking of public transit & human friendly cities, here’s two links that made me smile today:
http://www.carectomy.com/index.php/Train/All-Aboard-the-Train-that-Never-Stops
http://www.carectomy.com/index.php/Urban-Planning/Portlands-Depaving-Day
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Garden Girl on June 30th, 2008 | File Under gardengirl | -
July 1st, 2008 at 4:19 am
so happy to see that you’ve already seen the portland depaving day video. i thought of you when i watched it yesterday!
and i’m so happy some of the crepe myrtles near your cottage are white!
altho i don’t think i have ever commented, i am a devoted reader here! i really appreciate your thoughts and many references to other worthwhile pieces to read and think about. i greatly enjoyed the post recently with the link to the blog post on “the letter”- describing victory gardening experiences in the past. it made me a tad depressed tho, longing for a kitchen full of friends of my own all sharing our homegrown goodies and canning them together, feeling so distanced from that yet. working on it though, definitely working on it!
pics soon of your summer time progress around the cottage????
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Hi Becky & thanks for reading & commenting. & yes, I love that letter (& the Red White & Grew blog in general), as it reminded me of *my* Grandmother’s big kitchen table & the family around it whom she fed from her garden & pantry!
Progress at the FTC is slow– I’ve started some sheet mulch for veggies this Fall & my fruit trees & blackberry bushes are doing fine, but we have a drought going that the little rain we got yesterday barely touched.
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July 1st, 2008 at 12:34 pm
CENTRAL MARKET IN PFLUGERVILLE!?!!?!?!?!?!?
Sorry…that freaks me out.
You know, I just may have to blog about this (will trackback if I do)…I’m just old enough to have shopped at both the original Whole Foods AND to have attended opening day at Central Market. So I’ve seen the whole trajectory of both and have, like you, some mixed feelings.
But Pflugerville? The tiny town that ate Gilbert Grape in the movies?
You know, I don’t ever want to be one of those “you have to keep things the same,” but good grief…
And the state of Texas doesn’t help matters, since counties can do pretty much whatever they want with regard to construction. But I digress.
Pflugerville? Geesh.
Yay, rain though!
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Nods– freaks me out a little too & I’ve only lived here a decade. & yes, we are doomed to have population growth, & so things will change (”How many Austinites does it take to change a light bulb? Ten– one to change the bulb & 9 to go on for hours about how the old lightbulb was so much cooler. Y’know, back when it was The Armadillo… ”
), but I hope we are not doomed to sprawl– sprawl is just a stupid waste of resources & our aquifers here are too precious.
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July 1st, 2008 at 1:01 pm
LOL! The more things change…
When I started at UT in the VERY late ’80s, after the oil crash and just as the growth was picking up, all the old hippies (bless ‘em) used to throw snark about the “old days.”
Have you read “This Land”? All about the sprawl…scary stuff. Seeing as I contribute to it personally, it’s even more discomfiting. A decent read though. HPB might have a copy..
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Hmm– I’ll have to put that on the “to read” list. Thanks for the tip. I think suburbia doesn’t have to be all bad– nice big yards for gardening for one
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