A Gardening Sob Story

My Three Rivers Yard

When we lived in South Texas, I had a great garden all around my house. The front yard was filled with all sorts of herbs, flowering plants, and native plants. We had more flowering plants on the sides of our house, and in the back yard I had a big vegetable garden. The only gardening problem I had in South Texas was the fact that bugs would eat up much of my summer vegetables. That was fine. I just did most of my vegetable gardening for the other nine months of the year!

Then we moved to the ranch here in San Saba County eight years ago and I have not been able to get my gardening mojo back. The drought we have been in for the past few years has not helped a bit. I have planted lots and lots of seeds, plants, shrubs, cacti, and trees over the past eight years and only a fraction of them have survived.

On the vegetable front, I have tried raised beds in several configurations. Sometimes the plants will come on strong in the beginning, then suddenly dry up and die. Sometimes a swarm of one kind of insect or another will come along and make a meal of my plants. Sometimes cows get ahold of whatever I have planted. I have had some luck with flowering plants, but nothing lasts for long. Sometimes the summer heat and drought will burn up everything, and other times we will get a ridiculously cold winter that will kill what was supposed to have been cold-hardy.

We have done some remodeling around our house over the years and have had fill dirt brought in twice. Apparently the fill we got is mostly clay. I have discovered that clay soil and drought-tolerant plants do not mix well. The rosemary I planted in the clay is doing fine, and finally one antique rose is going to pull through—oh, and the plants labeled “Spanish Broom” are doing very, very well in my clay-filled spots.

Finally my husband grew tired of looking at one of the crusted-over clay spots and decided he would turn it into a sort of desert garden. We spent most of the weekend putting down weed blocker and spreading large river stone gravel over the area. The plan is to dig large holes in the clay until we reach the sandy soil below, then fill it with a good soil mix for our plants. So far we have put in more prostrate rosemary, some blackfoot daisies, santolina, and a four-nerve daisy. I have an assortment of agaves with pups to contribute to the project, a huge cholla we are trying to figure out how to transplant, and we are on the search for a desert willow.

A Good Year at the
Ranch (Pre-drought)

Meanwhile, closer to the house, after having no luck with trying to grow pretty flowers in the various pots (drought, heat, turkeys pulling things up by the roots, chickens eating everything) I am trying the Southern California way. As much as I did not enjoy the big picture of Los Angeles, I loved the landscaping and container gardening I saw there. I especially loved the containers planted in various shapes and colors of succulents. Recently, I found an assortment of succulents at Home Depot so I brought them home, planted them all, and stood back to see what the chickens would do. I can see that they have sampled some of them but they apparently find them to be unpalatable (YAY!).

If anyone knows of any kind of gardening demon exorcism I can do or has a suggestion on how to (safely) transplant that monster cholla, please let me know. Meanwhile, if you have beautiful roses or vegetables, you will likely see me lurking about, admiring your gardening mojo! I will put this on my blog (springcreekartsguild.blogspot.com) along with some photos of past glory and present failure for your entertainment!

Sunday Afternoon

Just below this is the newspaper column for this week's San Saba News and Star. As soon as I emailed the column off to the newspaper and posted it here, I went looking for the really-cool-because-it's-so-obviously-vintage Red Heart Yarn granny square afghan that we inherited a year and a half ago. I wanted to post a pic of it along with the column. But alas, I stood at the edge of the massive pile of…stuff…on my husband's side of the office and was too fearful to dive in. I think I'll go get a cup of coffee and muster my courage.

Meanwhile, I am determined to master free-motion quilting on my home machine. So much so that I have signed up for THREE Craftsy classes on the topic. And I took two classes on it at IQF Houston this past fall. Since I can't find the afghan, I'll post pics of my Houston class projects. One has been made into a wall-hanging and one into a cover for my Bible. Meanwhile, has anyone else taken Craftsy classes? I hope they work because my local quilt group is expecting me to teach them how to free motion quilt in two months!

From my class with Lois T. Smith

From my class with David Taylor

Those Who Show Up

Those Who Show Up

Last week I spent several hours sitting in a legislative committee room listing to public testimony regarding several proposed bills (AKA potential future laws). This may sound about as exciting as watching paint dry, but you would be surprised. I was at a meeting of the House Committee for Culture, Recreation, and Tourism who have several wildlife-related bills to consider. As sobering as my experience was on this one day with this one committee, it is downright frightening to realize this same thing is going on all around the capitol in regard to nearly every aspect of the daily lives of Texans.

You have probably heard some variation on the quote, ”the rules are made by those who show up.” Those who show up are the people who, for whatever reason, decide to prevail upon a legislator to carry a bill of proposed legislation through the channels. The reasons people have to do this may be for the greater good, or for their own personal good or gain, or simply to tweak the nose of someone else. Most of what I saw on Wednesday fell into the last two reasons. Another set of people who show up are the folks that show up to give their input during these public comment opportunities. There is no swearing-in for these testimonies so people are not legally bound to tell the truth or to refrain from speaking on an emotional versus a factual basis. Another group of people who show up are paid lobbyists who show up to give whatever information or misinformation is needed to get their client’s opinions and values applied in the legislators’ votes.

If you have been really paying attention so far, you may have noticed that the lawmaking process I observed has very little to do with what is practical, realistic, truthful, or oriented toward the majority of the people but has everything to do with what is emotional, idealistic, or oriented to individual and small-group interests.

Most of you know that I am a knitter. So what if I decided that I like only natural-fiber yarns? I like them so much that I hate synthetic yarns, like that Red Heart yarn that EVERYONE has at least one

A vintage 1970-ish Red Heart Afghan

afghan made from. So I draft a bill making the sale of synthetic-fiber yarns illegal in Texas. And then I find a legislator who is willing to present my bill to the appropriate committee. Next, I round up a bunch of my acquaintances to go testify before the legislative committees that synthetic yarns are so disturbing and dangerous to quality of life in Texas that they should be banned. And besides, banning synthetics would help support the growing alpaca-farming industry in Texas. If no one shows up to say we are a bunch of crazy people, that the choice between synthetic and natural fiber yarns should be strictly individual, that all those Red Heart Yarn afghans are keeping millions of Texans warm, and besides, it would drive over half of knitters and crocheters out of the craft to ban synthetics because only the wealthiest can afford to use all natural fibers—then guess what? The bill passes committee, gets voted into law by the legislature, and you now have to go to a neighboring state to buy Red Heart yarn! You go to Alco one day and there is no Red Heart yarn! How did this happen?

I know how—the rule was made by the people who showed up! And where were the rest of us? Likely going about our business working, going to school, taking care of our families, and trusting that our elected officials know what is important to us. The truth is, they do not know if we fail to tell them. It would be nice if we could all go participate at the capitol, but if you don’t have the time to do that, at least look over the pending legislation and give your representatives and senators a call or an email to let them know where you stand. Go to this address: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us. From there you can find all the info you need on all the current bills and how to reach your representatives. I have moved my blog to http://springcreekartsguild.blogspot.com--I will post links there to help you SHOW UP AND MAKE THE RULES!

You know what they say about good intentions...

A couple of years ago, I decided to create an eponymous blog to support the column I write for my local newspaper, The San Saba News and Star. Although I had positive experience with Blogger, for some strange reason I decided to try a different blogging platform--BAD IDEA. It was so unwieldy that I ended up with very few posts before I gave up.

Since then, I have had a lot of people outside the local area become interested in the column so I wanted to have a place they could easily access it. And there is still the original reason I wanted to have the blog--to post the pictures that the newspaper can't print, and to give additional information, such as links to websites I mention in the column.

My intentions right this second are to post this week's column tomorrow, concurrent with newspaper day in San Saba. Then I intend to post several of the past columns with any associated pictures. After that, I intend to keep current on posting the bi-weekly columns, select a few more archived columns to post, AND to post other entries during the weeks between columns. We shall see. My intentions often do not come to fruition as planned. But…we are headed into the "slow" season of my family's business, which usually means I have fewer interruptions and crises.

In the meantime, I want to share a few pictures I have taken over the last couple of days:

These were the eggs I gathered from my henhouse yesterday. I love the colors of eggs and sometimes take photos so I can refer back to those colors. The light blue of that whopper egg in the middle is the color of my kitchen walls. The other reason  I took this photo was to show the relative size of that whopper egg. We have been getting those regularly in the past few weeks. My son thinks it's our hen Cinni who is responsible for those. Poor Cinni! She isn't just a whole lot bigger than this egg! We cracked it this morning and it was a double-yolker. I keep waiting to get an egg-in-an-egg like this guy.

I like to hang clothes on the clothesline for a few reasons: I'm a tightwad; I like the way they smell when they are line-dried; because I can (no deed restrictions on the ranch); it's environmentally-friendly; it's mostly easier on the clothes; and because it's what my farm/ranch ancestor women did. I also like being outside with all the sights and sounds of nature rather than standing in the house in front of the washer/dryer combo. I had been needing a new clothespin bag since my old one, made from an old pair of my son's jeans, needed to be retired. I was having a hard time convincing myself to buy one when I know how to sew. I found several ideas on the internet and was planning to do one from the Martha Stewart website, when I was cleaning out my bathroom cabinet and found this little tote bag that had come with some Biolage shampoo. I was about to throw it away when I realized it was the perfect size for my clothespin bag. I took the handles off, used a CD to draw the circle on the front, cut out the circle, folded the cutout part in half and sewed it in the bottom half of the opening, then zig-zagged and trimmed the opening with some rick rack I already had. After that, I sewn the top opening shut, leaving an opening for this pants hanger I had. My son squished the top of the hanger to close it up and make it fit the clothesline a bit better, et voila! A pretty, double-recycled clothespin bag that cost me exactly NOTHING!

Finally, I love this time of year! Even in the absence of wildflowers in this droughty year, the colors of the budding leaves are beautiful. Here is a photo of the blackjack oak in my back yard.