You don't have to "ignore the present shapeless mass" any longer. This past weekend, my husband and I got a wild hair because we were sick of looking at The Great Bamboo Blob. It might be too soon to begin the pleaching process (we are afraid we will discourage height if we trim out the bulk), but what the heck - we took a chance:
Yes, that IS the same view, just four months later! It's a bit scruffy, but it's still less than two years old right now. Additional refinements will come with time.
It's still growing more radially (as opposed to upright) than ultimately it needs to be trained to grow, but you can start to get a better idea of where this effort is headed. The point in this very narrow space between the houses is to create scale and privacy while not appearing oppressive when viewed from either my property or my neighbors' property.
Here's an example of an even narrower space where the bamboo has been trained to serve as an artistic focal point as well as providing visual privacy by extending the existing fence upward.
Obviously I have a larger space and a more substantial height requirement than what's shown in this wonderful example above, so I have a bigger pleaching job ahead of me. But it's looking promising so far.
As I mentioned in Part 1, I don't know how tall this malingensis will get, because I'm the only person I know of who is growing it in north Galveston County, in these soil and microclimate conditions. But one thing is clear - it hasn't topped out yet. The new culms are coming in around fifteen feet.
Stay tuned for future bamboo babblings. Who knows what the next four months might bring?!
... complete with a screengrab from this HGTV page just in case it evaporates. I can't blame people for asking - this sub-page was not easy to find.
No, I most certainly do not know how you might program your DVR to automatically record Episode HNT-7712H when it next airs. I don't even know how to program my own DVR.
:-)
I will tell you one thing, though: Being on HGTV is not all fun and games. When I went drilling for information on this episode, HGTV wasn't the first reference I found.
Well, dude, if you DO decide to ever live in League City, the first step in any successful coping strategy for dealing with "teaparty central" is to start reading this blog, eh?
Screengrabbed from a Google search.
Anyway, that's all I got right now. I'll check back from time to time to see if HGTV has posted the vid on their site, and if they do, I will snag it for you then. Unless, of course, teaparty central manages to inspire the Second Coming such that we're all summarily dispatched to our final destinations before I have a chance to embed it.
I've said it many times to my husband: "I watch so darned many home improvement shows that it's only a matter of time before I see someone I know featured on one of them. It WILL happen."
And so last night it came to pass in a proverbial 'all new episode' of House Hunters (is there any such thing as a 'half new episode'??). Except it wasn't the person that I knew, but the house.
Does anyone still have an e-mail address for the H family? If so, please forward them this postlink. They might get a kick out of seeing their old house featured on HGTV.
Screenshots courtesy of HGTV with my television on pause.
And in this case, it was not one house that I knew, but two.
As the camera panned into the back yard of this different Centerpointe sale contender (not the H's house), I was like, "WAIT FOR IT!!!" And right on cue, the potential buyer uttered those immortal words: "Ugh, this is not what I wanted. It's too small." Welcome to the world of microscopic back yards, dude!
But nevertheless, the wise buyer made the decision to invest here anyway:
YAY!!! HE PICKED HOUSE #1!!! :-)
But I suck, don't I?? I blurred out the danged house number on this screenshot. And don't a fair number of our 438 fine homes look very similar? Will you ever be able to figure out which one this is? Will the suspense kill you outright or will it merely torment you psychologically?!
:-)
HGTV keeps the identities of their guests confidential, so I decided to follow suit (I knew where this one was because I jog in Centerpointe, plus there were other clues). If you know who this relatively new neighbor is, don't spill the beans in the comment section below. I'll just remove any identifying info.
Anyway, a hearty welcome to the buyer from the blogger you'll meet in the near future. And there's a guy over here in Section 9 that I need to introduce you to as well, because he's the subdivision specialist in growing the kind of trees you are so eager to cultivate. He lives up the street from that other house you looked at.
:-)
Some of you Centerpointe folk are receiving little gifts with tags stuck in your doors that look like this:
That's happening because I'm in the process of excavating volunteers from my yard.
I'll be re-mulching my wretched-looking weedy beds soon, but before I do, I need to remove all of the valuable volunteers, like this these milkweed starts. Three years after we first began terraforming our back yard, a lot of stuff has become prolific, including these.
I dug up this batch and went door to door, sometimes talking with folks, but some were not home and others I knew were putting small children to bed, so I did not knock. I just left the plants on their front stoops with the tags wedged in their doors.
The caterpillars feed on milkweed species exclusively. We had a lot of fun last year watching them complete their life cycle. This guy is about one hour old.
Two days ago, NYT published this piece describing how Monarch habitat is almost gone. That was part of my inspiration for saving our current batch of volunteer plants.
Milkweed is fairly easy to grow - just place in fertile soil and water frequently. We keep ours in two large flower pots.
Once they get large, you have to prune them back or they'll look scruffy. But they flower without encouragement. I took this pic of the parent plant this evening. It's been outside all winter - they also stand up well to cold weather. If frost kills them, they often come back from the roots.
Anyway, if you happen to receive one of these from me and don't have room for it, feel free to pass it to one of your neighbors.
They don't take long to grow to a good size.
I'm going to be distributing tomato starts in much the same way pretty soon. Because I compost my own garden wastes, I end up with volunteer tomatoes everywhere in my yard. Based on my past experience with them, they seem to be pretty productive in the second generation, so they're worth planting. Or at least they have been, so far.
A roving band of children cornered and seriously entertained a loose dog yesterday in the League City, Texas suburban neighborhood of Centerpointe.
It is suspected that the children were between six and nine years old.
Neither the dog nor the children were subject to any obvious control or supervision by hovering adults at the time of the incident.
The dog was rendered blissfully passive as she was alternately rubbed, scratched, and petted.
Witnesses report that the children and the dog also spent close to an hour engaging in games of chase and fetch within the public right of way, also without direct adult intervention, and without the dog being leashed. The children had no prior knowledge of the dog's training or temperament, but successfully negotiated the play interaction with the animal despite this limitation, as evidenced by their constant screams of delight. The witnesses refused to identify themselves for fear of social, legal, or regulatory reprisal.
It is believed that no similar incidence of spontaneous, unchoreographed play has occurred anywhere in League City since approximately 1984, prior to the time when stranger danger paranoia swept American society.
What prompted yesterday's bold demonstration of trust and affection is not known. However, greater Houston's primary English language commercial news network, local ABC affiliate KTRK-TV, recently distinguished itself by documenting the "free range" parenting movement and showcasing with actual statistics the degree to which "stranger danger" fears are unfounded, and follow-up reporting by independent sources emphasized these facts. It is possible that some local parenting attitudes are quietly evolving in the face of this compelling information.
Neither the children nor the dog were harmed during the event, although the dog's owners now wonder if her future expectations for affection will become a bit over-inflated.
I wanted to provide some additional ideas on walking routes around here, but in order to do that, I first have to verify which parcels are owned by whom, to ensure that I'm not accidentally describing something that would have the potential to be a trespassing scenario. And that verification can't be done with an apparently-crashed CAD server. Again.
Anyway, what I'll offer instead today are a few cool pics of our neighboring subdivision, Oaks of Clear Creek.
It's that subdivision due east of Centerpointe, on the other side of the retention ponds and the easement.
Screengrabbed from Googlemaps.
This development is almost 20 years old, and land in League City was a heck of a lot cheaper back then. What this means is that this subdivision ended up with a larger ratio of common area to single-family lots compared to what Centerpointe has.
This subdivision can be accessed on foot via the Interurban easement which is just on the other side of our stormwater retention ponds.
There's a foot gate in the wrought-iron fence that surrounds the subdivision's common areas. It's got collision posts to prevent any type of small motor vehicle (such as ATV) from passing through from the Interurban easement.
In a previous post, I questioned the strict legality of walking in the Interurban easement (I don't know the answer to that), while at the same time noting that it's not posted and many local people walk there on a daily basis. Furthermore, at least half of the easement-flanking properties in Oaks of Clear Creek were constructed with back fence gates allowing property egress directly into the easement, as was this community park. There is substantial evidence suggesting that this was conceived as an area where the public would, in fact, walk.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's common areas? Well, I do. The pool and park areas are HUGE by present-day subdivision standards. It's so cool to see open areas like this. Kids can throw balls here and whatnot - there's enough space for that. Unfortunately, we don't have this kind of resource in Centerpointe.
They didn't call it the OAKS of Clear Creek for nothing. I don't know who the developer was, but the number of shady oak trees in the park is just fantastic. The subdivision is also unique in that some of its single family homes have water oaks in their front yards, instead of the usual live oaks (and there's a street in the subdivision named Water Oak). Water oaks are native and grow quickly into absolutely massive, upright trees - they can reach 100 feet in height.
I did notice that one of the park's playscapes seemed to have met with some kind of recent misfortune. Vandalism? Arson? I don't know. I didn't hear anything about this in the local news, but then again, I don't hear about a lot of local things that happen, in part because League City doesn't have its own newspaper yet.
Back in April of this year, I described a public outreach initiative pertaining to a new pipeline installation that was scheduled. Initially it was suspected that the pipeline would be in "our" Centerpointe easement, but in fact, it's probably due to be installed in the Centerpoint easement, which we think is the Interurban easement.
I haven't seen any physical activity to date regarding that, but unless plans have changed, there's a good chance that there will be some construction-related disruptions in this area in the future.
Until such time, if watching sunsets is your thing, there's hardly a better wide-open location than this. This is the view last night, looking west across the fields toward Centerpointe. You can see our iconic pine tree just left of photo center.
The title of this blog post is reminiscent of my all-time favorite T-shirt, which reads "Say No to Negative Thinking". I reckon it took me a good 45 minutes to stop laughing after I first saw that one.
This post's subtitle should perhaps be "Dancing Cows and Missing Cats".Because firstly, if you did not see the dancing cow last night at National Night Out (NNO), well, what can I say? You should have, because if you missed out on this unprecedented cultural enrichment, there's really no excuse.
Unfortunately, he seriously put the kybosh on his own moves when he noticed I was filming. I don't know why - was he afraid he'd end up on Facebook or something?? Or perhaps on some really dorky subdivision blog??
Now secondly, on the issue of missing cats, let me start by saying that what I really don't like about NNO is that it only happens once per year. And it only happens for two hours. Each year like clockwork (or Groundhog Day if you prefer), what occurs is that I show up, take a few minutes to cram some really good BBQ into my chops, and then manage to have time for only 1% of the conversations that I would like to have with residents. And then a year later, the same thing happens all over again. If I manage to make the next one hundred annual NNO's in Centerpointe, which has a zero percent probability of happening, I might get to actually talk to everyone.
But included amongst those few with whom I did manage to have interesting chats last night were a small group of the very first buyers in Centerpointe Section 1. They had some interesting things to say about this area as it was Way Back Then, a whole entire decade ago, which is an unfathomable time frame for many of us (see, I was one of the first buyers in Section 9, the very last section - I'm the late chick to the party, here). And what happened in those proverbial Early Years still resonates today in some of the effects that we can still see here.
Case in point: the coyotes. Reportedly, when Centerpointe first commenced construction, this area was crawling with coyotes. The Section 1 residents reported that they'd listen to them singing at night as they roamed across territory that included the as-yet-undeveloped Centerpointe Sections 2 through 9.
So the coyotes moved out when the houses moved in. But not entirely - they're still here, just not according to their original distribution. I have seen them sneaking into Section 9 even after construction was finished. And, of course, during the 2-ish years it took for this batch of 75 houses to go up, I would constantly see coyote tracks everywhere in the freshly-plowed dirt.
Coyotes' lingering proximity to Section 9 may be part of the reason why in this thread,"Walnut Pointer" noted what (s)he described as an undesirable situation with feral cats on Walnut Pointe (which is in an older section) and yet I haven't seen a single one of them in Section 9.
We have one well-cared-for family-pet Tinkerbell-style feline who often runs at large here (we do cherish him) and that's all. And I've wondered why that is, because usually there are feral cats to be found just about everywhere in urban and suburban areas. I've wondered if perhaps the coyotes have been taking them out in those neighborhood fringe areas that they can still access, the areas that are still adjacent to the undeveloped lands that still support coyotes.
It could be the case. Coyotes do eat rodents, but a feral cat would make a much more desirable meal. Better bang for the canine buck. We are cleaned out over here in Section 9. This might be the reason.
So there's all that. In future posts I'll talk more about the potential to have additional NNO-type events, because some residents do want that. I don't mean large-scale commercialized events such as what occurred last night...
Gone but not forgotten.
...I mean smaller-scale casual events. Whatever happened to the Friday evening spontaneous gab-fest at the end of the cul-de-sac that naturally progresses into an unplanned mini-potluck? One of our Section 9 cul-de-sacs is pretty good at doing that kind of thing already, and another of our cul-de-sacs is making plans to start. If stuff like that happened, I might actually get to talk to everybody before I die. So I'll have more on that idea later.
About two months ago, I was messing with some landscaping in our front yard when I noticed that a pretty young lady, apparently out for a walk, had paused a short distance away. She was obviously very reserved, but an irrepressible curiosity peeked through her demeanor even as she pulled her scarf more tightly around her head.
So I joined her in the street, and we began to talk. On a couple of occasions following that day, I visited her and her husband at their house here in Centerpointe. They belong to a particular Asian Muslim culture of which I had no prior knowledge.
What struck me about our lively chats is the degree to which they naturally gravitated toward discussions of the principles that we hold in common: A belief in the importance of education. Hard work. Bootstrapping. Devotion to children. The American Dream. A moral commitment to honesty. Rejection of a debt lifestyle.
In stark contrast to that experience, very often when I get together with American friends, the chats gravitate toward discussions of beliefs that we DON'T hold in common. Why is that?? Could it have something to do with the constant fractious screaming of politicians and news media? Everything we hear about is presented as a "war on", a "fight for", or a "crisis of". We are in a cultural phase right now where many Americans cherrypick their own custom-made but incredibly-narrow mindsets and then form de facto alliances with whatever gas-bag talk-show hosts promote those same precise subscriptions. And then of course the result is nothing more than an ideological stalemate as each side digs in its heels and leers (and jeers) at the other.
Meanwhile during this witless, divisive process, people seem to forget about everything that originally made America great: Hard work. Bootstrapping. Devotion to children. The American Dream. A moral commitment to honesty. Rejection of a debt lifestyle.
***
Vignette in a similar vein: about two weeks ago, I visited a Muslim client of mine whose fierce intelligence is outstripped only by his startling frankness. He left the office to attend a business luncheon while I stayed behind with his staff to work on the regulatory filings that he hires me to assist with each year.
Upon his return, he seemed mildly agitated. "That guy," he began, and I could tell by his body language that he was referring to a white American with whom he'd had lunch. "That guy asked me what is the deal with the Taliban."
"And what did you tell him?" I asked.
"I told him the same thing I tell everyone who wants to know. I told him that the Taliban is our equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan."
***
Get to know your neighbors and associates on an appropriate personal level - all of them, including the ones who may appear less approachable.
Don't do it because I suggested it, or because some public authority figure proclaimed that it's the "right" thing to do and you figure it's your day to take a bath in political correctness.
Do it because it might be the most interesting experience you have all week. We have a wealth of diversity here in Centerpointe, as I'm sure many of you also have in your places of business. What derives from that diversity is reality, genuine reality with all of its insight and unpredictability. It's not the pre-packaged rhetoric you see on TV, the stuff that was auto-generated and spun to maximize both viewer alarmism and network advertizing profits.
It is simply interesting to get to know new people, especially when they live close to you, and I bet nobody around here will leer at you as you do it.
