Waterscape before and after

Remember that kettle pond I blogged about two weeks ago? 

Well, surely you didn't think I'd leave it sitting forlornly in the middle of an empty patch of sod like this:

Nice, but an underwhelming presentation.

Well, we had this equally-forlorn weedy patch next to the house...

A back yard doesn't get any more boring
than this right here.
Resist suburban mediocrity in all its forms!!!
:-)

...and so, over the past two weeks, we turned it into THIS:

No longer boring!
We were going for Zen overtones,
but more animated.
I wanted color and vibrancy.

In that previous post, I also raved about Nelson Water Gardens.  Most of the individual supplies for the disappearing fountain came from there...

The SOUND that this thing makes is incredible!
Absolutely mesmerizing!

Water cascades down the ripples in the stone...

...and then disappears into the reservoir below.

Here's a shot from closer to the kettle pond:

It's getting harder and harder to actually go into the house.
Everyone hangs out here now.

This was a total DIY job, and it turned out to be the most fun project that we have ever undertaken.  I do not want to know what this would have cost if it had instead been professionally designed and built, but I was pleasantly surprised by the DIY price, which was somewhat less than emergency medical treatment for a dog with sago poisoning.  Drop me an email if you'd like technical details.
:-)

Sago to hell

Say what?!  Go where?!

Sorry for the strong language in that title, but in this case I think it's worth using as an attention-grabber for this little factoid: 

Did you know that the very popular and very expensive sago palms that many suburbanites (including many Centerpointers) use as landscaping plants are lethally toxic? 

Beautiful but absolutely deadly to humans and pets.

Ingestion of any part of the plant can easily kill you, although the seeds are the most toxic.  Unfortunately those seeds are bright orange and resemble candy-covered almonds or something, suggesting that they may be attractive to kids:

From
http://www.flickriver.com/photos/johno2el/3402931666/ 

Sagos kill by (among other things) causing liver necrosis - your liver dies.  Even if you, your child or your pet survives the initial liver damage, death can occur weeks or months later from liver fibrosis. 

And why do I bring this up?  Because two weeks ago, as we were preparing to transplant a few sagos into our landscaping, our dog grabbed a small root fragment and chewed on it briefly - typical dog behavior.  Within an hour, she was vomiting uncontrollably and having seizures.  We rushed her to the Calder Road animal emergency clinic, where the attending veternarian gave her just a 20% to 33% chance of surviving.   After overnight emergency treatment there followed by three days of hospitalization and treatment at the wonderful Animal Kingdom Pet Hospital, she was released into our care along with two weeks of drug therapy.  As of today, she appears to have recovered, but we don't yet know what her longer-term survivability odds are.

We had no idea.  I'm a gardener and I had never heard about sago toxicity; neither had any of my friends or my uncle who has been gardening for almost 60 years.  The ASPCA website lists 391 different plants that are toxic to dogs but makes no distinction among them based on the degree of toxicity (how helpful!).  It turns out that sagos are in a league of their own. 

A sago palm measuring about 2.5-feet in diameter currently retails for about $100 at the Houston Garden Center located on the other side of SH 96 and IH-45.  You might wonder how such a popular item could pose that intensity of hazard, and yet nobody is informing consumers about it's dangers.  I'm not an expert on those issues, but I suspect it's occurring because nobody "manufactures" sago palms - they are made by Mother Nature - and therefore no corporation is liable for the damage that they do.  So instead of having the typical disclosures and disclaimers, what we have instead is perhaps the opposite motivation: if consumers were to find out just how dangerous these things are, sales would fall and horticultural growers and distributors would lose money. 

The toxicity information is actually out there assuming you know to go looking for it (but that's the tricky part).  This article talks about how poisonings are increasing all across America now that sagos are being sold in big box stores.  This blog entry says it all quite bluntly in it's title:  "This plant will kill your dog (and maybe your kids)".

We decided that the risks are unacceptable to us and have removed all sagos from our property.  I don't want to overreact, but after $1,500 in veterinary bills having been incurred by virtue of the smallest sago root fragment, I don't even want to set eyes on sago palms any more.  I don't want to think about what would happen if a very young child toddling down our sidewalk were to somehow get a similar little fragment into their mouth (tiny kids put EVERYTHING into their mouths).  The odds of that happening are very low, but there are many other beautiful landscaping choices out there that are NOT toxic, so into the fires of hell our sagos have gone.

Please rain on our parade

As if a months-long deepening drought, local water emergencies, rampant destruction and federal disaster declarations from wildfires, and petrochem plant-crippling power outages weren't painful enough, we appear to have set an all-time temperature record today, and it's only 2 pm as I write this. 

Wundermap screengrab (they're so pretty!).
According to Houston Chronicle, Houston's previous high temperature record for today was 91 degrees.
Well, we've pretty much toasted that sucker, with readings of 92 at the airport, 94 in Channelview, 95 in Angleton and 97 (!!!) in The Woodlands.

As my late grandmother used to say, "This, too, shall pass."  While you're patiently waiting for that to happen, it might be worth checking out SciGuy's post on why this current mess is NOT related to global warming. 

Security insecurities

One of my greatest mentors used to constantly remind me that every negative is also a positive, and every positive is also a negative.  Might as well say yippee for yin yang, because this natural duality is inescapable.

Nowhere is this more evident than with respect to all of the electronic consumer devices that we have at our disposal.  Buy a gizmo to resolve one of your predicaments, and sure as heck, you've thereby created a brand new predicament for yourself somewhere down the line.

Such is the case with the new home security systems that use continuous-loop video monitoring.  I'm not talking about those old-style monitored systems that use contact sensors on doors and windows, motion detectors, glass breaks, etc. and third-party telephone alerts.  I'm talking about the camera systems that pipe video to a DVR hidden somewhere in your house, and which also upload that video to the internet for live viewing and secure storage. 

Do you feel like you're being watched? 
Because in an increasing number of homes and businesses,
you ARE -  in both visible and infrared spectra.

These systems have reached middle-class affordability status (turn-key "plug and play" systems from a vendor such as Lorex can be less than $2,000) and can significantly increase a homeowner's control over their property, in both active and passive senses.  I was recently sitting in a client's office discussing business when all of a sudden his eyes darted to one of his computer monitors.  He quickly punched a call into his cell phone and yelled, "Frank, there's a strange truck in your driveway!"   A moment later he put the phone down, looked at me sheepishly, and said, "Sorry.  That was my neighbor across the street.  He was just having a new refrigerator delivered."   My client had seen the truck drive up via his driveway cam, which fed live across the internet to his office computer. 

But sometimes the situation is not as innocent as a delivery dude in an unmarked truck:

HPD photo published by Houston Chronicle.
These systems are A-MAZING!!
This is a photo of a serial burglary suspect obtained from a home monitoring system and released by police.  You can read about this story here.  These camera systems may not prevent the crimes from occurring, but what a terrific tool for prosecution.

The trouble is, these systems don't just record the types of crimes they were developed to deter and/or help prosecute - they record EVERYTHING you do inside and around your house.  Do you ever watch TV in your underwear, sprint naked across your kitchen to fetch clean towels from the laundry room before returning to your shower, or change your toddler's diaper in the livingroom?  If you've installed a DVR system, it will all be recorded, along with everything your neighbors do as viewed from your yard.  Furthermore, these machines can record that information for weeks at a time before looping.  That's a lot of revealing information, and it creates privacy and information management challenges. 

The specific tricky scenario I put before League City Chief of Police Mike Jez this morning was the following:

What happens if a homeowner's monitoring system records evidence of a crime on a nearby property or in the public right-of-way?  How would the homeowner's privacy be protected if they volunteer video evidence to the police? 

I asked this question because, of the material on that DVR, 99.9% will consist of underwear-lounging and naked sprints, and about 0.1% of it might turn out to be criminal evidence.   And whereas a homeowner might feel that it's worth the invasion of privacy to proffer those recordings to help investigate and prosecute a crime committed against their own property, it becomes a much tougher cost-benefit analysis when someone else's property is involved.

Chief Jez's response to my question was as follows: 

"The short answer to your question is that we, the police agency, wherever possible, would try to respect the privacy rights of the individual that is attempting to cooperate with the investigation.  Beyond that I am afraid the courts are continuously creating new case law as it relates to technology."

In other words, it's not completely clear what would ultimately happen to all those not-so-Rockwellian scenes involving skivvies and baby booty.  This is something to think about.  Personally, I suspect that what might end up happening as we evolve into the future is that police departments everywhere start receiving highly-edited anonymous video clips which may not be admissable in a Court of Law due to their unverifiable origins, but which would still serve to point the investigators toward additional evidence that they COULD assemble without anyone's privacy getting violated in the process.

The usual disclaimers apply.  I am not an attorney and none of this is legal advice; I'm just a blogger with a vivid imagination and a desire to minimize my chances of experiencing the type of devastating residential burglary that I had to deal with several years ago while living in another neighborhood.   



Take my voice-of-experience word for it - this sucks!!!
It's not the financial loss, it's the personal violation and all the time and energy required to put your lives back together.



Submergent surprise

By some accounts, 75% of Americans garden to some extent.  With the recent economic recession, there has been greater emphasis on gardening for financial reasons.  Community gardens are developing rapidly, encouraging more people to learn about the almost-lost art of raising their own food, but also for reasons of socialization and outreach.  Here in League City, perhaps the most notable example is the community garden at St. Christopher Episcopal Church, which supplies food to our most prominent social assistance coalition, Interfaith Caring Ministries (ICM). 

But some of the gardening we do is just for the pure personal amazement of it.

First lily to open in my watergarden,
which we set up just a few days ago.

Sorry for the unsightly copyright stamp.  I used to think that bloggers who disfigured their photos with stamps were rather paranoid, but now I see from this blog's access statistics that surfers, particularly from foreign countries, do seem to be trolling for free stock photos. 

Our area rolls out the red carpet for gardeners, with almost eleven frost-free months supporting multiple growing cycles per year.  Even if gardening is not your primary interest, it becomes a life-hands-you-lemons scenario:  our summers are terribly hot, and our land is not scenic.  Might as well capitalize on the outdoor potential that IS furnished by this environment...

...because when you step out your door and are greeted by an unprecedented sight like this, you tend not to notice the flatness and humidity quite as much!!

Dash cam, Part 7: No hiding behind a smokescreen

When you see situations like this...


Sorry about the crummy resolution,
but do you see that gray cloud behind the white pickup, a cloud engulfing the car in the right-hand lane?
IH-45 southbound at Baybrook Mall, 4:45 PM today.

 ...you have the option of completing this:

Click here for the reporting URL.
The screengrab shows you what info you would need to collect in order to make a complete report.

My chief concern is with dangerous driving, but there's a strong correlation between extreme recklessness and other unlawful behaviors.  In this case, I could not acquire the license plate of the offender because to do so would have involved driving in such a manner so as to risk the lives of about a dozen innocent other drivers, including myself, because this smoke-belcher was speeding and weaving like crazy.  But in those cases when you are in a position to get the plate number, this reporting URL provides a convenient means of focusing enforcement attention upon nasty people who deserve to feel some heat.

PSA: League City forums and election links

Regarding the upcoming municipal elections, here's the briefest possible summary of relevant info.

League City has one Mayoral and seven "at large" City Council positions.  In the 2011 election, the Mayor and Positions 1, 2, and 6 are being elected.  Position 1 and 6 candidates are running unopposed. 

There are a few public forums scheduled to provide citizens with opportunities to meet and evaluate the candidates for office:

(1) The League City Chamber of Commerce is hosting a forum on April 28, and you can read about that here. 

(2) The Clear Creek Village (CCV) Civic Association is sponsoring a forum on April 25 (CCV is located near the northwest corner of IH-45 and FM 518 and is one of the earliest and most unique League City subdivisions, having been developed in the mid-1970's).  Here is a re-post of their announcement:

CCV West Side Candidates Forum

April 25, 7 PM

Christus Victor Lutheran Church

(2098 West Main Street)

Please join us for our annual CCV West Side Candidates Forum.  This is your opportunity to ask questions of all candidates as well as meet each one personally.  Take this opportunity to get involved and let your voice be heard.  Show your interest in the community and the issues of the West Side--take time to join us April 25 and remind all candidates that we, as citizens, care about our city.

Early voting is available May 2 through May 5, and information is available here.

Information on the May 14 general election can be found here, with logistical information presented here.

Voter registration info is presented on this County website.