More cool stuff at CLS Farmers Market

A few pics here to showcase some of our local micro-entrepreneur craftspeople who occasionally sell at the Clear Lake Shores Farmers Market, which unfortunately has a downed website as of this writing, but it's every Saturday morning in Clear Lake Shores... just drive down there and you can't miss it.  And/or you can find it pretty easily on Facebook.  Happily, most of what this market sells is actual home-grown and home-made food (rather than being a made-in-China trinket outlet posing as a farmers market, which some of them are), but there are also some wonderful local handicrafts among the offerings.  

In no particular order...

Kitchen cutting boards crafted by RELEAF using recycled wood.  This business has no website that I know of, but you can find the proprietor on Facebook by searching for 'RELEAF'.  

Superb artistry.  My cell phone pics don't do them justice.  Wonderful gift ideas here.  

Raised garden planters from TX Green Beds.  I myself garden in stock tanks and discarded highway culvert scraps, but this is another good option for folks who have limited spaces and/or limited mobility.  

Robin's Cedar Planters, also on Facebook.  These are ingeniously constructed so that they are collapsible for easy transport.  Most of them will fit into the back seat of a passenger car once folded up.  Prices are very reasonable.  

I like this pic because it shows how a Robin's planter can be incorporated into a standard existing suburban landscape as a focal point.  Screengrabbed from Facebook.  

This customer put the planter on casters so that it could be rolled around a patio as needed.  For gardeners with limited spaces, these things would be great.  They'd also be excellent for strawberry-growing.  Screengrabbed from Facebook.  

I took business cards for two of these proprietors but I don't have a card for RELEAF.  

Remember to check with the market's Facebook page before you go to see which vendors will be present on any given Saturday.  Not every vendor attends every market.

Two events tomorrow at the Pasadena Fairgrounds

You get two for the price of one, sort of.

Always a popular event.  Mega-popular.  Trust me - a lot more than 11 people are going (I must have screengrabbed this about two tenths of a second after it was posted to FB).

More information here:  

Here is the 411 on both events, screengrabbed from this source.  The rock show is in the main convention center.  The plant show is sort of behind that in another part of the complex.  You'll see signs directing traffic if you go out there.  

If you'd like to know more about the barely-advertised Clear Lake Gem and Mineral Society show, I posted lots of photos from last year's show here. It's really a neat event (here's a Yelp description).

If you've never been to this annual Harris County Master Gardeners plant sale before, dress comfortably, get there early, and be prepared for some major intensity including long lines and lots of waiting.  They have a cult following and usually sell out completely.  If you're not early, you probably won't be able to buy what you want.

Happy weekend.

Hawk release at the Dudney Nature Center

This morning's hawk release by The Wildlife Center of Texas was a great success, and came with one heck of an unexpected bonus.

League City's very own unsung hero Sharon Schmalz and friend shortly before release.  The Wildlife Center of Texas is now one of the largest organizations of its type in the nation. 

Unfortunately, all I have of that unexpected bonus is the following circumstantial evidence.

The two rehabbed hawks were scheduled to be released at 9:30 a.m.  The release was a bit fashionably late in its timing, but at exactly 9:31 a.m. (I checked my watch), one of the Clear Creek bald eagles flew directly over the crowd that had assembled to see the hawks.  "This is like having the jets fly over before a Patriots game!" a guy behind me said.  What are the odds of having that happen??  It was really wild, in more ways than one. 

I didn't get a pic of the eagle, but I can offer you this collection of freaked-out laughing gulls.  Nothing like a predator with a 90-inch wingspan to really liven things up in the bird world.  All of the gulls took to the air in abject terror. 

 The hawks were both in fine form, and with their hawkish, indignant gazes, they are so easy to anthropomorphize. 

"Just who the hell do you think you are, lady?!"

"And now you've got everyone looking at my butt, too?!"

Sharon was demonstrating how this young 'un has only one reddish feather thus far, in what will grow to become a much redder tail. 

"These people are insane.  I need to get out of here."

"I think I'm fixin' to get my wish.  Better get ready."

Aaaand he's outa there. 

This resident red-shouldered hawk immediately raised a major vocal stink about the newcomers.

Yeah, that's a bit confusing.  The hawks that were released were both red-tailed hawks, but this one is a red-shouldered hawk.  Two different species.   

When you hear hawks screaming their guts out around League City, they are very often this type.  Red-shouldereds are not shy about making noise.  I'll close with someone's short YouTube which shows this behavior quite well.  Next time you hear that distinctive shrieking, you can impress your friends and neighbors by confidently declaring the identity of the perpetrator.
:-)

Update:  For whatever technical reason, this video embed is not displaying properly on certain mobile devices and iDevices.  Here's the direct URL:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Zwc3TJyqA

Everybody loves a parade...

...especially if you get to be in it.

Under the oaks:  FM 518 as you've probably never seen it, although this pic might look crummy on a little phone screen. 

Despite it being 39 degrees with a nasty little northeast wind, a good time was had by all at the League City holiday parade this evening.  The turnout was great and the parade was fun - a more laid back experience than some of the others I've seen in my life (this was my first LC parade). 

It was quite sedate and slow-moving because many of the groups had to pause for performances at the very end of it.  That gave time for the rest of us to have some interaction with the crowd.  Barriers were erected only around the performance area, so kids were free to dash for candy, pet the animals, and have fun with the participants over the majority of the route. 

I walked back to Centerpointe at the conclusion of it.  I wish I could give you some pointers on how to best deal with traffic if you don't live close enough to walk to and from this annual event, but closing FM 518 is going to cause significant mobility challenges no matter how well-planned the festivities, and you're likely to wait in traffic no matter where you manage to park.  If you can handle a short walk, you could choose the municipal complex because parking there was very light this evening, and it's really a short walk from there across East Walker and then north for about two blocks on Park Avenue.  Not sure if that would work for families with small children, but it could be a zippy option for others. 

Near the end of the line, as the performances were taking place in front of that shuttle bus in the mid-ground ahead of us.  Note how compact and orderly those people are as they are piled up on both sides of the road.  Very well-behaved, as crowds go.   

Dr. Ned and Fay Dudney Nature Center

What is this place, and who are the people it's named after? 


You've no doubt noticed the gate and the sign while driving down the stretch of FM 270 between Five Corners and NASA Road 1.

It's a 148-acre tract of largely wetlands adjacent to Clear Creek, roughly that elongated blob you see at photo center. 

League City's web entry describes a bit of the history of the property, but not much about its namesakes. 

Dr. Ned Dudney was a local physician who is considered to be one of the founding fathers of League City.  He was also instrumental in the formation of the hospital now known as Clear Lake Regional Medical Center, which holds a special place in my heart as it's where I gave birth to my daughter. 

In a nutshell.  Screengrabbed from this League City Historical Society newsletter. 

League City's current website is rather discordant, hosting this page which contains almost no information on the park, which in turn does not link to this page which does, but which is curiously anecdotal.  You'll notice that they make reference to the fact that this property was formerly called "the Davis tract".  That seems a propos of not much, until you consider that, at one time several years ago, League City had a loose ambition to acquire and link multiple wetland tracts into a larger system, of which this was only one tract, hence being called out as the so-and-so tract as distinct from the such-and-such tract.  My memories of those ambitions are both faint and incomplete because I was neither a League City resident nor was I extensively involved at the time.  But I do remember hearing about a larger plan along these lines. 

If you peruse Googlemaps, you'll see a number of analogous vacant tracts sandwiched between built-out areas and Clear Creek, including this tract north of the Clear Creek Village subdivision. 

There's not much that can be done with these tracts from a "developmental" standpoint.  They're situated partly within the Clear Creek floodway and almost entirely within the 100-year flood zone, and are seriously encumbered by their status as jurisdictional wetlands.  Therefore, the idea to obtain and connect a string of them as parkland made perfect sense. 

You're going to get a rude shock in a diversity of financial and logistical senses if you try to build something adjacent to the likes of this.  Pic taken from one of the Dudney Center's bird blinds.  Those are white pelicans in the background. 

Like I said, I don't know what happened to that original plan.  New Mayor, new Councilmembers, who knows??  If anyone knows, please email me a short-version summary and/or some links.  This issue has been tied up in the hike and bike trail plan, the evolution of which I'll need to address separately in a future post.  Meanwhile, let me leave you with a few non-spoiler pics I took at the Dudney center late yesterday afternoon.

I hadn't been to the place in a few years, and I had forgotten that it's a good place to walk dogs, which are permitted in the park as long as the waste and leash ordinances are observed. 

The main trail is wonderful - wide and paved in concrete, which makes it suitable for kids on tricycles, people in wheelchairs, parents pushing strollers, etc.  This one low section is finished as an elevated boardwalk. 

Yesterday afternoon was not the most peaceful time to take a walk, however, as Wings Over Houston was rehearsing in preparation of today's events!!

As usual, I was largely interested in macro photography.  The park contains quite the diversity of native and invasive plants.  It's adjacency to Clear Creek means that a lot of suburban seeds get washed into its boundaries and take root. 

Bumblebee on goldenrod.  Not to be confused with honey bees, the kind that gets Africanized, although they were certainly present, too. 

This guy above may be some species of Leschenaultia, which is apparently also known as a big black hairy fly (ya don't say!).  I don't know what they do for a living, but they were present in abundance. 

Big Bend Ranch State Park

A piece in today's Chronicle tells the harrowing story of an Arkansas couple who, after getting booted out of Big Bend National Park due to the federal government shut-down, got lost for four days and almost died in their alternate destination, which was the adjacent Big Bend Ranch State Park (BBRSP). 

Sorry, try again later:  Souvenir notice on the national parks website. 

Moral of that and many other stories:  Don't mess with west Texas.  BBRSP is an extraordinary destination and, in fact, I prefer it to the national park because it remains unpopulated and completely wild and open for discovery.  But west Texas is utterly unforgiving of those who make mistakes.  It is defined by beauty and potential danger in equal measure.  None of the regular rules of society apply there. 

I myself don't have a BBRSP story of personal danger to tell you, but I can show you a story of beauty, so I thought that's what I would do today.

This is what the only "improved" road through BBRSP looks like, for miles and miles and miles. 

Here it is that road shown on a roadside park sign.  Sixteen miles into the park, you're still nineteen miles from the end of the park road!!  Many people simply cannot conceive of these distances in a public park.  There is nothing else in the brain's experience for context. 

All of the other roads inside BBRSP look basically like this - old primitive ranch roads from years and years ago.  I learned to drive in a foreign country that had its share of bad road conditions, so I have successfully taken my consumer-grade two-wheel drive vehicle into locations like this both in BBRSP and in Big Bend National Park without incident.  But people who have no driving experience in these conditions break down in droves (punctured tires are probably the most common result). 

Yes, there is a leash rule in BBRSP, but with 300,000 acres, you'd be hard pressed to find someone to argue with you about what you're doing or why.  Our dog is a well-trained trail animal.  You'll notice that she's carrying her own equipment and has her head turned sideways with both my husband and I in her field of view, and with herself positioned equidistant between us.  Her shepherd instincts are superb.  She won't allow any hiking pack member to become separated from the group. 

It was the park rangers in BBRSP who originally taught me about the hazards of bringing dogs and wild pig species into spatial proximity.  They have several amusing anecdotes that they use to underscore their message about how dangerous javelinas can be when something (such as a dog) puts them into the wrong frame of mind. 

With the situation being what it is along the Mexican border, camping down by the Rio Grande is not something I necessarily recommend unless you are well armed with both canine and other defensive strategies (plural).  People cross the river at night... and let me just leave it at that.  We have copped campsites such as this one within a hundred yards of the river, but only on those days when we ran out of sufficient daylight for getting deeper into BBRSP. 

But this is why we really go to west Texas - not to camp by the river but to camp by ourselves.  To the best of our ability to discern, there were no other human beings within eight miles of this particular campsite.  And there's no other public land in the state of Texas where the likes of this solitude can be achieved. 

Think about that.  When is the last time you were eight miles from another person?  Or have you ever been?  There is no cellular coverage here.  No development.  No roads, no buildings, no trace of modern civilization.  That's exactly what makes it special. 

Yes, there is the issue of drug-related violence in Mexico.  But I tend to think that most folks are going to remain pretty safe if they are tucked miles and miles back into the desert like this.  Anyone attempting to do harm would first have to make one gut-busting hike to even find the targets.  And then they'd have to hike themselves back out.  Hardly seems worth it when there are easier targets who have more to offer than granola bars. 

There are also interesting things to see of a more intimate sort.

Near Presidio, there's Fort Leaton, which is where one of the park headquarters is located. 

And there is also evidence of native cultures within the park. 

This little piggie has never even heard of a market.  Remember when I was talking about feral hogs in Clear Lake, I mentioned that I treat them like javelinas in west Texas.  Just stay as far away as possible.  Do not approach for a photo op. 

Not every natural feature in BBRSP is defined by endless wide open expanses of space.  This is Closed Canyon, which is my favorite spot.  Husband and trail dog for scale. 

The FM road out of Presidio and the stark but vibrant beauty of the place.  If you're an outdoorsy person, make sure BBRSP is on your bucket list. 

Window into La Porte

My work travels took me through the City of La Porte yesterday and so I did my usual bucket-list thing:  I dropped in on some local specialty shops that I had driven past twenty times previously without stopping. 

La Porte has attempted to buck the trend of small town Main Street decline (OK, outright death) by repurposing its original general shopping district into a targeted specialty market. 

Incidentally, I like La Porte's municipal logo much better than League City's controversial logo.  By representing Galveston Bay dynamically but generically, La Porte leaves open to the imagination what a person might achieve there on a variety of personal levels.  This logo conjures up a sense of freedom, energy, and delight without being locked into a specific narrowly-defined and hellaciously-expensive recreational pursuit.  When I look at La Porte's logo, I think to myself, "Immediately they're communicating to me that they're artistic, so I wonder what there is to discover here?"  In contrast, when I look at League City's logo, I think to myself, "I'm S.O.L. in this town unless I own a sailboat and can afford a berth plus insurance for it." 

Remember the idea of "open to the imagination"??  Or as Anne of Green Gables would say, "There's plenty of scope for imagination in it."  "Open to the imagination" is the antithesis of "We spend our money here according to well-established stereotypical formulae from which we do not deviate". 

Screengrabbed from the City of La Porte website. 

Tap to expand.  Amen, sister. 

Screengrabbed from Goodreads. 

OK, enough horse-beating digression.  Now onto Main Street, La Porte.

They've created a really cozy atmosphere for shopping. 

There are historical markers here...

...and there.  Somewhere in my dim and distant memory, I remember reading about that famous children's train. 

I'm a sucker for pretty but unconventional building colors... 

...and meticulously-maintained thoroughfares.  Main Street in itself has become a piece of art.  This store (Mike's Antique Station) was my favorite of the ones I saw, for the sheer diversity of goods it contained.  To get a feel for the interior, search for it on Facebook. 

Two things struck me about this shopping-slash-cultural experience:

(1) The word "antiques" in the La Porte context really means "small antique items".  There wasn't much furniture in any store.  Mostly they were dominated by glassware and ceramics, except for Mike's, which had a mind-boggling collection of just about every item you could name that was smaller than a breadbox.

(2) The high prices blew my mind.  I come from an age when new products were expensive and most used goods were sold at bargain basement prices.  With the recent influx of cheap goods from China and other overseas markets, that paradigm has basically been turned upside down.  "Old" and "used" are now expensive (even if they are nowhere near old enough to qualify as antiques) whereas "new" is dirt cheap.

Let me give you an example.  Three months ago when we installed our first stacked stone garden, I had to cut down a fairly large tree to accommodate it.  Not wanting to be wasteful, I wondered if I could turn it into one of the deep south's folk artistic staples - a bottle tree. 

Here's an example screengrabbed from this site.  They come in many forms but I'm partial to the classic all-cobalt-blue renditions. 

Austin landscape designer Pam Penick actually has the coolest-looking modern bottle tree I've ever seen, but I don't reproduce her imagery so you'd have to click the link to see it. 

This bottle tree project is not a high priority on my list of life chores, but given that I was driving through La Porte anyway, one of my motivations for stopping was to see if I could pick up some blue bottles to get me started, again with the idea of recycling plus also supporting local small businesses by purchasing from them instead of feeding the ravenous maw of cheap crap that continuously spews forth from China. 

What I found in La Porte blew my mind.  Blue bottles that weren't that old were consistently priced in the range of $8 to $50.  Apiece!! 

Compared with what you can get on the internet for a bit more than one dollar apiece.  The very same item, except it's new instead of slightly used. 

Screengrabbed from the Label Peelers retail site which, in turn, references the LD Carson site. 

I have no problem supporting local businesses by paying a little more or in some cases even significantly more for goods.  But not eight times as much!

With respect to some items in the La Porte stores, I was amazed to see that the prices did, in fact, reflect prevailing market values.  Here's an example of where the brick-and-mortar pricing was right on the money: 

Back in the 1970's, every household in every Commonwealth country had a collection of Red Rose tea figurines on the kitchen windowsill.  Seriously, these things were everywhere.  And they were freebies included in every box of tea, except the older ones are now priced at five to eight bucks apiece.  Plus shipping if you buy them on eBay.  If I'd known this value appreciation was going to happen, I could have saved my family's collection and used it to finance my child's college education three years from now. 

Screengrabbed from Google's thumbnail of this listing. 

Anyway, if you're looking for unique décor items, La Porte might be a good place to shop.  But don't expect to experience the flea market economics of yesteryear.  The goods may be older, but the prices are very much a modern phenomenon.