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Fais do-do and filo dough.

  Some years back my brother Glen and our families owned some apartments in Houston. Perhaps to get me out of his hair Glen sent me off looking for some now forgotten something on the other side of Houston. People for some reason don't think of Houston as the 4th largest City in the US. That's by population drive around it and it's bigger. Like all things in Texas their traffic jams are bigger. So I'm sweating my brains out (In Houston you begin sweating when you step out of the shower in the morning -Just saying!) in a truck with no A/C, in a construction zone with the street going from 3 lanes to one and people fighting for the next inch like it's the last food on earth. The street is completely gone, just orange cones and caliche potholes filled with water. Needless to say I'm cursing my brother, God, and the guy in front of me. I mean I'm a good person why oh why God must I suffer so... 'course just then I see a guy in a wheelchair stumps for legs trying to negotiate this mishegoss. OK, yeah God - I get it! but this traffic still bites... yeah yeah but sometimes you're little points are quite sarcastic - just saying God, you should work on your attitude!
  In keeping with the Bayou theme the music is a mix of BeauSoleil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol9J8H-M1fA&list=PLNUQMbJOU1-MfBNoIA6NPwszWacdxe-fe and Buckwheat Zydeco. I'm also just back from the gym and BeauSoleil was my workout music till my Walkman died. A Walkman is ancient technology designed to play one CD and eat one battery. It once was de rigueur along with a headband and short shorts at the gym - not so much any more. Anyway with BeauSoleil playing on the headphones (yeah I know) the miles just clicked by on the bike.
  Glen now lives in Aransas Pass (essentially X marks the spot for Harvey's 1st landfall) and works at the Corpus Christi marina. Thus I had to say good-bye to my little pity party about my garden being hit by hail.  A couple of days of pulling weeds throwing mulch and generally tidying up has the garden not looking good just not ugly.The garden even gave Deb and me a great salad last night. Everything from arugula and beet greens to baby carrots and tomatoes - delicious!
 The small boat armada I'm seeing on TV doesn't surprise me. Nor does the spirit of volunteerism. I think in East Texas you're considered poor if you don't own a boat and merely lower middle class if it's a bass boat or you only have one. Glen only owns one boat but it's a big one so I think he's not looked down on by the neighbors. The volunteerism, Texans all seem to think of themselves as frontiersmen and have that help your neighbor ethic. They might shoot their neighbor after the emergency is over but... I spoke in the last blog about resilience. Social capital along with flood insurance (how can 80% of Houstonians not have flood insurance!) are part of resilience. Good neighbors will get you through tough times better than most other things. I hear Glen's house and boat somehow managed to survive and I'm sure he's busy helping Corpus Christi recover.  Thanks God!
  Before I leave the thought I have to add the counterpoint. I was leaving the grocery store yesterday and a fellow and his dog were panhandling. Big tall guy maybe mid twenties had all his limbs and a sign that said "Portland - anything helps." Now you can write the story anyway you want and frankly how you write it probably says more about you than him. Me, I wrote it - and when you get to Portland are you just going to be just standing there with a sign? Charity and compassion are tough things the queerest things can make you empathetic or not. 
  The garden is as I said not ugly. I pulled the potato- onions from the row at the Mennonite garden and saved seeds for them along with carrot seeds. If anyone would like seeds let me know. The bulbs for the potato onions after culling are essentially all promised.  The potato onions at the Mennonite garden did a bit better than those in the backyard. I attribute this mostly to a bit longer in the ground and perhaps better watering. One beauty was right next to a leak in the drip irrigation system so I'm going to look at watering practices next year as one mini experiment. I'm also considering planting half of the onions in fall and half in spring. Mostly to see what effect it will have on the flower stalks. I think that is one of the pleasures of gardening. There are a thousand variables and every year is an experiment.
  The corn will have me hovering and looking up on-line twenty times how to tell when to pick it.  Soon I know but now? My fear is that the night before I plan to pick it the dogs will wake me to the raid by the racoon family.  I haven't seen raccoons for a few years but than I haven't grown corn for a few years so.. This year with hail and squirrels and other critters I'm getting a little bit of a Pharaoh/ Moses complex. But I wasn't going to whine, right.
  I'm not really a big string bean person but I like some. I planted enough to feed a small nation kindly most didn't sprout or got mowed down by weather or critters.  The cool thing is a little patch grew mixed in with a couple of truly huge sunflowers.  It looks quite Martha Stewart artsy.  I guess I kinda want that artsy level of craftsmanship because I know it pleases me so when it actually works out.  Dale Carnegie opined that they give the blue ribbon to the biggest pig at the fair but it's the owner that shows the ribbon off.
  While at the grocery store the other day I passed by the filo dough and had to sigh. The last few years have been good and sometimes great years for fruit trees in the neighborhood. Not every fruit every year but plums one year pears or nectarines the next and apples, way too many apples. This year if it wasn't for the strawberries I'd be on a corner with a sign begging for fruit "anything helps!" My dog Callie a few years back I realized arranged our walks so as to go by all the Fritos an tidbits I had managed to keep her away from previously.  She had a little mental map.  So too, I've got a little mental map of all the fruit trees in the neighborhood and who doesn't pick their pears, or apples that are especially delicious.  I've never been shy and with a picking pole this time of year the kitchen is usually overflowing with 5 gallon buckets of this fruit or that. Thing is with 20 gallons of rapidly ripening pears you gotta do some form of preserving. Jam and jellies I've never quite got the hang of.  But filo dough will make you look like a professional baker. Give a neighbor a filo dough anything and you got beau-coup social capital.  
  Buckwheat Zydeco is doing his version of Hey Baby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH2eRRh4Bls and my baby just headed to work and probably assumes I'll be doing some work today also so gotta go.  Doug A.

Comments

  1. I'm a little frustrated with my potato onions this season. I'm going to try a couple of new things this year, too. I also fought the raccoons in my corn. They got about 15 ears of corn. I set a trap for them, but, with my luck I only caught the biggest skunk I've ever seen in my life.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So how does one remove a skunk from a trap? I'm laughing thinking about it but I'm sure you weren't!
      'Be curious to know what experiments you're trying and the results.

      Delete

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