I started this blog in March of 2003. Before then I was posting albums of my photos along with descriptions on a simple website I had made.  Mostly  my blog is about gardening and my efforts at home improvement and land stewardship, along with observations about people and places in rural Texas. But I am liable to write about any subject that comes to mind, even politics and religion.  So while I call it a gardening blog, every post may not strictly fit into that category.

In addition to keeping a personal blog, I maintain the website of the Native Plant Society of Texas. I contribute a little content to that site but mostly I edit and publish the work of more talented people.  I also design and maintain websites for a variety of  clients. I am active in the Texas Master Gardener program and volunteer at Clark Gardens and at other community projects.

When the earliest posts here were written I was living in a different region and working in the city. My wife and I have since become refugees from  big-city corporate life and we are getting acustomed  to the slower pace of the country.  We live by a small lake in rural north Texas.  We have eight wooded acres that we share with deer, fox, raccoon and various and sundry other wildlife.  Also with our house cats, Sapphire and Julie.

We are on a little piece of the Cross Timbers,  a thick forest of juniper and oak that once  stretched from north central Texas through Oklahoma and into Kansas.   The Cross Timbers earned its name from settlers who found much of the thick forests impassable as Oklahoma Territory was opened for settlement. American writer Washington Irving visited in 1832 and wrote of the “vexations of flesh and spirit” that set upon the travelers who he said felt as if they were “struggling through forests of cast iron.”  Just to the west a vast prairie opens up, with cattle ranches and gas wells.

After decades of steadily losing population, the area is now under assault from the sprawling suburbs.  Although just beyond comfortable commuting distance,  it is being cut up for the benefit of retirees, weekenders and those who can work from home.   In the little towns and farms you can still find old-timers who can drive down a road and tell you everyone who has lived in every house they pass.  But that will soon pass.

Gardening here is proving to be a challenge.  The soil is thin and sandy.  On our hillside there are boulders just below the surface which make any kind of planting difficult.  On top of that the summer can stretch for weeks without significant rainfall.   When the rain does come, it just washes down the hillside into the streams that feed the Brazos.