I’ve always liked writing. This blog gives me a place for it.

Most of it is about gardening and my efforts at home improvement and land stewardship, and observations about people and places in rural Texas. But I am liable to write about any subject that comes into mind, even politics and religion.  So while I call it a gardening blog, it may not strictly fit into that category.

The journal archives go back to March of 2003. Before then I was posting albums of my photos along with descriptions on a simple website I had made.  Blogging software makes it a lot easier.

We are refugees from the big-city corporate life and we are still getting used to the slower pace of the country.  I wasted a huge part of my lifetime working in the information technology field for various  companies. I still do projects in that area when I can work from home. I also do volunteer work in the community and for the Native Plant Society of Texas.

Tricia runs a quilt-making business, which she calls QuiltCat.  Check out some of her handiwork.  She does custom work and has stuff to sell.

We live by a small lake in rural north Texas.  We have eight wooded acres that we share with deer, fox, raccoons 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.

There is a rich history here.   Many tales were written down by John Graves in his well-known books and others have been used as the basis for popular books and films, most famously by novelist Larry McMurtry.

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 the road and tell you 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.