The argument can be made that there are at least three, possibly four acceptable routes to take when one journeys from Houston to Yoakum, Texas.  My favorite is Highway 90.  I typically avoid I-10 at all costs and Highway 59 just puts me in a bad mood—not a good way to start a trip when the whole intention is to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life.  During the Fall and into late February, a cruise down 90 takes a person right through the heart of goose and duck country.  One can see thousands of snow geese covering rice field after rice field. Many times in the evenings it is against the backdrop of a fiery red sky that will take your breath away. This is all good and swell, but the real reason I travel this road is because situated smack dab in the middle of Eagle Lake, Texas we find one of the finest chains of convenience stores ever conceived by mankind, Buc-ee’s.

Buc-ee's

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If nothing else, I am a man of time and convenience. Rarely will you wait on me if we are meeting for lunch. Unless there are circumstances outside of my control, I will be at the airport before your plane arrives to make sure you are not waiting on me at the baggage claim with  suitcases your carry-on luggage (stupid baggage fees). Stacey would say that I am leashed far too closely to my watch. At any given moment of the day, unless I’m sleeping obviously, I am pretty much aware of what time it is or what time it is not. For instance, I know that it takes me 23 minutes to wake up, take a shower, get dressed and get out of the door if don’t need to shave that particular morning (three-ish more if I do have to shave). A bit psycho? Maybe. But I hate being late.

I also hate having to take time to eat breakfast (the most important meal of the day?) or make coffee in the morning. This is a problem though, because I’m not one that can skip breakfast. Anyone who works with me will vouch too, that I cannot go without caffeine. It took me quite a while to get a sustenance routine down in the wee small hours.

Iced Coffee

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Elaine had her Big Salad.  I have my pink salad.  This will serve as my unintentional breast cancer awareness post.

Salad for the Cure

In Houston it seems like the fruit trees, azaeleas, and vegetables have been blooming their hearts out for weeks now.  Our peaches and apples set fruit in the latter part of February, after putting on quite the floral show.  We had almost 100% of our seeds germinate and our tomatoes already have blooms popping out.  So what the heck is wrong with the Black Mission Fig and especially, the Santa Rosa Plum?  If there was one tree in all of our garden that we were looking forward to, it was the Santa Rosa Plum.  After this and this appeared, I felt like we had no choice but to buy one.  Here we are now in the advent of Spring and it seems like nothing can coax this guy out of hibernation—at least not any blossoms.  Yesterday though, I did notice a tiny hint of green.

Signs of Life-Santa Rosa Plum

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I just thought I would throw a quick link up about a short piece that appeared on the Bitten Blog in the Times today—rings a little too close to home, I’d say [uncomfortable laugh]. “What to do with all of the leftovers?”

*Slenderette Bush Beans

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In doing research on High Density Home Orchards, I kept running across a term that I felt deserved an explanation.  The word “pleaching” seems to be a catch-all for several similar techniques that were implemented in the formal gardens of the ancient Roman Empire.  Generally speaking, pleaching is yet another tool at the urban gardener’s disposal.  Like espalier, pleaching is a method used to train normally unruly trees into visually striking, and space defining features.

For our purposes, a more laid-back approach to pleaching was the perfect solution for the citrus trees that we wanted to plant on the west side of our home.  We have a long, blank wall that opens up to our neighbor’s parking lot. As exposed as it is, it comes off extremely dull and boring.  To give an idea of perspective, we have roughly four feet from the side of our home to the back of our neighbor’s curb.  Closest to the curb, we have an espaliered fence consisting of apple trees, plums, and peaches.  At its highest point, the espaliered fence is three and a half feet tall.  In trying to bleed this property of every bit of it’s plantable space, we had the idea of planting our citrus trees behind the espaliered fence, and train them to grow straight up before we let them branch out and into each other, similar to to the below picture.

Pleached Trees

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