This weekend the Heard Natural Science Center native plant sale takes place. We try to attend each of these sales, and to plant our yard in native flowers. The natives always seem to do better in our yard than more exotic things.
Texas is all about the wildflowers. The same things that makes trees largely a riparian experience (other than in folks' over-watered lawns) makes grasses and flowers thrive. Last year we had a winter so temperate that very little rain fell and it was all largely like living Summer all year long, but for a day or two excepted. The flower bloom proved disappointing. This year has been a harvest of wildflower by comparison.
Lately I ponder how we are within a couple of years of five dollars a gallon gasoline. I suspect that expensive gasoline will do wonders for conservation. I'm a little sad that not much pre-planning is taking place, when the hand-writing is on the wall. I suppose, though, that I should refurbish my bicycle, and begin focusing on how to find leisure things to do within very short distances of my home. It's always easier to lament large issues of policy than to make small changes in one's own life.
Let's take "condensed fluorescent bulbs". There seems to be a broad consensus that these are one way to reduce one's power consumption "footprint" to a dainty step. Yet I have not installed any of these bulbs as yet. Perhaps this will be the weekend to begin.
I went yesterday to a greenbelt trail near my work and stood on a little culvert bridge which forded a creek. I loved listening to the water flowing through the culverts--it had a purity in its sound which belied its rather artificial concrete appearance.
I am glad to see the national mood changing on "outrageous" media personalities. I tend to be of two minds about such things, because I am a big fan of "freedom of speech", whether used in its "legal" sense as in the First Amendment, or used in its colloquial sense, as in folks having the right to speak out in private settings such as workplaces or on private media. I believe, though, that satire exists to "speak truth to power" more than to denigrate the relatively powerless. I am not a fan of the steady diet of "shock" media, whether it be disk jockeys, opinion flack hacks, would-be "cutting edge" comics, or true-crime-is-a-salacious-heroin-fix "documentaries". I am glad that there are subtle signs that this form of media will fade a bit eventually.
The weather has been in the 70s this week, but tomorrow is to return to the 50s. It's hard to complain about the 50s, which is, after all, a perfectly workable sort of weather. Yet I'd still like to have a dry, warm Saturday return, so that I can go on a long hike on Trinity Trail without it being chlly or wet. I cannot complain, though, as I know that August will offer me both dry and
quite hot. It's important to me to savor each season for its own virtues.