I was wondering when this was going to happen… kinda expected to see it sooner.
Austin is going to stage 2 water restrictions starting September 6.
Please spread the word. And people please… adhere to the schedule and restrictions. Your lawn is not THAT important. Predictions are that our exceptional drought is going to last for a long long time (years, potentially). We need to be mindful.
Puppy barking just before dawn. I let Sasha out and she bolts for the fence. Sure enough, the mother doe and her fawn.
It’s a nice morning. Feed the dog and cats, then take out a raw beef bone for Sasha. She’s excited. We go out back.
I sit with her. She’s laying in the grass, gnawing away. The sun is rising. The morning is peaceful.
Hey look… bats catching a morning meal.
Bzzzzzzzzz…. ah cool! At the feeder just a yard from my head, a hummingbird came to feed.
Sweet peaceful silence of the morning Just me and the critters.
(wow WordPress… you sure are sucking lately… wrote a whole post and you lost it… let’s try again).
Last night my neighbor’s car got broken into.
Another neighbor discovered some “trash” in her flower bed this morning. Turns out it was a wallet and some other belongings. Everything remained in the wallet, except the cash (natch). She called Austin Police. When I saw the cruiser pull up across the street I went to ask what was going on and got the skinny.
It would appear this was a premeditated crime. That is, it wasn’t a teenager walking by a car, saw a wallet, checked for an unlocked door and snatched the money. No… they had tools. There were no windows smashed nor visible damage, but his car door no longer locks… so they suspect a slim jim. His door was locked, his wallet was out of sight in the center console. They still broke in and took it. Their other car was also jimmied open, a bag was taken and also found in the flower bed but nothing of value lost.
APD told us a few days ago some other cars were broken into a few blocks away.
I checked my car. Nothing that I could see.
As I’m writing this, my neighbor called… she was driving out of the neighborhood and on the cross street she saw another APD car. She pulled over, asked, and yup… her car was broken into. I don’t know any more details than that.
But the one neighbor, his doors were locked, but stuff was in the car… not visible, but still there. Exactly why these people were targets, I don’t know, but it does say simply that you should keep nothing in your car except car things, like the spare tire and owners manual.
It also says… the world is getting uglier. You need to be prepared for it.
Jani Lane, best known as the (former/original) lead singer of the hair metal band Warrant was found dead at age 47.
Googling for more information, there isn’t any… other than he was found dead in a hotel room.
Jani’s been struggling with drugs and alcohol for quite some time, lapsing in and out. Following all his ups and downs via Metal Sludge over the years, you wondered when this was going to happen… you hoped that it wouldn’t, you hoped he’d pull things together. But alas. 😦 Even if the cause of death isn’t substance-related, you could see how it was all taking a huge toll on him.
R.I.P. Jani.
Here’s my favorite Warrant song, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (tho I’ll agree that “Dog Eat Dog” was an underrated album)
This exceptional, history-making drought in Texas is causing massive pressure on critters.
There’s a muscovy duck that laid her eggs in our bushes. Two days ago they finally hatched and we now have 14 ducklings, which seem to be doing fine. However hopeful I am of their survival to adulthood, I’m not expecting it. They have decent shelter, they will have water and food, but it’s predators that I’m betting will reduce their numbers. There just isn’t much food around, and ducklings are food.
The other morning I saw a doe in the backyard that I’ve never seen before, distinctive by the fact her face was much blacker than any whitetail I’ve ever seen. I’m sure she’s from around these parts, but pushing further than her normal range in search of food. The greenbelt no longer has the natural food supply because there’s no rain, and the heat’s drying everything up.
Over the past some months we’ve had stories of feral hogs coming into neighborhoods, tearing up lawns. Not surprising because they’re just trying to find food and water. But these reports have usually been from neighborhoods on the outskirts of town.
Now we’re getting reports of coyotes coming into town, going after pets. Hey, they’re pets to us, food to a yote.
And now, there’s news reports of a bison on the loose.
Yes, a bison. This is actually in my general area and depending where he travels it’s possible I could look out the back of my house some morning and see him. I hope they’re able to catch him, but I reckon it’ll be tough because he too he going to keep pressing on as much and as hard as he can in search of food and water.
Something’s gotta give…. *sigh*
”When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn’t matter. Am I tired? That doesn’t matter either. Then willpower will be no problem.”
~ Emil Zatopek, Czech Olympic athlete
(seen on Facebook)
Many people cannot fathom how I can be a morning person.
When I stepped out of my house this morning to walk to the gym, the sun was just starting to rise… hadn’t peeked over the horizon, but light was coming up. Basically, it was light enough to see, but not enough to legally hunt deer. 😉
I look up and see about a dozen Mexican Free-tailed bats flying around. Usually we might see only one or two, so seeing this many was quite a treat. I called back into the house to have everyone come out and watch. As I continued my walk to the gym, obviously the bats were all around the greater neighborhood as I was able to still see them feeding.
Then I hear one of my favorite morning sounds: the Black-bellied whistling duck. There were 8 flying in formation, circling around the greater neighborhood. They’re around all the time so they’re nesting somewhere nearby.
Otherwise, the morning was unusually quiet. No one else out jogging. Only a couple of cars drove by.
Just quiet.
Peaceful.
Only the sounds of nature.
Puts a contented smile on your face.
That’s one reason I love mornings.
Be more aggressive in life. Eat more meat. Say no to people and things that are awful. Don’t settle for anything you don’t want.
– Jim Wendler
When we bought our first house, despite years of hating landscaping and lawn care, I had my own lawn and felt it was time to become Hank Hill and have the prettiest yard on the block.
That didn’t last long.
Mother Nature, she will always win.
The reality of living in Central Texas is it’s hot and dry. Oh sure, some people manage to have green grassy lawns down here, but they usually have lots of shade plus spend a lot of time and money to irrigate their yard. I’ve had varying amounts of shade, but never enough; I certainly don’t have enough money to budget for heavy watering.
Even if I did have the money to keep my yard flooded, I’ve always felt there was something wrong in doing so. This is the water we need for drinking and basic life needs. Texas has gone through numerous droughts, and the one we’re in now is exceptional and could go down as the worst ever. I just cannot justify watering the yard when water is a finite resource and we need it for more important things. I’d rather have water to drink, and if water is going to go onto vegetation I’d rather the farmers have it.
Alas, I live in the city… I have some semblance of a HOA to deal with… and I admit to not liking erosion nor an ugly house and neighborhood. So, some sort of “yard” is necessary.
I never thought I’d do this… but I’m going to try xeriscaping.
It’s just not aesthetically pleasing to me, because it implies a lot of desert, and I do like the look of plush green. Xeriscaping invokes images of sand, rocks, cactus… not much color, a lot of hard and sharp lines and materials. But it isn’t exclusively this way. For one, a central notion of xeriscaping is to use native plants. I never was a fan of going to Home Depot and getting whatever they sold because they are rarely native and able to handle the environment. But I also wasn’t a huge fan of the way a lot of native plants looked. That has changed and I now find great beauty in the native plants of this area — the key is exposure. So many of the yards and commercial landscapes go for what is common, what is easy to find. But if you look deeper, especially using local nurseries, you can find an amazing depth of plants that look beautiful, give year-round color and interest, attract desirable wildlife, and work in the high heat/sun and low water environment that we live in. For example, some years ago I tore out a bunch of shrubs and planted Barbados Cherry. They’ve thrived, they look gorgeous when flowering and fruiting, attract a lot of birds, provide a lot of color throughout most of the year… and I haven’t seen them anywhere else in Austin (tho I’m sure other people have them).
The key? You cannot start out picking plants you WANT. You have to pick plants that are appropriate. You have to consider size issues, sun exposure, water availability, animals (attract, repel, etc.), and so on. Austin’s Grow Green Guide is quite useful. Once you narrow down to what’s appropriate, then you can choose what you like. The Barbados Cherry were not something I would have picked if given the choice, but they fit best for the particular situation and have turned out to be wonderful.
Another useful thing? Using a good landscaper. We’re using Fertile Ground Organic Gardens. Yes, it’s run by an old friend of mine, but she’s done work for us in the past and it’s always been excellent. I’m using her not because of friendship, but because of solid work and creative design. Look at their website and you’ll see examples of their work.
The thing is… our front yard is always going to suffer. There’s a good portion that gets sun most of the day, and a fair portion that gets sun all day long. Consequently, no turf grass can survive. In drought like we tend to have most years, the grass eventually dies off and all we have is either burnt, dead grass, and then very tolerant weeds grow. It’s ugly. I hate it. And the weeds can’t even grow enough to cover for soil retention. So after debating solutions for the past few years, Wife and I decided… let’s try xeriscaping.
I’ll try to document how it goes, with pictures. Should be interesting. 🙂
So I find out the hard way that the Parental Controls for iTunes and iPod’s don’t apply to each other.
That is, in the iTunes.app you can set Parental Controls to restrict the content your children have access to. Well, it seems that only applies to accessing the iTunes Store via the iTunes.app. If there’s a device involved, like an iPod, then you must also set the Restrictions on that device. They don’t apply to each other, which makes sense now that I think about it, but it didn’t occur to me when I was first setting things up. I only set stuff on the app thinking it would carry over… and in a way, that would seem logical to do.
But alas.
And we got to learn the hard way.
All is good tho. Something for us all to grow on.
Stuff From Hsoi 