We're ripping out the summer plants at the community garden and setting in cool weather crops. I'm going to plant a boatload of arugula and cilantro. Haven't decided what else. Any suggestions? The first season went pretty well. We had a few dropouts, as we expected. Gardening sounds nice to most people in the abstract. Sweating in the Texas heat and getting dirt in your shorts is a hard reality to face in the concrete. Okay, I admit that most gardeners didn't get dirt in their shorts. Okay, I admit that no gardeners got dirt in their shorts. I just made that up. But everybody got sweaty. that part was true. And the dropout part was true, too. We expected it, though. Cow Hill's fall festival, the Bois d'Arc Bash, is this weekend and the community garden has a booth at the fête. One of us is an accomplished graphic designer and she's put together some nice posters about fall crops and stuff. I probably should just look at the posters to figure out what to plant this fall. Crowd sourcing this bunch is an iffy proposition. Bois d'arc is the local name for the horse apple tree. It's French. But don't rub it in. We don't pronounce it like French, anyway. We say bodark. Apparently the Caddo people who lived here in olden days used the wood from that tree for bows. Lord knows how they worked it. Bois d'arc wood is so hard that some of the houses in town are built on rounds of it. That's the foundation. Rounds of wood sitting on the dirt. It won't rot. Bugs won't eat it. Cow Hill boasts the second largest bois d'arc tree in Texas. We're number two! They gave it a name, but I can't remember what it is. Something like Bo, probably. Bo the bodark. I'd be willing to bet it's not named Skippy. Anyhow, the stalks of lemongrass I rooted and planted this spring have become hedges of lemongrass this fall. I gotcha lemongrass. More lemongrass than brains. So this afternoon, I took a break from hauling mulch to pull up some lemongrass for the community garden booth at the Bash. One stalk became about thirty in about four months. We'll give them away at the Bash to spread good will. And flavor. On another topic, I've just about completed the video piece I'm making for the show I'm in up in Wichita next month. It's about 2,400 pictures of food I culled from PingWire ( http://pingwire.com/ ) over a few days back in July. Each image gets 1/2 second, so the video is 20 minutes long. The show is about food, so I'm also bringing some stuff I made recently: pickled okra, pickled watermelon rind, and pastrami. The pastrami was made using the Ruhlman and Polcyn recipe in Charcuterie. I got the brisket from a farmer I know and I grew the vegetables I pickled. So everything's local. Of course hauling it up to Kansas will mean it ain't local anymore. What's a guy to do? Speaking of local food, has anybody seen the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative coming out of the USDA? The press release is here: http://tinyurl.com/meokfg That and the White House kitchen garden and the new farmers' market signal a small, but perhaps important, shift in governmental attitudes towards food production. Okay, that's not something going on in Cow Hill. My mistake.

We're ripping out the summer plants at the community garden and setting in cool weather crops. I'm going to plant a boatload of arugula and cilantro. Haven't decided what else. Any suggestions? The first season went pretty well. We had a few dropouts, as we expected. Gardening sounds nice to most people in the abstract. Sweating in the Texas heat and getting dirt in your shorts is a hard reality to face in the concrete. Okay, I admit that most gardeners didn't get dirt in their shorts. Okay, I admit that no gardeners got dirt in their shorts. I just made that up. But everybody got sweaty. that part was true. And the dropout part was true, too. We expected it, though. Cow Hill's fall festival, the Bois d'Arc Bash, is this weekend and the community garden has a booth at the fête. One of us is an accomplished graphic designer and she's put together some nice posters about fall crops and stuff. I probably should just look at the posters to figure out what to plant this fall. Crowd sourcing this bunch is an iffy proposition. Bois d'arc is the local name for the horse apple tree. It's French. But don't rub it in. We don't pronounce it like French, anyway. We say bodark. Apparently the Caddo people who lived here in olden days used the wood from that tree for bows. Lord knows how they worked it. Bois d'arc wood is so hard that some of the houses in town are built on rounds of it. That's the foundation. Rounds of wood sitting on the dirt. It won't rot. Bugs won't eat it. Cow Hill boasts the second largest bois d'arc tree in Texas. We're number two! They gave it a name, but I can't remember what it is. Something like Bo, probably. Bo the bodark. I'd be willing to bet it's not named Skippy. Anyhow, the stalks of lemongrass I rooted and planted this spring have become hedges of lemongrass this fall. I gotcha lemongrass. More lemongrass than brains. So this afternoon, I took a break from hauling mulch to pull up some lemongrass for the community garden booth at the Bash. One stalk became about thirty in about four months. We'll give them away at the Bash to spread good will. And flavor. On another topic, I've just about completed the video piece I'm making for the show I'm in up in Wichita next month. It's about 2,400 pictures of food I culled from PingWire ( http://pingwire.com/ ) over a few days back in July. Each image gets 1/2 second, so the video is 20 minutes long. The show is about food, so I'm also bringing some stuff I made recently: pickled okra, pickled watermelon rind, and pastrami. The pastrami was made using the Ruhlman and Polcyn recipe in Charcuterie. I got the brisket from a farmer I know and I grew the vegetables I pickled. So everything's local. Of course hauling it up to Kansas will mean it ain't local anymore. What's a guy to do? Speaking of local food, has anybody seen the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative coming out of the USDA? The press release is here: http://tinyurl.com/meokfg That and the White House kitchen garden and the new farmers' market signal a small, but perhaps important, shift in governmental attitudes towards food production. Okay, that's not something going on in Cow Hill. My mistake. Plant rapini (broccoli rabe).  It likes cool weather.

There's a large area under the electric highlines near the local Lions Club house. The city and the Lions, with a grant from one of the local LNG plants is making it into a community garden. Looks really good right now they have four of the raised bed garden plots built. Four feet wide by twelve feet long looks like. I wonder if the EMF (is that what it's called?) from the highline will affect the crops

We're ripping out the summer plants at the community garden and setting in cool weather crops. I'm going to plant a boatload of arugula and cilantro. Haven't decided what else. Any suggestions? The first season went pretty well. We had a few dropouts, as we expected. Gardening sounds nice to most people in the abstract. Sweating in the Texas heat and getting dirt in your shorts is a hard reality to face in the concrete. Okay, I admit that most gardeners didn't get dirt in their shorts. Okay, I admit that no gardeners got dirt in their shorts. I just made that up. But everybody got sweaty. that part was true. And the dropout part was true, too. We expected it, though. Cow Hill's fall festival, the Bois d'Arc Bash, is this weekend and the community garden has a booth at the fête. One of us is an accomplished graphic designer and she's put together some nice posters about fall crops and stuff. I probably should just look at the posters to figure out what to plant this fall. Crowd sourcing this bunch is an iffy proposition. Bois d'arc is the local name for the horse apple tree. It's French. But don't rub it in. We don't pronounce it like French, anyway. We say bodark. Apparently the Caddo people who lived here in olden days used the wood from that tree for bows. Lord knows how they worked it. Bois d'arc wood is so hard that some of the houses in town are built on rounds of it. That's the foundation. Rounds of wood sitting on the dirt. It won't rot. Bugs won't eat it. Cow Hill boasts the second largest bois d'arc tree in Texas. We're number two! They gave it a name, but I can't remember what it is. Something like Bo, probably. Bo the bodark. I'd be willing to bet it's not named Skippy. Anyhow, the stalks of lemongrass I rooted and planted this spring have become hedges of lemongrass this fall. I gotcha lemongrass. More lemongrass than brains. So this afternoon, I took a break from hauling mulch to pull up some lemongrass for the community garden booth at the Bash. One stalk became about thirty in about four months. We'll give them away at the Bash to spread good will. And flavor. On another topic, I've just about completed the video piece I'm making for the show I'm in up in Wichita next month. It's about 2,400 pictures of food I culled from PingWire ( http://pingwire.com/ ) over a few days back in July. Each image gets 1/2 second, so the video is 20 minutes long. The show is about food, so I'm also bringing some stuff I made recently: pickled okra, pickled watermelon rind, and pastrami. The pastrami was made using the Ruhlman and Polcyn recipe in Charcuterie. I got the brisket from a farmer I know and I grew the vegetables I pickled. So everything's local. Of course hauling it up to Kansas will mean it ain't local anymore. What's a guy to do? Speaking of local food, has anybody seen the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative coming out of the USDA? The press release is here: http://tinyurl.com/meokfg That and the White House kitchen garden and the new farmers' market signal a small, but perhaps important, shift in governmental attitudes towards food production. Okay, that's not something going on in Cow Hill. My mistake. Neat post!  And neat doings!