Honeymooning

For our little mini-honeymoon we flew to Corpus Christi and stayed in the little island town of Port Aransas. We hung our hats at a little inn named the Tarpon Inn, and had a lovely, undisturbed (no phones, t.v. or clocks) three days of wedded bliss.


Mustang Island and Padre Island are also major bird habitats/refuges, so we aslo went down to the National Seashore on Padre Island. Apparently it's the longest undisturbed barrier island habitat in the world, and also a critical mid-point for migrating birds-- also the only habitat for the Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle. Unluckily for us, the turtles had yet to come to shore and lay eggs, but we did see a TON of birds!!! I've never seen a beach so full of birds... pretty amazing. Of course, all we had was the crappy little disposable we bought at the bait shop, so following is the only pics we got:

One of the many flocks of brown pelicans that cruised the air pockets above the dunes.

A Great Blue Heron! It's supposed to be pretty rare to see them on the ocean side of the island, but from what we could tell, that's what it is! (We were actually MUCH closer than this photo looks like)

The Mrs.

Well we did it!!! We're married!

The only photo I've been able to round up yet is on our band (who was INCREDIBLE!! Midnight Thunder was their name, and they rocked the ranch down with Country, Classic Rock, and a few well placed Elvis songs). I'll post more later, but let this be a FIRST of MANY thanks to all of our friends and family that pitched in and helped us throw one HELL of a party!!

Guerrilla Gardening?

Wes was out talking to our neighbors yesterday evening, when he ran into the house calling, "Lacy, come here! Come on!! We're talking about a community garden!"

This is the giant median next door to my house where the road splits off. It is currently almost empty (save for a few small gardening attempts by my one lone neighbor-- she's trying!), and though she has planted a few trees and some small gardens at the corners, for the most part it's wide open bermuda grass. My neighbor and her husband have tried in the past to have it made into a community garden, but with that comes intense responsibility (mowing, paperwork, etc) that she, as a working new mother of two, doesn't really have time to undertake. So, she "fenced" off little pieces and started a couple of mini "guerrilla gardens" of her own. The city guys that do the mowing will leave it alone if it's easy to avoid and fenced off, and you can basically do what you want! It's more than a little bit of work (pulling up bermuda grass, hauling compost, hauling water) but I think more than worth it! I told her to DEFINATELY count me in this spring/summer to really expand our community garden into something that will really make our little median sing! Flowers, veggies, new trees-- there's no telling what could come!

CONTAIN-O-RAMA and other stories

Wow. Sometimes life throws you curve balls, and sometimes it eeks by like one of those old waterwheels in an old dried up river. Then there are the times where it flies at you 100 mph from every direction and hurls your forward regardless of your feelings on it. That is where I am now.... there is SO much going on, new projects starting every day, new ideas, things falling by the wayside, etc.

SO, first-- we got really lucky at a garage sale on Sunday and tripled the size of my "garden"

I met a cool lady and had a look at what a REAL urban farm could look like.
http://www.happyhenfarm.org/

Gas hit $3 a gallon, so we decided to buy a scooter for neighborhood errands (being delivered in a few weeks!) and met another cool guy that told us ALL about motorcycles and scooters.

I became the crazy lady who drives around high-end neighborhoods gathering their trashed grass clippings for mulch (I got a HUGE bag! Luckily I was in the Man's car, so I didn't get little Judy the bug all grassy)

The CLUCK put a coop building workshop on the calendar for the weekend after the wedding, so my little chick-a-dees will have a place to grow up (still haven't talked to the landlord... thinking about just putting them in and then saying, "Oh, THIS??? This is my chicken coop. Oh, yea, those are it's inhabitants.... that's not a problem... RIGHT?")

And the seedlings are growin' like CRAZY! We'll see how they turn out... the Tigerella Tomatos seem to be filling out well, and as you can see, the sugar snap peas are having quite a time of it (*reminder to self: MUST get raised bed against fence built to house these little beauties!)

Oh, and all the wedding stuff. Going good, will soon be married. We finally bought rings this weekend, so even if all else fails, we WILL be married in approximately 11 days.