A Eulogy For Dora

Seeing that I have featured my dog (the "Compost Digger" I think I called her) in this insignificant blog, I find it only fitting to write a note about her on her passing.



I found Dora three years ago at about this time while bird watching in Sanger, Texas on the Lake Ray Roberts Greenbelt. She followed me around the whole day and I told myself that if she stayed with me until I got done birding, I would take her home and try to find her an owner. Well, that owner ended up being me. Over the years she went from being the dog with the funny name with a new home, to the dog with the funny toe that rolled in horse shit every time she stayed at my parents place, to the dog who absolutely hated the mailman and couldn't stop digging in my compost. So, to explain her lifeline. Her name: My Spanish-challenged self assumed that since El Dorado means the golden road, Dorado must mean gold, since she was golden and a female I figured I could add an "a" at the end to make it feminine and call her Dorada (Dora for short). So, first she got a stupid name, then moved to Corpus with us. Funny toe: Playing with our friends dog Tlaloc, and probably her only dog friend bigger than her, she tore the tendons on her middle toe. So, it healed funny and was always kind of looked weird and made a weird clicking noise when she would walk on our hard wood floors. Hating the mailman: Every since we moved to Austin she just despised all the mail carriers. Also, she wouldn't stop digging in my compost even when I put a fence around it, so I just figured she was turning it for me and let her at it.

Dora passed yesterday afternoon out at my parent’s house in Sanger. She was hit by a UPS truck, shortly after arriving out there to play on the “farm” while Julie and I were going to Mexico, which I find ironic since a year ago at this time she bit a mail carrier. Man, Karma is a bitch! My sisters and mother rushed her to the vet, but she did not make it. Luckily she died even before the UPS man could put her in the back of my sister’s car, so she did not suffer much, if any. Julie and I drove out there last night and buried her in my parents pasture. My family build a very nice box for her while we were driving and we put her favorite things in there with her. The top of the box read "Dora...from Sanger", it was an extremely thoughtful gesture. If you don’t know, I found Dora out in Sanger during Christmastime three years ago, and now during this Christmastime I buried her three miles from where I found her. Although way too early, I find the situation quite fitting.

For someone who doesn't have kids and I will quickly admit I haven't had many hard times in my life, this is pretty tough. But I know everyone loses pets, and it was bound to happen (maybe not in this way). I just hope I gave her a happy life while she was here with us. Thank you everyone who played with her, gave her a scratch or pet on the head, or let their dogs play with her. I know those where her happiest moments. She will be missed greatly, and now I have to do extra work to turn the compost pile.

Dora is survived by her Ma and Pa, and her two brothers of a different species, Zissou and Klaus.

R.I.P.

First Frost

This is a few days late, but we had our first frost when we woke up Saturday morning. At the same time as being excited because now the collard and mustard greens are suppose to taste better, we were a bit worried since my spouse, her girlfriend, and one of our grad school buddies had signed up to do a bike ride touring the urban farms and community gardens around Austin. It was a chilly bike ride, but we got through it with minimal complaints. Here are some pictures of frost on the garden.

Getting prepared the night before with my half-ass cold frame. i was worried my little lettuce sprouts might not be able to take it.



Waking up to the first frost of the season.

Front yard greens.



The collards.


Chard de Suizo.

Cooking Mustard Greens, Drinking Indio

I finally got a chance to cook some mustard greens out of the garden. Not that anyone really cares, but I thought I would share how I cooked them. First crack open a beer, in my case an Indio that my mother-in law brought back from her last trip to Mexico. One perk about marrying into a Mexican family, you get Mexican things that don't always get exported to the States.


The bounty! I thought this was going to be way to much for just my spouse and I, but it shrank down a lot after cooking. I harvested by just cutting the outer leaves and leaving the middle ones to keep growing, the "cut and come again" method. You can see the mustard green plants on previous pictures of my front yard garden. They are the ones on the back corners towards my Texas natives garden.


Sliced it all up like lettuce and dried it in my salad spinner. I made sure to clean this batch thoroughly, since I gave my little sister a whole bunch of Swiss chard, and she found a caterpillar in her food after she had eaten most of it. That's funny!


I sauteed some garlic and shallots (recipe called for onions, but neither of us like onions) in olive oil, then through in the mustard greens. Stirred it around a bit, and then covered.


Since there is so much before it cooks down, I had to run two skillets. One is for cooking the greens, the second is for holding the already cooked greens and keeping them warm.


Put them all back together and added some Pinot Grigio white wine vinegar, and let simmer for just a few minutes.


Done. Add it as a side to our roasted acorn squash and peanuts. So, this meal was almost all local. Mustard greens from my garden. Garlic, shallots, and acorn squash from our CSA farm in east Austin. So only the peanuts and the olive oil was not local. Now the best part is the peanuts were probably grown in Vietnam, sent to China for packaging, sent to California, then to the brands headquarters in Alabama for distribution, then probably sent to the HEB distribution center then finally to my HEB. So, they defeat any notion of feeling good about eating local, since they made up all the miles.

Fall Bounty and some Texas Ecology

A bit of food from the backyard! Salad greens and radishes made a nice winter style salad for a night that dropped into the 30's.


First time to grow radishes, but they seemed to come out OK. Some had already split from being in the ground too long, but still tasty. When they say radishes are a fast growing annual, they mean fast growing.

The front yard garden is still doing well with Swiss chard, two cabbage plants, some mustard greens, and collard greens. More pictures to come when I actually get a chance to harvest and cook a meal with all this. Life has been busy.



I had a Gulf Muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris) in my native garden that wasn't doing very well, so I decided I needed to have a prescribed burn. I burned the clump down to a nub, which turned out to be a trip since I did not think about the dry cedar mulch that was around it. All in all, I didn't burn down the neighborhood, and the muhly clump started growing back already and its only been about a week and a half. There's some Texas ecology for you. Texas loves to burn!

Lacewings and Chard!

Red cabbage, Chinese cabbage, Swiss chard, collard greens, and mustard greens. Bring on the first frost! The "front yard green's" garden, as we are calling it, is coming along. We finally got some mulch on it, and pulled the first wave of weeds, but we still need to finish out the border with some free rocks from the office. Its to muddy to get back to the rock pile, so we will have to wait for the rain to stop.


Some good ol' fashion Swiss Chard. My favorite thing to eat in the winter!


Lacewing eggs. These guys are quite welcome to set up shop and wage war on some aphids!


Black-eyed peas for the new year!

Composting Shoe Update: September 2009

We started to put in our new front garden bed this weekend, and we needed to stir in some homemade compost. I figured it was good time to check up on the shoes. Here is an update with a few pictures.



You can see the gum soles starting to decompose, but the tweed outside is holding strong. The inside is also starting to breakdown a bit, but I am thinking it had already started to decompose on my feet!



A wheelbarrow full of compost for the new front yard bed. Its amazing how much we threw in there that have decomposed since Spring. Napkins, compostable to-go containers, a full watermelon, wash clothes, etc.

Winter Adventure

I have decided on an adventure for my winter break. Last year I went to West Texas and ventured around for a few days. This year, I am going to ride my bike home to see my family for the holiday. If anyone wants to join me for any legs, or nights of camping, just let me know. I am not sure what days I will be doing this, but the tentative route so far is as follows (it could and probably will change as the dates get closer):

Day 1: Austin (my house) to Moody, TX (camp at Mother Neff State Park) -- 84.3 mi.
Day 2: Moody to Glen Rose (camp at Dinosaur Valley State Park) -- 79.2 mi.
Day 3: Glen Rose to Decatur (probably get a hotel for the last night) -- 78.3 mi.
Day 4: Decatur to Denton -- 32.8 mi.

Let me know if you want to ride along.

Bachelor Party to Big Bend

A few pictures from the guys trip to Big Bend. Enjoy.


At the top of Emory Peak (3rd highest point in Texas, 7,795 ft.).

Cody and Scott on the trail to Ernst Tinaja.

View from the house the morning of departure.

La Casa.

Desert Cottontail (Sylvilagus audubonii)

The Ol' Man enjoying the evening in the mountains.

Santa Elena Canyon (the great country of Mexico on the left).

Father and Son.

The Ol' Man on the edge of the U.S.

Blind Prickly Pear Cactus (Opuntia rufida)



Cody on the edge (literally) of the South Rim.

Mike enjoying the half way point of the Chisos South Rim trail.

Mexican Jay. Notice that he is banded, they are doing a lot of Mexican Jay research in the Chisos mountains. AKA Mikes buddy.

Early morning view from the house.

Fossils.

More fossils.

Bigfoot's fossilized footprint.

Long-spur Columbine (Aquilegia chrysantha).

Dad and I at the Cattail Falls waterfall.

The Ol' Man at the falls.

Cattail Falls.

Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens) .

Strawberry cactus (Echinocereus engelmannii).

Velvet mites.

The boys waiting for the first hike of the trip.