Flowering

Jun. 2nd, 2014 11:35 am
rebeccmeister: (Acromyrmex)
[personal profile] rebeccmeister
My weekend gardening activities weren't the usual gamut; things are at a reasonably self-sustaining stage, aside from me needing to stake up the tomatoes a bit more and harvest things before they get too crazy. Projects I can easily accomplish 15 minutes at a time in the morning right after I water.

Instead - on Saturday I remembered, just before heading out to Brazos Natural Foods, that there's a section of my return route that is dangerously overgrown. Riding towards BNF, I'll watch for a break in traffic and take the lane on Texas Ave, which is the biggest superhighway road in town here. It isn't too impossibly hard or intimidating to then merge left into the turn lane and turn into the grocery store parking lot. At least, it's easier to do that than to ride the sidewalk down to the traffic light where there's no way for the signal to detect me and no crosswalk whatsoever. I just don't enjoy the ka-thud off the curb into the drainage ditch and the frantic scramble across the road, for some strange reason.

The return section is a different story. I just don't feel comfortable taking the lane and then merging for that left-turn back onto the side street, so I stay on the sidewalk until the next roadway, where I'll either do an insane u-turn hook back around to get across Texas Ave, or I'll take a right onto the side street, ride down a short distance, u-turn, reapproach the intersection, wait for a clearing across Texas, and then get back across. Hm. Let me just show you a picture:

TexasAvePoorAccess

The big green arrow points at the narrow portion of the sidewalk, running over Carter Creek. Let's just say that the whole sidewalk is now clear again. Also, there are wild grapes growing in the creek ravine. I didn't taste any of them, but I think I might stop by next time to see if they're ripe.

The other pruning work was at the tail-end of a hectic Sunday. I got up, made pancakes, rode over to Village Foods for a few more grocery items (chickpeas in bulk, baking powder in bulk, organic red leaf lettuce), then went to my friend A's house to help her move to a condo. After we wrapped that up, I helped my friends J and T prune out some mountain biking paths through the park that's on the lower left of the satellite photo above. There's a kid's mountain biking clinic starting today, so they were under the gun to clear out foliage and make at least a basic loop rideable for the kids. It will be a great beginner trail. But man, the mosquitoes. I don't like DEET, but it was a welcome relief when T appeared with the mosquito repellant.

Meanwhile, in my own garden, things are flowering. The Flickr photo tour begins here, and goes forward. I don't feel like retyping the descriptions I posted there, so I just have to hope you'll be encouraged to click through and check out the remaining eight photos.

Survivor strawberry

Date: 2014-06-03 05:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randomdreams.livejournal.com
That looks like it is -- or was? -- an awful road layout. Are you towing a trailer full of groceries?

Date: 2014-06-03 12:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rebeccmeister.livejournal.com
It's pretty obnoxious. A lot of the infrastructure in this town is pretty old. Part of the problem is that there are two cities sitting side-by-side, and while one city has stepped things up to accommodate bicycles, the other city hasn't.

I generally don't bring a whole trailer to grocery-shop - I can usually fit everything into panniers and a basket. But whenever I do have the trailer with me, it's even more obnoxious. The other thing I didn't mention is that there's a chunk of crumbling pavement on the narrow bridge, in just the wrong spot. There's a meeting coming up in 9 days to talk about a regional bicycle plan...and I'll have words. That's for sure.

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