Sex in the Garden With Tex

This gets me. Dallas (and North Texas generally) are the very worst in the state as far as water use. Water goes for landscaping, keeping Dallas looking lush and green (which it does). At what cost, though? Here’s a link to an older story about the dam Dallas wants to build — nowhere near Dallas — that will allow it to continue to waste water. Why doesn’t it encourage planting of native plants? It does, to some degree; most city-planted sites use natives.

But most individuals don’t plant natives. And while the city will claim it encourages them to do so, it doesn’t spend much time on it that I’ve seen (and I live here).

The city also claims to have an extensive conservation program in place. And while it does ban sprinklers from mid-morning to evening, that’s about all it does. No teeth, unless your neighbor turns you in. People still water during the day, either blithely unaware of the ban or not caring.

So the city needs more water — because it can’t or won’t make people stop watering their golf-course lawns. And it wants to take the water from East Texas.

I hope the city loses — because waste is the problem here, despite what the city may say. We are wasteful, selfish water pigs. And we don’t deserve to take others’ beautiful places because we are pigs and can’t control ourselves.
 

Okra makes me gag, but it’s pretty good fried. Here’s how to grow it:

The rest of my family will plant okra in hopes of frying up its pods; I’ll stick a few seeds in the ground just to enjoy the pretty, papery flowers. Okra, a relative of hibiscus, shows off large, pale-yellow flowers that resemble hollyhocks or hibiscus. Consider planting it along the border of your garden.

The value of native plants is that when the water crisis comes, you’ll be in better shape than your neighbors:

People called it “the ugly house on the corner.” … But where others saw ugly, Randy and Carla Cochran saw possibility. …
The Cochrans knew what they wanted for their multiple terraces — a colorful perennial garden — but they didn’t know much about plants. And they also knew that they had a lot of ground to cover, so to speak. The terraces, almost all in full sun, added to a lot of challenging planting space. Three years ago, Carla decided they needed an expert.
“She called out of the blue,” says Steve Huddleston, who owns Blooming Concepts, a landscape consultation, design and installation company. “She said, ‘I need some help with perennials.’ It was this cry of desperation.” …
Huddleston  likes low-maintenance gardens with lots of perennials for color, and he relies on heat-tolerant native and adapted plants.

That is all. Resume your regularly scheduled activities. — Tex