Suzie Park

Thanks for the update!

That water flowing over the rocks is so beautiful! The addition of little ponds along the way sounds also beautiful! My permaculture earthworks guy said it wasn't worth doing more ponds on our property except maybe a little one for fun near the house. I would love ponds feeding into each other but I will be content with my rather large run-off pond and the berms/swales he put in.

Harmony Dybala wrote:On Saturday it was a mudhole with dead fish like you saw, but Ex-hurricane Beryl hit on Monday, filling the pond completely! To my great astonishment this morning, lots of smaller fish survived the die-off, and there’s already a new cohort of tadpoles!

We got almost 5" of rain in Burnet, Texas within days including last Monday and Tuesday. It was marvelous. Glad to see your critters are reproducing again! Ahhhh. I agree with the stepped up method if your pond goes dry enough again. My brother's father-in-law has a small decorative pond and he says part of it is very deep so the fish can hide from predators.

I love your ongoing project by the way - you didn't overthink it; you just started it and let nature find a way. :)

Sorry to hear about your papa. Great you can take care of him. Thanks for the updates. I'll be checking the past stuff soon.

We're back and forth between our 8B Austin place which is 5 minutes from our daughter's family and our new grandbaby. So no immediate plans to be fulltime at our 8A (but barely) country place where we've recently had awesome earthworks done. Really, the temperature difference between the two places is only about 2 degrees. Extremely different soils and almost no sunny areas in the burbs but haven't planted at the country place yet till we get rainwater catchment going, hopefully in the next month.

I thoroughly enjoyed this thread, even though I "should" be doing other things right now. The photos, the amazing drawings, the inspiration, DANG you are the firewood whisperer - WOWWW.

Much love to you, Peter, Mimi, ChimiChanga, and the people and places in Japan.

From Suzie in the Austin area. Got our permaculture swales/berms being done this week by an awesome guy. Onward to rejuvenating some already pretty but could be prettier/healthier Tierra.

Spent a lovely 2 hours yesterday with our bees and my smoker lasted 2 hours which is amazing! I am still a novice at getting it lit, but chopped a bunch of branches this week with my pruners and the bigger pieces with the miter saw, so now I feel smoker fuel-rich.

I looked up Alosha and found his site - he still offers online courses and consultations. Very cool earthships, hobbit house, etc.

https://www.bioveda.co/

I'm interested in his hobbit house model for an office/storage space in Central Texas.

Azure Standard says their laundry detergent Azure Clean Sweet Zephyr Laundry Liquid, (Hot & Cold), Fragrance Free is gray water safe; however, it contains sodium citrate.

Newish beekeeper here (about 13 months).
If you build a slotted tray of some sort to hold the eggs aloft AND a barrier underneath, you could check on the eggs without disturbing the bees - you'd have to be able to approach from a side without their entrance or ventilation where they can see you and go on high alert which is stressful.
If you have to turn the eggs every day or similar, this would only make sense if the hive were super close to your house.
Interesting low-tech idea though!

Thanks for these links! Great to know varieties that got their start in Texas and I've definitely bought that brand from local garden centers.  I happened to have bought a Lila type. She's in my well-lit cottage east-facing for the winter in Central Texas.  I use a Blumat gravity-fed ceramic-carrot system from a 5-gallon bucket to feed her and two of my citrus trees. They use very little water so far - we'll see about summer when she's outside. My Sarocco orange I've taken inside every winter except this one just during the one cold snap we've had so far - she was in the garage for about a week. I am VERY new to growing fruit trees.

Kim Goodwin wrote:This is one of the nurseries that sells hardier avocados in Texas. They are wholesale only, so you may need to ask for a distributor list. They also developed some varieties.

https://brazoscitrus.com/Products/Fruit/Avocado/index.html