HANC ArBOOretum, 2009

Van Weldon has been sprucing up the website for Wood Duck Farm.  C&D are now on the front page; the image links to the fall CSA application. 

The Big Thicket Association held its July meeting at Village Creek State Park, in Lumberton.  We showed up in time to enjoy some music and get and give a round of hugs before sharing dinner at the park’s cabin and spending time with Jerry Rashall at the park’s nature center.

Above:  Shaun Davis, Director of the Southeast Texas Regional Planning Commission; former aide to the late Congressman and Big Thicket advocate Charles (Charlie) Wilson; longtime musician.

Shaun’s son, Hunter Davis.  Hunter and Shaun were performing at the park’s pavilion, which was comfortably cool despite the heat.  And, bonus!  It had a playground and swingset next door for C&D to explore once the music was done.

With Maxine Johnston and Ann Roberts, two of the original Alligator Snapping Turtles.  (Alligator snapping turtles are tough, long-living turtles of the southern United States.  They are not aggressive but can turn dangerous when provoked!)

In the cabin:  Maxine with park manager Jerry Rashall at the Village Creek State Park cabin.  Maxine brought plenty for dinner—she always knows how to take good care of us.    The drive to East Texas was a little easier than it had been since the AVM burst.  It helps that the roads are for the most part open, and I’m familiar with them since traveling on them while obtaining my Master’s at Rice.  But I also take the easier trip as a sign that improvement since the AVM continues, if sometimes imperceptively slow.

What do you do on Wednesdays? 

We hang around and hand out vegetables.

Van Weldon from Wood Duck Farm started a CSA last year.  The farm is in Cleveland—about fifty miles north of town.   This is a little far to pick up some groceries so Joe, Van’s driver, delivers the weekly shares to various points around town.  Last year my local pickup point was in an office building, but this year so many people signed up that Van needed to find a larger space.

Like my garage.  In this picture on the left we have the full shares, on the right the partial, smaller, shares.  In the center we keep the signout sheet, and the cooler contains treats like cool salad greens.  Carmen and David are usually around, somewhere.  Carmen likes to make sure everybody puts a check by their name and remember their salad greens.  (If someone forgets to sign out, she tattles to me.)

The first week David was so excited to have so much company that he made a kid-sized centerpiece with his favorite shells and some flowers from the front yard.

It takes about three hours for everyone to pick up their shares, so C&D usually pass the time by drawing or painting on the driveway.

One day David drew some rockets, which inspired a customer to stop and draw some artwork of his own.

Another day David drew a picture of Sarah Hazel, who had come by for a visit.  In the picture Sarah is holding his hand.

After everyone picks up their shares we get to enjoy what we’ve been given that week.  With the contents of our shares we might cook (here, Carmen is cooking rosemary portabello mushrooms from a share in May, then eating them all up with David):

play with our food (as an example, this is David playing telephone with a cucumber from David Cater of Utility Research Garden; David is another producer who is gracious to deliver to us on Saturday):

slice and dehydrate (shown, yellow squash chips):

or just gobble it all up (like last week’s gigantic and sweet cantaloupe).    The summer CSA just has a couple of weeks left, then we all will rest during the hottest, hardest part of the summer.  The fall CSA should begin in late September; see you then.

    The UPS man brought us something new today:  a stomp rocket.  There are some fun physics in the stomp rocket, plus they’re cheaper than the model rocket (no need to buy “fee-ul”).  I can also tell you that it does a pretty good job of wearing C&D out before bedtime.

We’re not done with the Alpha III, however.  Yesterday C&D were bummed because they realized they had forgotten to stick their dolly C&Ds on the rocket to go up just like the astronauts.  I imagined their little dolls strapped to the rocket with rubber bands or (David’s favorite) masking tape, flying high over the park.  Wheeeee!  C&D figured they can try it next time.  (Actually, one of the Estes rockets has a cargo bay built in . . . )  (And, no, I’m not letting Dolly Carmen and Dolly David get shot into the air taped onto a model rocket.  Too dangerous for everyone involved, especially the Dollies.)

The Alpha III creates a fun flame front and vapor trail that seems to say “Today, the park; tomorrow, the moon!”  The box shows a picture of a rocket with an orange flame shooting out the end.  I didn’t notice this at the store but at home David sure did, and asked about it.  I told him that the flame in the picture was just for “decorating” (marketing, in other words), because the rocket was just pretend.   I didn’t know what would come out . . . hot air?  Hummingbirds?  Oh, Mommy, Mommy.

But now, to the great beyond of sweet dreams and a good night’s sleep . . . it’s time for bed.

From our dining table we can watch the sun rise and set, the moon wash the city in its blue light, track the planes on the way to Hobby Airport and watch the clouds drift and build like mounds of soap bubbles in the kitchen sink.  We look for satellites, count stars, and wonder if the moon has mountains.

But then . . .

I think it started with an airplane ride, and then a request from Carmen that she take a flight into space.  The airplane ride was cute and all, but a little tame, I guess.

Maybe this was how last week we began talking about shuttles and rockets, boosters and stages.  I showed C&D some shuttle liftoffs on the NASA’s mission pages and then some Thunderbirds and Blue Angels demos on YouTube.  We talked about rocket fuel and jets, g’s and gravity, space suits and the atmosphere, platforms and liftoffs.  We showed them how Rice has a former student, Shannon Walker, on the ISS now, and watched her crew travel on the Soyuz and enter the ISS.  Carmen asked if the Houston astronaut was still in space?  Yes, we told her, until Christmas.  But Carmen asked a few more times anyway, maybe for good measure.

David was all about the mechanics of the liftoff.  How did the rocket work?  What was all that fire about?  What was the platform for?

One morning he built a rocket out of Matt’s old Capsela toys, brought home after that first airplane trip to California.  With the rocket in one hand, David held his George Ranch beeswax candle out with the other, and asked me to light it.  Why? I asked.  “To make the rocket go up,” he answered.  Oh, right.  I imagined the smell of burnt plastic and the sight of Matt’s Capsela pieces melted and warped.  I smiled, mumbled something, and stashed the candles and matches out of reach.

More questions, more answers that only brought more questions.  Does the sky end?  What’s up with those suits?  Why is that astronaut being interviewed upside-down?

Monday, after noting this aeronautical obsession, I bought us a small model rocket.  Matt and C&D built the rocket last night, and this evening we launched it at Hermann Park.

We used an Estes Alpha III rocket (bought at G&G in the Village) and started with the B6-4 engines that came with the rocket.

When it was time to launch the rocket Carmen stood halfway down the hill, afraid of the noise it might make.  She had paid attention to all those NASA videos, after all.  David isn’t keen on loud noises, either, but he really, really wanted to send it up.  So he did, and again, and again.

  The first launch sent the rocket to the middle of the street in front of the garden center, the second sent the rocket to the street in front of the HMNS parking garage.The man at the hobby shop warned us that could happen, so he also sold us a set of smaller A engines.   Those, he said, would only send the rocket a couple hundred feet.

Good thing—everybody was tuckered from chasing the rocket all over.Then it was time to go home.  We were out of recovery wadding (special paper that prevents the parachute from melting), and, anyway,  it was almost bedtime.

David has already started reviewing plans for our next rocket adventure.  We need more recovery wadding, for instance.  And at the park he decided we need to bring about five baskets’ worth of rocket engines the next time we go out.  (“Feeyool,” he calls it.)  It didn’t take long for him to start thinking in greater, grander scales.  In the garage he watched Matt lift the rocket out of the trunk of the car.  “Next time,” he asked, “Can we make it go into space?”

The model rocket was cute and all, but . . .

“Agricultural experts said the use of other chemicals is already creeping up. Monsanto and other companies are developing new seeds designed to resist older herbicides like dicamba and 2,4-D, a weed killer developed during World War II and an ingredient in Agent Orange, which was used to destroy jungle foliage during the Vietnam War and is blamed for health problems among veterans.

Penn State University weed scientist David Mortensen estimates that in three or four years, farmers’ use of dicamba and 2,4-D will increase by 55.1 million pounds a year because of resistance to Roundup. That would push both far up the list of herbicides heavily used by farmers.”

“Roundup-resistant weeds pose environmental threat.”  Associated Press.  Chron.com (Houston Grows).  21 June 2010.