about

When we moved to our current house, I started keeping a written gardening journal for myself, then found myself duplicating much of the information in emails and discussions with friends. So I thought I’d combine it all here, with pictures. Bonus! You can click on the pictures to enlarge them and get a closeup look at the bugs on my veggies.

Technically, McKinney is in a slightly colder zone than Dallas (7b vs 8a), even without the urban heat island effect of major cities. But my experiences and planting dates should be very similar to the entire DFW metroplex.

A mosaic birdbath I designed and made at a groovy workshop in Wimberley, TX.

As for the “make mckinney weird” title: I’m from Austin. I miss it terribly. While I love my house, and my neighborhood, and most of my neighbors, and my downtown, and my office, andandand . . . McKinney is not nearly weird enough. It’s still very Dallas. For instance, there’s no public art, to speak of. And the local idea of “green space” is a baseball field. So, McKinney has a long way to go. But I’m hoping that by being a contrarian, and voting, and planting vegetables in my front yard so that people stop and talk with me and steal tomatoes, I’ll bring a little bit of Austin with me. Perhaps it will take root and eventually bloom.

While I write mostly about gardening, I also occasionally share cooking stories, in the most broad sense of the word. My husband and his friends built a brick bread oven in the back yard, for instance (which is fully documented here, under the category “brick/bread oven” in the lefthand menu). I am also interested in all things textile, and can’t promise that I won’t write about that, too. It’s plenty weird enough, and I need a good record of my experiments.

I hope you enjoy the stories. Please share your experiences with me through the comments. It means so much to me to hear other weirdos pipe up. And if you’re in the area, please, let out your inner weirdness. Then share. We got your back.