Earth Day Celebration at River Bend

River Bend Nature Center will celebrate Earth Day on Saturday, April 23, from noon - 3. The schedule is still being developed, but I will be there leading bird walks along the trail.

I'll post more information as it becomes available.

Don't forget to take your garage sale items to River Bend this week. The resale event is April 9.

Keep Wichita Falls Beautiful Needs Your Help

All of us prefer to live in a good looking city. The nonprofit, Keep Wichita Falls Beautiful (KWFB), would like to do a lot more to make our city more liveable, but in order to do so, they need help. This is a small group, and they desperately need energetic Board members and other members who want to get involved in activities to make the community a more beautiful place to live and work. If you are interested in learning more, contact Rachel at brown.rachel82@yahoo.com.

Spring Cleaning in Wichita Falls

Keep Wichita Falls Beautiful is sponsoring a community cleanup on April 9. Interested individuals and groups should meet at Scotland Park at 9:00 AM to pick up bags and to be assigned a location. If you've looked around while driving in Wichita Falls, you know a thorough clean up is overdue. We didn't have a big turn out last year, so help spread the word and recruit some workers. I have taken part in many clean ups and it is amazing how much trash you can pick up in just a couple of hours.

Gardening

One way we can all live more sustainably is to grow some of our own food. I added a few vegetable plants in the flower beds where we removed some invasives this past year. Today Jim Miller pointed me to an ad selling some heirloom tomato plants on Craig's list. Heirloom plants are open pollinated and grown in an earlier era. They come in many varieties not commonly seen now. Take a look at some of the varieties shown in the referenced ad, for example. They provide the opportunity to maintain some of the genetic diversity in our food crops, and give us the chance to experiment with more colors, flavors and textures than we can easily find in our stores. It's also a stick in the eye to Monsanto, which I am all for. I contacted Sherry and she is delivering some plants to me in Wichita Falls on Friday. You may be able to get your order in for this week. If not, she'll be back in town next Friday. Along with the tomatoes I already put it, I'll probably have more tomatoes than I know what to do with this year, but we'll see. The heat hasn't arrived yet. Now for some herbs.

Three Water Topics

First, I went to the Red River Authority Clean Rivers Program meeting today and heard some interesting speakers and had a nice lunch (thanks, RRA!) Although all of the presentations were of interest to me, I was looking forward to three presentations in particular--I wasn't disappointed. An opportunity to get involved in the Region B water planning process is coming up on May 18 at 10:00 AM. The Region B Water Planning Group will be holding an public meeting to get input on the scope of planning activities for the next round of water planning. There was also an interesting article on coming water shortages on the Nature Conservancy blog today. Although international in focus, the US has not and will not escape having to deal with issues of water quality and quantity.

Wichita Falls Compost Giveaway April 2

Instead of typing all of the details here, I am giving you the link to the 30-second YouTube video with all of the details. Be sure to take your water bill and something to cover your load.

Looks Like a Drought

We have not had any rain this year. If it wasn't for the two winter storm events in February, I don't believe we have had any precipitation this year. According to a post I saw on Facebook from a local TV station, so far this year we have the worst drought in 44 years. Although I am hoping the weather breaks and we get some of this moisture that has been teasing us for weeks, right now it's just plain dry and dusty, which doesn't bode well for plants or animals.

I was at Wichita Valley Nursery yesterday and saw some olla pots with information on using them as drip irrigation. Olla pots are unglazed terra cotta pots that are buried in the garden and filled with water. The water slowly seeps out of the pot into the surrounding soil, keeping it moist near the roots of the plants. We certainly qualify as arid right now. I didn't ask Paul how much he was selling his pots for, but online they are pretty pricey. If anyone has local sources and prices, please post a comment.

If you happen to be artsy/craftsy (I'm definitely not), then I found a video on making your own olla pots on YouTube. Ignore what seems to be narration that you can barely hear at the beginning--it is a radio in the background. The person doesn't talk at all in the video.

Since we will almost certainly be on watering restrictions soon if we don't get some significant rain soon, now is a good time to look at alternatives for low water use in your yard and garden.