THE PARK MEMORIAL CONDO WILDLIFE REFUGE A participant reports on a local running group’s visit last week to a thriving wilderness area off Memorial Dr. — otherwise known as the campus of the Park Memorial Condos: “We ran around the Rice Military area heading south, then ran into the parking garage under Park Memorial, winding our way into the courtyard gate and the path that leads to the swimming pool. [We] had a “beer check” (kind of like a water stop, but, you know, with beer) right by the mosquito-infested pool. This was about 8:30 p.m. and it was pitch dark (the moon hadn’t yet risen). It was creepy and also awesome. I was really surprised by how easy it was to get in there. We just walked right through the gate, then walked right back out. Several of the apartments’ doors were wide open too. It was rather spooky. I expected to see homeless squatting there but we never encountered anyone . . . . It was pretty cool to finally see what the inside of the complex looked like, but sad to see the state of disrepair they’re under.” [Swamplot inbox; previously]
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: THEY TOOK OUR YARDS! “The Chinese Tallow has been taking quite a beating lately in the press. ‘Wahhh, kill them all because they’re not native and they’re invasive!’ I’m starting to get these hateful declarations confused with Arizona’s immigration law. How about if instead of simply dismissing it as a ‘noxious weed,’ we instead think about the potential of that much fast-growing biomass. Fear is what’s invasive.” [kilray, commenting on Comment of the Day: Gotta Know Your Chinese Imports]
“If you were located a tad above sea level, between a river, a gulf and a bayou, where it’s hot and humid enough to rot any plant or animal, and were the site of several industrial plants, you’d stink, too.” Where’s Ann Huey talking about? Oh, Beaumont: “. . . home to a lot of homes with history, or no history, or that are history. There’s old money, new money, and no money.” There’s much in this introduction to our East Texas neighbor that should sound awfully familiar to a Houstonian — even if you’ve never had a chance to visit.
- Video Lunch: Year in Review, #5 [Beaumont Enterprise]
Video: Ann Huey
THE LUNCHTIME RACKET AT BRADY’S LANDING Visiting the Houston Ship Channel on a promotional “toxic tour” of sites where the air will likely be invigorated once nearby refineries get chugging on the Canadian tar sands headed for Houston through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, Perry Dorrell stops by the scenic Brady’s Landing Restaurant during lunchtime: “During the evening the restaurant is like many others in the city: bustling with patrons and staff, the parking lot busy with diner traffic. During the day, however, the region’s oppressive noise is invasive and obnoxious; right next door a facility is dry-docking barges and a team of several men operating industrial-grade pressure washers removes barnacles from their hulls. Cranes swing containers to and from foreign freighters, crashing and booming. The warehouses directly across the channel are beehives of activity, with stevedores operating forklifts, shifting and stacking and slamming pallets of material. It was amazing how loud it was, a phenomenon I never noticed in my visits at night to dine. On the other side of the restaurant a steamshovel was loading and unloading a smoking, 200-hundred-foot high brown pile of … something, fertilizer-like in appearance. No accompanying aroma, fortunately. Maybe we were upwind.” [Brains and Eggs; previously on Swamplot]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: PRAIRIE HOME COMPANIONS “In Houston, I think a tree over 20 years is considered ‘old growth.’” [Hellsing, commenting on Shopping for Antique Stores on Ferndale]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: MICROLOTS BY THE PARK “I think most people flee because they think they need yards for those kids, and with X amount of money you can either buy a house from the 50s on a lot or a townhome from the 80s to now on a microlot. I have a five year old and moved from my last two homes on lots (including Lazybrook) to a townhome in the 77007 and couldn’t be happier. We live next to the biggest, most amazing parks in the city, the arboretum, etc – why would I mow my own yard when I can walk a block to that?! This is turning out to be a better place to raise my kid than any of those neighborhoods were.” [Brandy C, commenting on Comment of the Day: Moving for Kids]
BATTLEFIELD RECOVERY A group of Texas history buffs called the Friends of the San Jacinto Battleground has spent $625K to buy 19 mostly overgrown acres near the San Jacinto Monument — 8 of them under water — from the estate of noted car collector and attorney John O’Quinn. The group intends to restore the tidal marsh, place historical markers, and add 1830s-approprate foliage such as cypress and pine to the property on Battleground Rd. just southwest of the Lynchburg Ferry, on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou. The goal: a landscape that evokes the good ol’ days of the Texas Revolution, long before the local ground started sinking. More detailed plans for the redevelopment are still under discussion, but the organization hopes to raise $325K for the project and wants to begin improvements in time for the 175th anniversary of the Texian assault in 2011. A few decades after it was crossed by battling Mexican and Texian armies, the land held a Confederate armory, barracks and shipyard. More recently, other potential bidders for the property were interested in using it for an industrial complex or a school for energy and maritime workers. [Houston Chronicle; project details]
A reader writes:
There is an overgrown 12 foot wide city-owned “alley” behind my house in Riverside Terrace that due to weeds and trees is no longer navigable by anything larger than a “mini hydraulic excavator.” I know this because Centerpoint drove one back there when they put in my new gas meter in October.
My busy-body retired neighbor informs me that I am responsible for maintaining the alley by keeping the weeds and grass down, though when I look a few houses down in both directions from my house, I see a forest – and no one other than my neighbor complaining about it. So I quit mowing it 2 months ago, much to her chagrine. I’d like to treat it more like a green belt. Occasionally I’ll see a screech owl hunting back there during the late evening from its perch on my wooden fence. IMO the more trees, the better.
Am I really legally bound to mow back there? Mowing that small strip of grass would equate to another 2 pints of sweat lost, according to my experiences this past month.â€
Photo: Swamplot inbox
ANOTHER BAYTOWN DROP City council members in Baytown are meeting this morning to try to figure out what to do about a sinkhole that’s opened up next to a sewer line that runs adjacent to a bend in Goose Creek. abc13 reported last night that the sinkhole was caused by a rupture in the line, but that repair work had already begun. [abc13]
That proposed underground pipeline linking Houston to the luscious bounty of Canadian strip-mined tar sands will sneak into Houston from the east, and won’t even make it inside Beltway 8, according to this map released by the State Department. The line is scheduled to carry up to 500,000 barrels a day of crude oil to Texas alone — probably more than 8 times as much oil as the successors to the Deepwater Horizon are currently delivering directly to the Gulf of Mexico.
TransCanada plans to stitch the pipeline over the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies water to part of Texas and much of the Midwest.
The pipeline also would cross more than 30 rivers and streams in Texas and could run underneath the Big Thicket National Preserve, said environmentalists and landowners.
Texas and Oklahoma portions of the 2,000-mile-long Keystone XL pipeline are still under review; this Friday is the deadline for public comment on the draft environmental impact statement released in April.
[TransCanada VP Robert Jones] defended the project, saying pipelines are the safest way to transport oil. The company will use pipe that has been employed safely in Canada for years and bury it 4 feet deep, he said.
Jones also downplayed concerns about Houston’s air quality, saying the Canadian crude is replacing oil from other sources and has not led to changes in the refineries’ pollution permits.
But [Matthew] Tejada, of Air Alliance Houston, found fault with TransCanada’s position. He said the tar-sands crude when refined will emit higher levels of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter into the air than conventional oil.
- Proposed oil pipeline to Texas raises worries [Houston Chronicle]
- Keystone Pipeline Project [TransCanada]
Those of you who feared the appearance in Swamplot comments of a second warning sign might be the signal of an escalating fruit-tree security threat in West U need not be alarmed: It’s apparently nothing new. The reader who first sent in a photo of the best-protected fruit tree in town — on Tangley Rd. west of Buffalo Speedway — claims not to have even noticed that the second sign a few steps away was any different from the first. And yet it is! The uh, somewhat enhanced wording on the second sign is en Español.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: PUBLIC MEDIAN FRUIT-FOR-ALL “Private property should be respected, but I was really happy the time I saw a person gathering the fruit from a Mexican plum tree on the median near the Judiway post office.” [mary t., commenting on The High-Security Fruits of West University]
And here we have perhaps the best-monitored fig tree on Tangley, west of Buffalo Speedway in West University. Practicing for the thorough investigation that is sure to follow, the reader who sent us the tip claims to have been “in the middle of a public street when I took the photo.” Fig poachers, you have been warned! Says our reader:
who knew these figs were so valuable they’re worth the sign, netting, security camera, and wiring installed to protect them?
Oh, but have you ever tasted a West U fig?
Late Update: The fig tree has been outed by several commenters. C’mon — fess up! You’re really a peach, aren’t you?
Photo: Swamplot inbox
WHERE TO PICK UP A FREE BITE TO EAT IN MONTROSE 
Looking for a little pony’s foot for your salad? You won’t find any in Montrose grocery stores, but you should have no problem picking some up in any number of nearby vacant lots: “. . . in just a three-block radius, [petroleum chemist and urban foraging teacher Mark Vorderbruggen] identifies 34 different edibles. Things like mallows, which have rough leaves with toothed edges, and wild radishes which have long, symmetrical leaves, four yellow or white petals and tastes like horseradish. But urban foraging isn’t only about finding tasty things to munch on. ‘There’s a lot of things you can use for skin irritation. In fact I see some right over here. . . . This is plantain and it’s real good. You just crush it up and make a mash. It’s good against insect bites, mosquito bites, bee stings.” [Houston Public Radio News] Photo: KUHF
WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO 
From Michael Reed, the River Oaks/Bellaire/West University/Memorial Examiner newspaper reporter who’s been covering the long, strange tale of the Wilshire Village Apartments all the way from the evictions last year to the recent mysterious weed-tag flare-up: “You know, I figure if all the Wilshire stories combined have caused just one person to rent ‘Blow Up’ my work is complete.” [Swamplot inbox] Photo: Michael Reed, River Oaks Examiner
