On the Gulf coast, February is a month of conflict. Cold arctic masses which push down from Canada are faced by warm Caribbean-scented air from the Gulf of Mexico. We get three flavors of weather and adjust our activities accordingly. Warm moist air brings out the gardener and so I started several pots with vegetable seeds, trimmed the bushes and I am seriously planning to convert part of the lawn behind the garage into another vegetable plot.

When the arctic air gets an upper hand we try to stay warm in our southern house with single pane windows and without a hint of insulation of any kind. Too bad we cannot save a little bit of that air, it would come in handy in August.

But most of the time the two systems decide to fight it out and it typically happens right above our heads. We get lots of rain, decent electrical storms and our share of tornado warnings. On days like those we are limited to inside activities.
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) Visit to a local brewery is a good option and so one Saturday we showed up at St. Arnolds micro-brewery, started several years ago by a young frustrated stock broker. He seems happy now, which may be partly due to a business plan which he summarized as selling all the beer he cannot drink. It is a small operation and there is obviously no money for advertising and so he quite sensibly decided to develop a cult following. The strategy is simple: every Saturday at 11 he throws the door open and any anyone who comes and listens to his short "history of beer making" gets four funny money coins which are good for four glasses of his beer at the bar. The speech includes a segment on "how the big American brewers went over to the dark side" and how his beer is brewed in strict accordance to the old purity law: four ingredients only. The strategy seems to be working, about 150 people turned up, some of them looked like they come every week and judging from the size of their bellies they do lot of practicing at home in between. Most of the participants could not be described as average Houstonians and that along with the beer quickly created a unique atmosphere.

Speaking of the old purity law, I can now buy two beers brewed in my hometown of Budweis. One is made by Budwar, which cannot use the name Budweiser in North America and decided on an interesting label: "Czechwar". The other is brewed by the Burger Brewery under the name Samson. The name is apparently derived from a statue of Samson in a fountain in front of the brewery. I found the same company also owns Trebon Regent, but I have not been able to find it yet. I suspect one has to make a transatlantic trip to taste that one.

Our makeshift sunroom has worked out very well. Plants not only survived, in spite of our rather irregular watering schedule, but many of them are continuously blooming. The Mexican lime is full of tiny little flowers. Myers lemon flowers are a little larger and have very strong aroma which in the confined space of the sunroom is absolutely spectacular.

In other news, Monica received the first prize in a local flute contest as a soloist and as a part of a flute quartet and qualified for state finals in Austin at the end of May. With March around the corner and the Dallas Quilt Show on the horizon Kumiko was very busy with a new miniature quilt. It is even better than the one last year (prettier, more detailed and more precise) but you will have to wait until next month to see it. That is about it, February was a short month.








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