So it is all over. When I called last week I reached only a recorded message: We are closed for the year. Blueberry harvest is finished. This year I had big plans to go every weekend and I almost made it. Had to skip once, because it rained all that, but something like that had to be expected. What I regret, however, is the week before last. The weather seemed fine and we were all ready to go and pick enough to fill the freezer. After about a 45 minute drive we noticed that the eastern sky was ominously dark. It was obviously going to rain, but in Houston that doe not necessarily mean much, because rain can be very local. Total deluge at work and not a drop at home is quite common. And I am lucky to live a mere 15 minute drive from the office. We were hoping to get lucky.Either it was not going to rain where we were going or it was going to rain later. When we finally drove into a wall of water it became obvious that there will be no blueberry picking that day. We had to turn back. Since the plantation is about an hour from the house we did not feel very happy about having spent all that driving time to no purpose. So on the way back we did something we have been thinking about for quite a while.

Just north of Woodlands is a shopping center that really stands out. It is difficult to photograph but it really stick out as you drive by. (Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) I do not know how to describe it other than to simply say that it is built in Venetian-Disneyland style. Since we had all that time invested we took a little detour and walked around. Found a nice Italian café with passable cakes and so the day was not a total loss. Strictly speaking, of course, the whole thing is a monstrous kitsch. Most of what looks like Venetian stone building is probably just a thin veneer on a two-by-four underpinning. As sometimes happens, it is so bad that it is charming. To start with, the grandiose architecture is totally betrayed by the retail occupants: Men's Warehouse, Clothing Barn, Dallas Shoe Warehouse, etc. more prosaic tenants would have been difficult to find. And so we wondered about the background of the center. Was it built during the boom with dreams of exclusive shops and later had to take anybody who came? There is probably an interesting story hiding somewhere. And actually, I have to give the developer some credit for trying something different. We certainly have enough cookie cutter centers.

As it turned out, this time the rain was not a localized occurrence. It preceded us on the way home and as we were getting closer to the house the cars in front of us suddenly started to slow down. It was not raining any more but streets were still full of water. Rather then risk drowning the car we pulled into a side parking lot and watched other people take a chance. When it stops raining water usually disappears in a matter of minutes, so why take any chances.

Meanwhile on the home front the cucumber harvest, which was quite successful, is over and tomato harvest, which was even more successful is approaching an end. This spring I decided to focus on bizarre eggplants. I went to the local Chinese grocery store and bought four different kinds of Asian eggplant with the intention to extract the seeds and grow them myself. Well, for some reason it did not work. The germination was almost zero. There was only one sprout and so I carefully transplanted it outside wondering which eggplant it is going to be. It was growing quite well and eventually had little flower buds. But then the buds were getting bigger and bigger and we knew something was wrong. It turns out that it was not an eggplant at all, but a trumpet flower, which I also tried to grow from seed. The flowers are quite spectacular, about 20 cm long. So, partial success. And I still have my white eggplant, seeds of which I bought at Wallmart.








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