The weather in March was fabulous and we spent most of it looking at houses. Not houses to buy, but just houses. First, the famous (at least here) Beer House.
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) It turns out that the owner, years before recycling became popular, decided to re-use empty beer cans to improve his house. Thus beer can sidings, fences, post box, gate, decorative items. Today it is a tourist attraction, but I wonder what his neighbors thought when he started 9or for that matter, when he finished). It would also be interesting to know whether he consumed all that beer himself or if he was taking donations. One day I’ll find out.

On a slightly upscale note, March is the time of the azalea trail. Since the event is planned a year ahead of time and it is very difficult to predict exactly when azaleas will be in full bloom, they usually miss it. Either too early or too late, this year it was a little bit too early. But that did not matter, because azaleas are only part of the attraction. The other part is the opportunity to visit very nice houses, which, unless one has very rich friends, is difficult to pull off. This year we chose only one house, the name of the architect escapes me now, but apparently he also designed parts of the Rice and Yale University campuses. It was a house Zorro would have loved. I was going to find out what do the owners do for living (these days you can find just about anything on the internet) but since I thought I knew the answer: “Not much”, I did not even try.

Next we took a 3 day road trip to Dallas. Kumiko’s quilt was being shown at the exhibition and we also wanted to visit friends. The quilt show, as always, had some quite amazing pieces, but after 2 hours I had enough and went to drive around to see what changed. I found the old Mobil building, where I worked when we first lived in Dallas in the early 80’s had been converted into apartments for seniors. I went in to ask if I could rent my old office, but I’ll have to wait another five years. They do not accept anyone below 60.

We also wanted to see how much the real estate has risen – quite a bit more than in Houston. A popular thing these days seems to be to buy older (50’s) bungalows in north Dallas (they were not very expensive when we lived there because of the school district), tear them down and replace them with 1.5 to 2 million houses which fill almost the entire lot. Much of the construction is on spec and you wonder where is all the money coming from and how long can it last. On return to Houston we found that our house had been burglarized (first time in 25 years) – a very nasty surprise. The police came quickly but that was the extent of their effort, no indication that they would be trying to catch anybody. So I spent the following two weeks interviewing security companies – but that is a story in its own right.

On a more positive note, March is a fun time to visit different plant nurseries and it is also the month when the Mercer botanical garden has its annual sale. They often have unusual plants. But since my land is limited I was just going to look. At the end I bought a couple of plants and then spent the next few days trying to find a spot for them. I also put in an experimental tomato patch behind the house, hopefully it will liberate me from having to spend $4 per week on grape tomatoes.