Dear Diary

What to do today.

1.-Decided that there needs to be a flyer for the Park & Rec wellness promoting volunteering. Not only good exercise, stress relief, learning, friendship, community support.

2.-Conversation meeting tonite about Tom Hank's movie about Mr. Fred Rogers - It's a Wonderful Day.

3.-Need to read, environmental books. Focus on urban nature. Johnson Creek? Attended meeting about storm runoff and move to eliminate flooding. Arlington has to work with Army Corp of Engineers when it involves a stream. Inverness residents most in attendance since their flooding is not from a city property, but a pond on their private property.  (City Councilman Andy Piel told how his sister moved out because Arlington looked old with all the 60's-70's ranch style homes. She moved to new suburb: Colleyville, Grapevine.  I think this is a Republican base who were upset that home owners were responsible and they couldn't get local business to pay for storm runoff-)

4.-Old Post Office. Outline for book. Preserving the old. Saving downtowns.

5.- Presentation from Italian housing developer

builder P to build rent controlled apartments. Arlington has resisted thinking it will bring unwanted residents. They liked restricting families to apartments build in north Arlington, then law forced them to take families and the result has been too many kids flooding a school district and ruining living conditions because there were too many apartments build too close together. WeCan  West Citizen Action Network. meet four times a year. wecanarlington.org
https://www.andrewpielforarlington.com/

Blogging 2020 - staying focused

Finally, or is it? Trying to stay focused and accomplish something. I now see the Blogger as a personal diary. A helpful tool to get my thoughts out and off my mind so I can focus on getting something done

January 20, 2020 - Went for a walk, met a neighbor with his hunting dogs. He tells about how he took November off to go to Death Valley and hunt rams. Or, help build water ponds for the mountain rams. Said he has been working 40 years to go off of the trip this past November.

He has told me how he helps maintain some ranches in Parker County, preserving nature. We talk today about the Post Oak. Most of the trees in the Cliff Nelson pond rec center are Post Oak. He mentions how in the Cross Timbers the Post Oak dominate. I thought Live Oak would be more drought tolerant and more dominant, but no, the finicky Post Oak. Burrel Oak is the future.

I brag about having the Post Oak in the backyard and Live Oak in the front. He tells how the Live Oak are endangered and how he once raised hundreds that he sold to Ross Perot, Jr. for planing in the prairies around Alliance Airport.

He discovered the rams in Death Valley from a Texas who was building casinos in Las Vegas, (Mafia?) and wanted to buy some Longhorns. The casino builder moved back to Texas and now lives in Gainsville north of Denton.

Winter has been surprisingly busy for the neighbor who lives in urban Arlington and installs lawn sprinklers. He has been busy helping some customers in Alvarado near the reservoir to irrigate a couple of acres. Told of one customer retiring from Radio Shack who wanted a Xeriscape, but needed some irrigation to get it started.

Nature? River bank of Johnson Creek totally resculpted. Trees, bushes, native plants removed replaced with turf.

Interesting.

Need to set goals.

1.) Urban nature (Johnson Creek, ACC membership)
2.) Postal Preservation
3.) Minimalist: Mercari, eBay,
4.) Texas Nature: camping, NTNPS,

Why can't we join together and be better united, focused.