My Bellaire Blog

I wanted to share my first attempts at growing food in Bellaire.  For so many years, after being discouraged by the hard clay that surrounds our home, I gave up my passion of growing vegetables and fruits.  Finally, this summer I reconfigured the backyard, cut out the tree that was shading it as well as the evergreen bushes, and spread bags of soil around the beds.  Finally I could experiment with my green thumb.  Well, as you can see in this photo, I have quite a few tomatoes!  Papayas have also done extremely well:  I just pray we won’t get a hard freeze before I pick all the ripened fruits.  Bell peppers are not doing so well.  I put them on a southern exposure but they are shaded by my neighbor’s house.  Other than that, herbs are flourishing:  Basil, parsley and fennel.  I have a few sprouts of Swiss Chard but they are taking forever to grow! 

How about you?  Have you tried your luck at gardening in Bellaire?  What works and what doesn’t?  I would love to hear from you.   One house on Evergreen has a loaded tangerine tree.  My mother on Azalea Trail was successful with eggplants and figs.

My Papayas

I am sure you have heard the controversy surrounding the amount HISD spends bussing children from one part of the district to another to attend their magnet programs.  The numbers are staggering (over $16 Mil a year) and exceed the amount spent on the magnet programs themselves!!!  WIth my child on the verge of transitionning from elementary to middle school, I am considering the magnet programs, especially the Vanguard Middle Schools such as TH Rogers and Lanier Middle School.  Now, will transportation stand in the way of my decision?  Probably not, but it would be nice if I did not have to worry about getting my child to school.  The economics however don’t make any sense to me, and I wish no one had to go outside their neighborhood to find a decent school!  Do you agree?