Articles about Nature
The Trouble With the Trees at Klyde Warren Park
Howard Garrett says it’s not good to plant a tree so low that it’s emerging form the ground as straight as a telephone pole. Photo by Howard Garrett.
So far, at least, Klyde Warren Park has got to be considered a big success. The lunch lines at the food trucks there nearly any day of the week and the huge crowds of families that descend upon the place when the sun is shining on weekends attest to that fact.
But every time I’m there, I can’t help but think of how little shade there is and how miserable a place it seems like it will be when the full-on summer heat arrives. They need the trees they’ve planted to grow as quickly as possible, to provide much more relief from the sun’s onslaught. That should just be a matter of time, right?
Arborist Howard Garrett, who calls himself The Dirt Doctor and has his own organic gardening radio show that airs on 660 AM, says the oak trees in the park are already in trouble. According to him, they are pin oaks (or possibly a type of scarlet oak), a species that does not grow well in our climate. These trees are already “chlorotic” (suffering from a nutrient deficiency) because they were planted too deep in the soil.
Leading Off (3/18/13)
Cruz In Control: Say what you want about Ted Cruz, the guy’s a freshman Senator getting presidential buzz in March, three years before the next presidential election. This guy is not going away anytime soon:
Fracking Fuels Boom Towns: Gas production is driving the rebirth of tiny towns throughout rural Texas. But don’t worry, fracking has nothing to do with this:
Bigfoot Not Spotted in Fort Worth This Weekend: Bigfoot hunters descended on Fort Worth this past weekend for the Texas Bigfoot Conference. Unfortunately, Bigfoot was a no show.
Meet the New D Magazine Mascot
For spring break this year, my 14-year-old son is playing Call of Duty for about eight hours straight every day, and my 7-year-old daughter is throwing marbles around the house. It’s a blast. No way was I going to miss all that fun. So today I stayed home to spend quality time with my laptop while the aforementioned machine gunning and wildass glass ball chucking takes place. Which is a shame. Because according to electronic communications from headquarters, there’s a bat in the office. From a co-worker:
Quincy and I were by the coffee machine. She said, “There’s a bird in here.” I said, “That’s no bird. It’s a bat!” Then it started swooping and diving. There were a lot of screams. It flew up to the 22nd floor, then came back and went after Quincy and Halley. It finally settled right above Quincy’s head.
My Staff Says Outdoor Meeting Was Bad Idea
Yeah, it’s a little windy today, but it didn’t really bother me.
Klyde Warren Park May Get an Ice Rink
Source: Klyde Warren Park
Let’s put aside the fact that while the Dallas Business Journal wrote a piece about the possibility of this ice rink yesterday, our Christine Perez mentioned it two weeks ago. That: aside.
There are some logistical nightmares that arise with this plan.
1. Brought up by Tim in the comments of Christine’s piece: “Even with a master’s from MIT, [Dallas Stars executive vice president of business operations and development Jason] Farris won’t be able keep a decent sheet of ice going in Klyde Warren. Thursday’s high will be 73 degrees.”
Leading Off (2/4/13)
Dallas-Dwelling Navy Seal Sniper Killed at Erath County Gun Range:Â Ex-Navy SEAL, decorated veteran, and the deadliest sniper in U.S. history, Chris Kyle, took former Marine Eddie Ray Routh to a shooting range in Erath County Saturday, most likely as part of a mentoring program for soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Then, for some reason, Routh shot and killed Kyle.
Museum Tower Spoils Latest Nasher Exhibition: A new show by the artist Ken Price opens later this week at the Nasher Sculpture Center, and to prepare, the museum had to cover the glass ceilings of the galleries containing the loaned art work to protect it against Museum Tower’s intense reflective glare. Little progress has been made on finding a solution to the glare issue, and a lawsuit looks more likely after a lawyer for the pension fund that owns the condo tower suggested as much to the Texas attorney general last week.
Wetlands Construction Begins Along Trinity River: Remember the Trinity River Project? Dirt is flying on the thing — or at least part of it. Two hundred acres of trees are being cleared for the creation of a series of wetlands that will help ease flooding.
Someone Has Been Trolling the Perot Museum Online, Calling it ‘Fairytale Propaganda’
Source: Reddit
Jesse Morrell is a Christian, a Christian who recently visited the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. He lives in Lindale, 90 minutes east of Dallas off I-20, where he’s the head of a group called Open Air Outreach, which is “dedicated to taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ to where it truly belongs — to lost sinners.” His approach has not been accepted by all. In his self-written Wikipedia user profile, Morrell addressed some of these criticisms, saying he is “often called a ‘heretic’ and a ‘Pelagian’ by Calvinists, but he is in good company because these same Calvinists say the same thing about great revivalists like Charles Finney, William Booth, and John Wesley.”
As you can see above, Morrell did not enjoy his visit to the Perot Museum. He called it “fairytale propaganda” and was stunned that a science museum included photos of Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins. Imagine that, a science museum with photos of scientists. The above screengrab is a Google review Morrell wrote, brought to the attention of the masses via Reddit. Redditors got a good laugh at Morrell’s expense, but thought he was nothing more than a troll. Wrong.
Perot Museum Shows How Not to Handle PR
The Perot Museum of Nature and Science has been quick to trumpet all the news of its greatness, most of it well-deserved, in science education, especially for young people. But in another area–transparency in dealing with the public after some news happened there that wasn’t so great–the new showplace gets a big fat “zero” so far.
We’re talking about an incident at the museum on Dec. 30, when, according to a Dallas Morning News report, an unidentified “adult male” was injured and taken to the hospital after suffering some sort of injury at one of the exhibits. The museum wouldn’t say which exhibit was responsible for the injury, or exactly what happened to the guy, or who he was, or much of anything else. But it did shut down the unnamed exhibit.
The Nasher’s Front Trees: Minimalist Sculpture, or the Worst Pruning Job Ever?, Ctd.
On Friday, Bradford put up a cheeky post asking the question in the headline. In the comments, people took the question seriously and speculated that the Nasher was over-trimming crape myrtles. I pass these trees every day on my walk to work and have always marveled at how they spring back from their yearly haircut. So here’s the real story from Neil McGlennon, the museum’s tree expert. Aft the jump an image from Google Maps showing the trees in spring.
They’re called Vitex trees. They produce small blue flowers in the summer months. They are very similar to Crape Myrtle trees. They grow very quick and need to be controlled by pruning. We originally had selected Chinese maple trees, but we did not have the shade to keep them alive, so we opted for the Vitex (nicknamed the Texas weed). If you have room for the trees to grow naturally, you would do minor directional trimming. Our trees are directly under our roof line, so we need to cut them back each year during the month of December. This keeps them manicured.
A Bunch of Couples Have Already Gotten Engaged at Klyde Warren Park
Dexter Josh Freeman II proposed to Tracey Akacomplished Eboigbe on Nov. 3. Source: Klyde Warren Park’s Facebook page
That’s according to KWP’s Facebook page. No word on how many rejections there have been, though the park claims “a 100 percent success rate.”
I guess the location is better than the alternative: a romantic engagement on Woodall Rodgers.
Dallas’ Trail System May Continue to Grow
.23 PM” src=”http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Screen-shot-2012-12-17-at-12.40.23-PM.png” alt=”" width=”300″ height=”398″ /> Source: DallasParks.org
Dallas’ Parks and Recreation board will vote on nearly $3.5 million worth of trail construction and procurement projects Thursday, projects that will grow the city’s trail system in South Dallas, West Oak Cliff, and Lake Highlands.
First up is the Chalk Hill Trail, which you see on your right. The Board will vote on procuring the land needed for the trail from BNSF Railway Company, which owns the right-of-way. The cost is $757,000, which, when you break it down, is about $22,000 an acre; the money comes from 2006 bond funds. The goal is to eventually connect the trail to the Coombs Creek Trail in North Oak Cliff, and the goal for that trail is to stretch it to the proposed Trinity Trail, which will attach to the Katy Trail and Santa Fe Trail. So: Cockrell Hill to White Rock Lake, all on trails. Not bad.
Next up is Lake Highlands Trail work. $1.1 million of work, specifically. Board approval would allow for construction procurement of 1.5 miles of multi-use trail, from the White Rock Trail to Ferndale Road. Funding for this trail also comes from ’06 bond cash.
The final item may be the most complicated (the first two are on the consent agenda, which usually means little-to-no discussion): Five Mile Creek Trail upgrades were moved from the Dec. 6 agenda, which usually means more discussion/vetting is in order. This chunk of the trail is short – less than a mile – and stretches between two parks in South Dallas. Funding would be split between ’06 bond money and an $858,000 Texas Parks and Wildlife grant. The land has already been purchased for the project.
Park board decisions are then forwarded on to the City Council; expect a vote early next year.
Law Man Walking: Nature Treks With Bill Holston
It’s been awhile since our man Bill Holston sent us a dispatch from the wilds of Dallas. You missed him, didn’t you? He has still been hiking, but his new(ish) gig as the executive director of Human Rights Initiative of North Texas has kept him too busy to type about his adventures. In this installment, Bill hikes into the Trinity forest to watch the last sunrise of summer and winds up meeting some Burundian refugees looking to buy a goat.
The Sun Also Rises Over the Trinity Forest
By Bill Holston
I’ve hiked a lot these last few months. I love my new job. It’s energizing to work in a place where everyone is passionate about the mission of helping immigrant victims of crime, domestic abuse and persecution. I love hearing French, Spanish, and Amharic spoken around me. I love watching our pro-bono lawyers come in to meet clients, and share their joy when their hard work saves lives. I love being in a place where women escaping abusive marriages and kids escaping gang violence sit next to human rights activists from Africa. It’s exhilarating, actually. Still, hearing the stories of prison and torture, of domestic abuse and little kids escaping gang violence is really stressful. It recharges my batteries to spend some time exploring our nature trails. By connecting to nature, I find some real peace for my restless soul.
Fall is my favorite season of the year. So, a couple weekends ago, my friend Ben and I managed to see the last sunrise of Summer on a hike in the Trinity forest. Ben writes a great blog called Dallas Trinity Trails, where he chronicles his adventures. I’m impressed not just with the adventures he’s had, but the broad cross section of people he’s encountered. He’ll strike up conversation with African Americans fishing in the river or Mexican Vaqueros riding horses along dirt roads. He has no agenda other than exploring what we have in our city.
This time, we started with a hike by Lemmon Lake, off of Loop 12. We walked along the paved trail and watched Roseate Spoonbills in the lake, and a few Great Blue Herons. We moved on because Audubon members were doing a bird count. (I gave up counting Spoonbills after….a bunch.) So, we crossed over Loop 12 and hiked along the Wetland Cells. We spotted Wood Storks flying overhead. Wood Storks are a threatened species. A hundred years ago, more 150,000 wood storks nested in Florida. “The wood stork declined from some 20,000 pairs in the late 1930s to just 5,000 in the late 1970s because of draining and development of wetlands,” but they are recovering because of conservation efforts. (more…)
An Easy Way To Raise Money for White Rock Lake
BMW is doing this Restore the Outdoors thing as a way to promote their X1. All you have to do is go here and give it a “like.” For every “like” up to, like, 10,000 “like”s, BMW will donate a dollar to sprucing up White Rock. We’re only at $6,241 right now. Let’s not leave the rest of that money on the table.
Heads Up, Rest of Dallas County: The West Nile Planes Are Coming For You Tonight
Tonight’s spraying will finish yesterday’s job, and coat the rest of the city, plus the suburbs that have signed on to the West Nile Emergency as well (Garland, Richardson, Addison, Farmers Branch, Carrollton, Coppell, Grand Prairie). Â Release from the city of Dallas:
Aerial mosquito spraying will continue tonight to include all areas in the City of Dallas not covered last night due to weather conditions. Spraying is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. and will continue until approximately 1a.m., weather permitting. Spraying began last night shortly after 10 p.m. but was halted at midnight because of rain.
A total of 62.8 square miles have now been sprayed in the City of Dallas, leaving 272.6 miles yet to be covered in the city limits. The priority tonight is to spray all areas missed last night, as well as the rest of the City of Dallas. Other cities will be sprayed as well. Areas to be sprayed tonight in the City of Dallas are:
Where Airplanes Doused Dallas With Bug Spray
The scribblings of a madman?
Last night two planes rained down poison upon much of central, east, and northern Dallas, just as the League of Shadows had arranged. They were supposed to get over into areas east of the city as well, but rain prevented them from finishing the job. That’s why only a portion of that zone pictured on the city’s map above (showing where last night’s aerial bombardment was to have covered and where it actually did) has been colored in with purple (or is that pink?)
Tonight four planes will be on the job to finish this block and expand into a much bigger chunk of Dallas County. The mayor and the county judge are supposed to be having a press conference about tonight’s spraying, right about right now. Find the details that the city has released here.