Both Nancy and Bill are very active in the Dallas County Republican party. We are wholeheartedly endorsing Jennifer for re-election as Chairwoman of the Dallas County Republican Party. We encourage everyone in Dallas County to join us. The election for the County Chair and all Precinct CHairs with be part of the 2024 Republican Primary in the Sping of 2024.
You can see our endorsements at the links below. Jennifer's website just went active on July 25th and we are both proud to be the first of many to come to formally endorse her for this important elected office.
Re-Elect Jennifer Stoddard Hajdu Dallas County Republican Party Chair - JenniferTheChair.gop
Stay tuned, more endorsements and more content will be added to her site very soon.
by Bill Anderton - April 25, 2020
I lost my little brother.
Mr. David Ray Anderton passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly on Saturday, April 10, 2021, at Harris Hospital in Fort Worth. David was very ill and had just received a cancer diagnosis. He was due to enter the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UTSouthwestern in Dallas to begin treatment the following Monday but went to Harris Hospitable on Friday for some tactical treatment to help him with his breathing before he began his comprehensive treatment in Dallas. He was responding well and was his normal joking self. He died suddenly of what we think was a massive blood clot from a saddle pulmonary embolism. He sat up a bit in bed, coughed, had a fleeting look on his face and was gone.
Nurses were in the room at the time and attended to him within seconds and doctors arrived in less than a minute. They were never able to restore a heartbeat.
His life-long childhood sweetheart and beloved wife, Marthetta, was with him at the time.
As he entered the hospital, we knew we were in for a long-term fight in the months ahead but it was very likely a winnable one. His sudden passing was not expected. To say it was a shock would be a massive understatement.
Life is fleeting. Its survivors have to accept the unacceptable.
David was the youngest of three brothers. I was two years older and the middle child. David and I were very close and being orphaned together made us even closer.
David's professional life was centered around cars. It was also his hobby and personal passion projects. He was also a well-known professional restorer of antique and collectible cars. He had a large collection of premier-quality Ford Model A automobiles of his own. He was a many-term president of the Fort Worth Model A Club. He was also the long-term Event Coordinator of the Pate Swap Meet held at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth which is the largest automotive event of its kind in the Southwest and the second largest in the country. The event is a 50-year old association of the fifteen largest car clubs in the State of Texas and consists of over 10,100 Vendor Spaces (18-miles of vendor frontage) on a dedicated venue of 310-acres. Almost 400,000 people attended this year. As Event Coordinator, David ran the event for the Pate Association.
My professional life has been centered on technology. Although very close personally, David's and my businesses naturally never intersected.
Until two years ago, that is. David called one Saturday morning to ask if I would build out a vision he had for the Pate Swap Meet. He had seen (many times) the online real-time systems that I and my company have built for others and wanted to take Pate into the 21st century with a state-of-the-art online system for extending the reach of Pate and its brand to a national presence.
I agreed instantly thinking it would be fun to work together.
As it turned out, because of the sheer scale of Pate, this became a very large project and perhaps some of the most interesting and technically challenging work I've ever done. That also was a blessing but the real joy was working with my brother almost every day for the last two years of his life. It was a blessing and an honor.
David lived to see his vision fulfilled and the system was publically implemented on December 22, 2020. The resulting system elegantly dealt with all of the postponements of the 2020 COVID-19 problems and performed a near-impossible total relocation to the site to the east side of Texas Motor Speedway (with only seven days notice) so our normal venue on the west side of the Speedway could continue to be used by Denton County COVID-19 vaccination hub could continue operation uninterrupted. Despite all of the issues thrown at us, David and the system sold more Vendor spaces for the 2021 event in Pate's 50-year history.
David's death occurred one week before the beginning of the 2021 Pate Swap Meet. We lost the captain of the ship at the very last minute. I jumped into service as did Pate's Board of Directors, officers and over 200 volunteers. Despite the loss, with no time for any of us to grieve, we pulled off a great event.
But, how do you accept the unacceptable or fill unfillable shoes?
We simply soldiered on because that is what David would have wanted us to do and to also honor both his memory and his legacy.
From David's obituary: https://www.galbreaithpickard.com/obituaries/David-Ray-Anderton?obId=20785658
David Ray Anderton, age 69, of North Richland Hills, passed away, Saturday, April 10, 2021 at a local hospital.
David was born March 12, 1952 in Fort Worth, TX to Dick Anderton and Loretta Hoskins Anderton and after the passing of his parents David was raised by his Granny, Madge Hoskins. He attended Baylor University, and then in 1972 he married his childhood sweetheart, Marthetta, and they started a family together.
David opened a local Paint and Body Shop in Fort Worth, Anderton Paint and Body, and will be remembered for having a heart for serving others.
He was a 39 year Fort Worth Model "A" Club Member, the Pate Swap Meet Coordinator, and a big supporter of Wheels for Wellness.
David is survived by his Wife, Marthetta Anderton of North Richland Hills, TX, Son, Tracy Anderton(Lauren) of North Richland Hills, TX, Daughter, Angela Patterson(Scott) of Conroe, TX, Granddaughters, Taylor Anderton and Sydney Patterson, Grandsons, Sammy Patterson and Blake Patterson, Great-grandsons, Karson and Knox Patterson, Great-granddaughter, Kennedy Patterson, Brothers, Dickie (Carolyn) Anderton and Bil (Nancy) Anderton, Brother in Law, Orville (Connie) Harris, and numerous nieces and nephews. He is preceded in death by his parents, Dick and Loretta Anderton and his Granny, Madge Hoskins.
A graveside service will be held on Friday, April 16, 2021, 3:00 PM, at Bluebonnet Hills Memorial Park Cemetery, 5725 Colleyville Blvd., Colleyville, Texas 76034.
Memorials may be sent to David’s favorite charity, Wheels for Wellness, wheelsforwellness.org.
"Dad’s funeral will be at Bluebonnet Hills Memorial Park Cemetery in Colleyville, at 3 pm, Friday April 16, 2021. It will be a graveside service only and everyone is welcome to come. He was loved by so many. He will be towards the back of Bluebonnet, on top of the hill near Hall Johnson. For anyone that would like to see him, Bluebonnet is allowing a 2 pm to 3 pm visitation inside before the funeral."
David loved his family. He liked his cars but they never rivaled his love for his family. He was very blessed to integrate both into a full and rewarding life while always caring and touching others.
If you never met my brother, check out the Discovery Channel series, Misfit Garage, Season 6, Episode 8 (aired June 27, 2018) titled "Minor Fire."
This segment shows full, free-range "David." It shows his incredible skills as a premier restorer/collector of antique automobiles (and part of his collection) but also his "cow-trader" genes inherited from our father and his ability to relate to people with kindness, grace and humor inherited and practiced by our mother.
In this episode, to quote Discovery Channel, "Series regular Thomas Weeks has found the crown-jewel of any car enthusiast's collection: a 1932 Ford Model A Roadster." By the way, Thomas found it at the Pate Swap Meet that year. In the segment, they meet in David's shop to do a deal.
David will be buried in this same red shirt shown in this video segment. He will also be wearing his blue jeans. This too is David.
The family knows that the Pate Swap Meet has a large number of volunteers working on the venue to prepare the Texas Motor Speedway for Pate's annual event that begins in just a few days. To David's many friends in his extended Pate family working outside in the rain and the mud as volunteers doing hard labor to get the site ready, don't worry about cleaning up and putting on a dark suit for David's service. Come straight from the work in muddy Levis and work boots.
Marthetta said that David would be proud to have them like that and would be honored by their service to Pate. Please come as you are.
David's Model A Car Club friends are planning on a Model A parade in his honor to bring him to his final resting place. Also, as a spontaneous show of affection, many of us will be wearing David's type of Tommy Bahamas shirts and Levi's (perhaps muddy from work) to the service.
Above (l to r): Tom Smith, David Anderton and Thomas Weeks
Above (l to r): Tracy Anderton, Thomas Weeks and David Anderton
While you may not have met him in person, David was THE Pate Coordinator. His sudden passing a few days ago is felt by many in the swap meet and antique car club community. Your Pate Board members are working hard to try and help Pate run smoothly this year but David's absence is felt by all. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and especially his wife and childhood sweetheart, Marthetta. Rest in Peace, David.
David's graveside service was the largest I have ever attended despite being held in a drizzling Spring rain.
At the end of David's graveside service, the pastor officiating asked if anyone would like to say a few words. Family, friends, clients, car folks started one by one to tell David stories. It was all spontaneous, speaking from the heart. It was wonderful. Dozens spoke and we had to cut it short, simply running out of time. We closed out the service feeling great from the show of love and respect. All of the guests left except for a few close friends and the immediate family hung around.
Then, something happened that I had never seen before EVER. About 6 close friends stayed and got hand shovels out of their cars.
With the vault lowered into the grave, the cemetery staff brought the dirt on a trailer to refill the grave. Normally, it is done by staff with a frontend loader after everyone leaves. This is something in funerals we usually never see.
In this case, David's friends' did this last small service out of respect. With hand shovels, his friend filled the grave one hand-placed shovelful at a time. At first, this sounds macabre. But instantly, I saw it for what it was; a great heart-left show of love and respect for their departed friend. Not much was said just quiet physical labor.
The cemetery staff resisted at first but wisely decided to not argue with six big guys holding shovels. After watching for a few minutes -- I don't think they had ever seen this either -- the staff clustered together and even removed their ball caps in a show of respect.
This was a PERFECT send-off for my brother. I would have never thought of it in a hundred years and found great comfort from this final simple act by his friends.
Our father was killed when David was a toddler. I was just a couple of years older than David and remember parts of this story but the full story was told to me by my mother years afterward; it was a legend in our family.
Our father died in what was the peak of his life as a cattleman and upon his death, our house was filled for days afterward with family, friends and other cattlemen, some of whom were business associates from around the county or old rodeo friends. I am sure David could sense the loss but I am equally sure that he was confused by the presence of so many guests in our home for such a long time. Our parents often entertained visiting cattle buyers in our home many times a week who were visiting on day trips. These had always been festive occasions with large meals and lots of hunting or fishing on the ranch. David knew something was up but I'm sure that he was just too young to fully understand what had happened.
The one thing that I am rock-solid sure of is that David was missing his Dad after just a few days. Being ranch kids, even as young children we always spent a lot of time with our father every day, not only at home but out on the land and in the outbuildings and barns at Headquarters on the other side of Dick Price Road on the opposite hill from our home. The old trope that sarcastically asked, "Were you raised in a barn?" My answer is always, "Well ... yes. Yes, we were and were better off for it."
In the mourning period immediately after our father's passing, all David knew was that he hadn't spent time with his dad for a couple of days and in a child's simplicity, he wanted to fix that.
As my mother told the story, she was sitting with a large group of people in our living room when all of the normal conversations in the large room just stopped. She looked up to see toddler David standing in the entrance wearing one of Dad's big Steadsons and dragging one of his signature stockman's canes. Of course, children often look like their parents but David was the spitting image of our father even at that age. Enhanced by the hat and cane, in context, the effect must have been equally overwhelming and heartbreaking.
Into the silence of the room, David simply announced in his toddler's voice, "Me go barn, Daddy barn."
There was a collective intake of breath in the room that even I noticed as a child, further put into relief by the following more silence. Also, as told to me, there wasn't a dry eye in the room from the old crusty cowboys present to my mother's genteel lady friends. My mother rushed out of her chair to scoop David up in one swoop and take him to a quiet place to simply sit with him, talk with him, hold him and explain as only a mother can, why he could not go to the barn that day. I'm sure it was mutually comforting.
Well, bro, I'm picturing that scene in my mind again today.
You made it to the barn, bud.
Enjoy the love you are also receiving there from Mom and Dad. You are deeply loved and missed by your entire extended family here.
by Bill Anderton - October 9, 2020
Grrrrr! Made a dumb-ass rookie mistake. My bad.
Friday night, ending my evening at my desk, I spilled half of a glass of wine on my notebook's keyboard. It was powered "on" and running at the time and wine makes a very good conductor. Fried the motherboard.
Yes, this computer has been drinking. It had a drinking problem; couldn't hold its wine.
I was reminded of the Tom Waits classic, "This Piano Has Been Drinking." As an homage to Mr. Waits, I borrowed the title for this story.
Between my professional work which is going full bore and my political work which is in the final stretch of a Presidential campaign year as well as a whole set of races, I have found time to do almost everything I need to do except sleep for about the last month. Exhausted and suffering from tired-puppy syndrome, on Friday night I decided to take the whole evening off and have an at-home date night with my wife and relax. We ordered take-out BBQ ribs from our favorite place and I opened a couple of bottles of a very nice old-vines Zinfandel which paired very well with the pork ribs. We started early, streamed a couple of new movies, ate and sipped our wine.
It was a nice relaxing evening up to that point. Just what I needed.
After the second movie, before calling it a night, I went into my study to first check on any urgent incoming e-mail and then shut everything down for the night. It was only going to take a couple of minutes.
I took my last half-glass of wine with me into my study and had set the glass down on my desk while I finished a few last e-mails. When finished with the last message, I reached up to turn off my desk lamp and while pulling my arm back, accidentally brushed the top of the tall wine glass and pulled it directly into the notebook's keyboard while it was still powered up. It broke the Riedel wine glass and lost half a glass of a very nice old-vines Zin by dumping it directly into the keyboard of my running notebook PC.
It was only about three to four ounces of liquid, but it was enough. Even distilled water would have done the trick but the sugar in the wine along with its volatile compounds simply made the wine a much better conductor. The motherboard fried, of course.
I tried to clean it up but to no avail, the damage was done. I cleaned up best I could Friday night. I took the notebook PC apart, applied solvents and vacuumed out the soluble mess as I went with a vacuum pump and small rubber tubing. I ended the squirt-and-vacuum process with a course of distilled water and finished with ECOLINK 2005 that evaporates instantly and leaves absolutely no residue. I then blew everything out with dry compressed air. I then liberally applied desiccants to try and further dry everything thoroughly in the crook and crannie to a bone-dry condition and let things sit overnight.
So much for my nice quiet evening.
Early Saturday morning, I vacuumed out the desiccants, gave everything more compressed air and another shot of ECOLINK 2005 followed by nice long bursts of dry compressed air lest any remaining desiccant dust caused a problem. I then buttoned everything up and applied power again. No joy. Deader than Kelsey’s nuts.
Within the first hour on Saturday morning, I faced the reality that I was going to have to start over with a new machine.
After getting a quote on a replacement machine from Dell, I found out that it is going to take Dell about four to five weeks to build a new Precision 7750 mobile workstation replacement with the processor and display card that I need. Not good. However, after an emergency trip to MicroCenter, I was able to score a Precision 3541 (the 7750's little brother) from their local Dallas warehouse on Saturday with a peppy i7 processor, an NVIDIA Quadro graphics card, a 32-GB of RAM and a 512-GB NVMe SSD boot drive as C: drive. The machine also had an open SATA port for adding a second SSD drive. The general idea was to come back up on the 3541 while Dell built out the new 7750.
By 3:00 p.m. I was configuring the new workstation at home.
It became my "lost weekend." Between my professional work and political work, I'm much too busy to lose two full days futzing with my tech. BUT, I had no choice and two days is much better than four to five weeks which was a non-starter.
I am fairly faithful to my data backups and have a 50-TB mirrored SAN (100-TB total) in my home office for backup and archives. It is the artifact of being a director and cinematographer with 4k and 8k cameras; big data are the tools of the trade. Plus, I put all of my production distribution files for my server farms and my media masters in my cloud storage at both Linode Storage and in Amazon AWS S3 buckets. Yea, I know; overkill, belt-and-suspenders precautions, but it's not my first rodeo. If the data on the drowned and drunken computer could not be recovered, only about a week of data would be lost since my last full backup.
No significant amount of data would be lost, only several gigabytes. But, it was going to require time. Yes, I'm VERY thankful it wasn't worse. Shows the importance of being faithful to your backups; you never know when something stupid will happen, even if you do it to yourself!
As of late Saturday afternoon, the new 3451 workstation had been set up, updated and was in full working status. The Dell Precision 3541 turns out to be a very nice PC and will carry me until its big brother, the 7750 supercomputer arrives. If it wasn't for the specialized things I do with media and encoding requiring a Xeon or i9 processor and as big a Quadro card as I can get, the 3541 would have been just fine. It was a nice buy and considering the generational differences, the 3451 is a little little bit better than the older machine it is replacing.
Fortunately, both SSDs survived in the drowned PC. I had a bit of a fright when I removed the C: drive, put it onto a USB adapter and tried connecting via my wife's computer just for a quick reccie. But, horror on horror, I couldn't get the drive to read; the Windows error message suggested a reformat. Oh no, you don't! I worried that the electrical short on the motherboard might have also taken the electronics in the SSD too. Once I got the new 3541 configured, I put the old C: drive into an external case with a USB 3.1 interface, connected to the new PC and got some of my disk repair apps onto the problem. In short order, about 30 minutes, I got the SSD back in shape. Fortunately, I had just purchased a new 5-TB Seagate HDD external drive the week before also with a USB 3.1 interface. Once the old C: drive was healthy again, I immediately copied the whole drive to the Seagate HDD drive as a safety. It took many hours to copy but was also belt-and-suspenders safe. When finished, I used a low-level compare application utility to (1) make sure I had copies of everything on the SSD drive; and (2) the data of the copies on the HDD were faithful to the original SSD. The bit-level copy-and-compare does a read-after-write comparison to be sure everything as written to the HDD was a 100% faithful copy. However, it took about 24 hours to complete. This is the only downside of such large disks (4-TB is a LOT for a notebook PC), it takes a while to move and process so much data to an HHD through a USB 3.1 interface. The HHD drive speed itself is the limiting factor.
This saved any unbacked-up data on the drowned-but-saved SSD that was never backed up to the SAN before my accident. Fortunately, all 4-TB of data on the drowned notebook was saved.
I relaxed a bit then. I did have my backup from earlier in the week on the SAN but it had been a busy week and I don't like losing any data. The thought of losing any data at all wounds me. My connection to my SAN was safe because it was fiber optic so no errant electricity would not reach it. Further, all of my systems servers and media servers are cloud-based in professional data centers so those were never at risk; this was purely a local tragedy. My faithful copy on the SSD, in addition to saving several gigabytes of unbacked-up new data from this week (out of the 3.6-TB that was backed up in my last session), the saved SSD and HDD can now become my roadmap for getting all of my application software re-installed on the new machine and configured as before.
I'm still installing the rest of my application software, particularly my media stuff and utilities, but the Office 365 suite and Adobe Creative Cloud are installed. The video and audio editors come next later tonight. Temporarily, I'm using my big SSD drives via USB 3.1 for my document files until Wednesday when the internal mounting bracket for the 3541 arrive (along with its cable) so I can internally mount the 4-TB SSD into the 3541. It will mount via the spare SATA port (operating at the SSD's SATA speed) inside the 3541 as its D: drive. The main C: drive is on the 3541's M.2 NVMe port and is blazingly fast, almost four times the SATA speed.
Once the old SSD is installed into the 3541, I'm going to wipe and format the old SSD (just in case) and copy all of my data files back to it afresh. I'm going to use the opportunity to also re-organize my folder structure and retire some old files that are no longer used to the SAN archive. WIth 4-TB of storage on the old notebook PC, I've gotten lazy, keeping stuff around that I don't need to have at my fingertips. These old files will find a permanent home on the SAN and free up more space on the SSD.
As of Sunday night, I was back up and running and online. But, I will have to catch up on my weekend commitments starting tomorrow. I was supposed to be developing a bunch of new content this weekend. Plans changed!
Like a Phoenix, I will have arisen from the ashes of my own stupidity and clumsiness. Huzzah!
by Bill Anderton - July 12, 2020
I love growing grass. Frankly, it relaxes me; I mellow out. Nothing better than after a long day in the office to get a buzz on with some really good grass.
Oh ... OH! ... WAIT ... No ... No, No, No!!
Dang it, that’s NOT what I mean, people. Get your minds off of the other kind of weed, you mary-jane-addled one-toke-over-the-liners!
Geez, I forgot for a minute, modern times.
Please let me re-state: I love growing turf; lawn grass.
Not the greatest show ON turf; the greatest show IS turf!
It’s kind’a my hobby. Geeky, I know, but it does relax me. Busy in my workday, I like to take a break to clear my mind, get out into the yard and work up a good sweat for about an hour of hard labor. Then, get a big glass of sweet iced tea, sit in a lawn chair to cool down and admire my handiwork and contemplate nature and turf.
Zen and the Art of Lawn Maintenance!
Plus, I get high on the smell of fresh-cut lawn grass.
I’ve been doing this since I was about 4-years old when I first started helping my older brother mow the 60-acre front yard of our ranch-house headquarters on Saturday mornings on our family ranch and dairy operation in Handley, Texas (eventually taken over by the City of Fort Worth.)
By the way, the land is almost all underwater now at what is modern-day Lake Arlington. The northern boundary of the ranch was just north of what is now Texas State Highway Spur 303. Spur 303 and the lake's dam are on the northern boundary of our former property. The dam's stone lining was quarried from our property, leaving a nice big and deep hole that scuba divers still use at the bottom of the lake. The lake was constructed by the U.S. Corps of Engineers to serve as the water supply for the City of Arlington. But, in the early 1950s, our house was at the apex of a sloping hill on the northwestern edge of what is now the lake. For the lake construction, we sold our big colonial two-story house built in the late 1800s (and beloved by my mother) as salvage. The salvage company de-bricked the house, cut it in half down the middle and jacked it up on two trailers to move. But in the Fall of 1957, it started raining one day and the impoundment for the lake began. The rain filled the lake in two weeks forcing the spillways to open. It produced one of the highest levels that the lake ever had. The lake level rose so quickly before the house could be moved, it stranded the house (on its trailers) on an island in the lake where it sat for about eight years before the water receded enough to move the house. Once moved, it sat unrepaired at the edge of the lake for years still having my mother's wallpaper on the walls. Finally, in the late 1960s, a religious foundation bought the house and spent a fortune restoring it to its full glory and turned into a retreat center. My brother knocked on the door one day and was graciously given a tour.
When I was a boy, the 60-acre front yard ran from the house at the apex of its hill down the length of the hill to a large private lake on our property with Arkansas Lane on its far side, past a stand of old tall trees. This yard was the object of our attention every Saturday morning as our chore.
I assisted with the mowing from atop a full-size 1953 Farmall Super H tractor with an 8-foot side-sickle mower (normally used in our haying.) We would pick one of the haying tractors from the ranch operations headquarters early on Saturday morning on the other side of Arkansas Lane and drive it over to the house. While mowing, my job was to jump down and unjam the sickle whenever twigs and branches from our old native pecan trees and live oaks jammed up the sickle (which was often.) I had a piece of hand-whittled lumber with a leather hand strap that our ranch foreman Bob Fugett made for me (he carved great wooden tomahawks for us kids too) that I carried for the purpose. My older brother drove, and I clambered up and down from standing behind the tractor seat (standing on the rear differential housing of the tractor) and hanging on. Great fun. Only a little bit dangerous and likely won't be allowed today but (1) we were ranch kids and not everything we did was totally in line with what people would consider entirely "safe" nowadays; and (2) we were from a "rub-some-dirt-on-it" generation of kid first-aid (I think we were tougher.) However, avoiding death or maiming wasn't just luck. I was “trained” (shown how, warned, watched over), the tractor and sickle were shut down entirely while I did my task, I wore heavy leather gloves and I never got my hands anywhere near even the non-functioning blades by using only my purpose-built stick-tool to perform my task.
This is a picture of a typical Farmall Super H. Next time I am at my brother's, I will look for a family photo for a picture of one of ours.
During the week, we moved and set the irrigation sprinklers for the lawn. My Dad had built a trolly-train system of big 1-inch commercial-size Rainbird heads on 3” x 8-ft’ lengths of steel pipes on carriages of four shop-made 18” steel rim-and-spoke wheels. We manually moved this sprinkler system around the yard. Our system could put out a great amount of water on a great amount of land fairly quickly even on our windy hill. Each “car” of the “train” was interconnected with short lengths of large-diameter hose with quick-connect couplings and one end of the train connected to strategically-placed water mains installed and buried in the yard for this purpose. The mains were fed, in turn, by big pumps in a pumphouse on our private lake, big enough to make a pretty good head of water up the hill even with the vertical height the water had to travel. The irrigation kept our yard green in the hot and otherwise dry Texas summers.
I still love that distinctive sound that the Rainbird impulse sprinkler heads make as they go through their cycle. It just means "summer" and "home" to me. Very comforting. After we started the pumps, I used to go back to the house and sit outside on the veranda early in the morning drinking my orange juice and watching the still-low rising sun shining through the big arcs of water those large sprinklers produced and listening to that impulse-head sound. The cool morning was made a bit cooler by the water mist in the air. It was like morning chapel for me even as a kid. I think that is why I still love sitting out drinking tea after my lawn work.
A couple of times each summer, we would hook up an ag-size ground-driven manure spreader to an old pickup truck, fill the spreader with composted manure from the huge compost pile at the dairy, roll up the windows of the pickup to keep the smell at bay best we could (even in the August heat) and fertilize the yard. My brother was too young to have a license to drive but, like a lot of ranch kids, we did a lot of driving on our property (and forbidden to take the trucks on the public highways.) Like all ranch boys, this was my least favorite job of the whole ranch operation. We always had to coordinate with Mom's social calendar to make sure she didn't have any garden parties scheduled after an application. The manure was well composted but it still wasn't the most pleasant form of natural fertilizer for a week or so after application. Like all ranchers of his era, my Dad was both practical and a conservationist, he used what he had to improve his land. Getting rid of the solid waste produced by a large dairy herd is always a problem. Composting it and using it to improve the land was ideal; it grew better grass, more grains and saved on the nitrogen bill for the fields.
Growing grass for agricultural purposes, lawn turf or for sports turf has many similarities as well as some unique differences. The basics are the same but the economics are different as are some of the priorities. However, growing grass is still growing grass.
Mow, water, feed. Rinse and repeat.
See the pattern. Not much has changed in the art of growing grass since I did it as a kid. One can go off into all sorts of minor details but unless you have some sort of pest or pathogen, 98% of the work is still classified as mow, water, feed, repeat.
Fortunately, our private lake was pretty big, and it was spring-fed to boot. It was a constant-level lake and the excess water from the springs spilled over to a creek that, in turn, fed Village Creek, a tributary of the West Fork Trinity River on the way to Dallas. So, we had an unending water supply even in times of July-August dry spells. Fuel, pretty cheap in those days, to run the pumps was the only cost. Similarly, it was a big 2,000-head commercial dairy operation and composted manure was also in what seemed like an unlimited and unending supply. What little we took for the yard, even enough for 60-acres wasn’t going to be missed when the rest of the pile was applied to our grain and hay fields that grew feed for the dairy herds.
We were using only compost and not using any chemical fertilizers or ammonia-sourced nitrogen on the lawn so there wasn't much chance of polluting our lake which was a prized recreational fishing spot for my Dad and his cattle-buyer guests.
The economics were pretty favorable too. Our only "input" besides our "kid labor" (btw, as the owner's sons, we weren't paid anything; we were expected to work and improve the place) was fuel for the pumps and tractors. Like the design of many modern golf courses' irrigation systems, since our lake was downhill below our yard, any runoff from any excess irrigation would simply flow back into the lake by gravity and into the water table and be recaptured without much waste so we were efficient in the use of our resources.
We were ranch kids and our Dad, in essence, grew grass for a living for our dairy and beef operation.
We kids learned too. It was our first true job on a working ranch.
Later, my first kid business earning outside money from third parties was a lawn mowing and lawn care service in the summers starting when I was about 10. First for cousins and then for anybody who would hire me. I made some nice folding cash as a young teenager.
Since then, I have always enjoyed mowing my own grass and taking care of my lawn.
Over the years, I sort’a became an expert, a grass whisperer. I’ve always taken pride in having the prettiest lawn in my neighborhood.
For the last 14 years that Nancy and I lived in Highland Park, I had a lawn service do my yard but missed the work. For the first 12 years in Highland Park, I did it myself but when we moved to the Fairway Avenue house, I started using a lawn service. After Austin left for college, we resized our home. We didn't downsize, just adjusted the flow of the house for the way we live and entertain. Nancy searched for almost a year to find the right house. So, last year, we moved a short distance up Preston Road into Old Preston Hollow, and I took back the lawn duties again.
When we moved into our new house (new for us) on the first of February of 2019, our lawn was just a weed patch. It was heavily infested with winter weeds and was too late for a full program of pre-emergents to be effective. The house was built in 1972, the older lady that owned it had not maintained the yard very well for perhaps a decade. I found it an enjoyable challenge in saving and restoring the lawn.
I spent the first five months doing triage to save what St. Augustine that I could and re-sodded a triage at the front walkway of about 220 square feet of the lawn that had no grass at all (just weeds.) I scrapped the area flat removing the weeds and leveling the soil, prepped the soil by adding compost and sodded the triangle with solid St. Augustine, the Raleigh variety, to match the rest of the lawn.
Overall, the work consisted of tuning-up a new irrigation system, getting and adjusting the right sprinkler heads for our windy hill, watering, feeding, weeding, and adding the proper soil amendments. This was just triage. The more-basic work was planned for next season, but I first had to save what grass I could. Then corollary to the plan was to grow the grass thick enough to choke out what weeds I could just by growing a thick stand of healthy grass. No, it would not be perfect, but it would be a good start. I did do a bit of physical removal of the thicker patches of weeds.
The lawn sod sits atop a fairly deep and wide vein of a black clay-heavy soil which some people call "gumbo" but it is actually more formally known as Houston Black. According to Wikipedia:
Houston Black extends over 1,500,000 acres (6,100 km2) of the Texas Blackland prairies and is the Texas state soil. The series is composed of expansive clays and is considered one of the classic vertisols. Houston black soils are used extensively for grain sorghum, cotton, corn, small grain, and forage grasses. The soil also shrinks and swells with variations in how much water it contains. In the USDA taxonomic system, it is designated a "Udic Haplusterts".
In tuning the irrigation system, I've dug down four feet to get past to the bottom of the deep risers of the system and it is straight Houston Black all the way down as far as I dug. Houston Black is a good rich soil that can grow anything but its heavy clay component, if untended, can have a tendency to chemically bind its nutrients to make them unavailable to the plant roots it supports. It needs attention to its pH levels and inclusion of organic matter so it will lighten the soil so the clay would chemically release its bound nutrients and make them more readily available. Improving the soil will be an ongoing program for this lawn for years. But, the work will be worth it; this is rich fertile soil that will respond well to some TLC.
So, inherent in my program is the application of soil amendments (minerals, organics and the like) and to compost as often as I can. Going forward, I am thinking of building a "landing pad" in the back-most part of my side yard between my back fence and the back alley where I can receive commercial big-bag cubic-yard-sized containers of compost. It will reduce my costs instead of buying 40-pound bags yet still be reasonably neat in appearance.
My triage program worked well. By late summer, the grass was solid across the lawn, thick and healthy. I wasn't completely out of the woods yet, but the lawn was rescued and looked pretty good. I was having to mow every five days. All my basic first growing season program was completed by mid-August. From then on, it was just growing roots for over-wintering into the next growing season.
Compare the "after" photo above with the "before" picture up-page. These two photos show the results of the first several months of work during the first growing season. The "after" picture was taken in early August.
For the August heat, and to conserve water, I set the mower blade to 3” high like many of us do in Texas for the hot part of the summer. The grass was not only growing fast; it is thick and lush. The St. Augustine runners are also growing like crazy, rooting and thickening up the lawn. My soil amendments started kicking in big time. Sure the fertilizer was helping but so was the extra sulfur (raises the pH of the soil from its alkaline state when I started) is beginning to unbind the nutrients held in the clay-heavy Houston Black soil. While they are bound in the black clay, the inherent nutrients are not available to the roots of the grass for up-take. Unbinding the locked-up nutrients is helping grow deeper roots (and healthier grass) along with the soil conditioners I applied (to soften the clay.) The extra iron is also greening everything up.
Happy, happy, happy.
Yes, there were still too many weeds in the lawn to fully please me but a lot of these will be knocked back in my over-winter program, at least back to manageable proportions.
In the late fall, I began to monitor the soil temperatures after our first cold snap. St. Augustine goes dormant when the soil temperature reaches 55F for longer than three days at a time.
When the grass was about 75% dormant with only patches of growing grass here and there, I mowed one last time to get everything even and neat for over-wintering. I applied pre-emergent herbicide for winter weeds and my final application of soil amendments.
I was then done for the season until after the first of the year.
I had accomplished all I want to do in the first growing season and was happy with the rehab effort. The results were much better than I had hoped. I was already making plans for my over-winter program and the early spring program when the grass becomes active again.
In late January, I again applied another course of pre-emergent herbicide to control crabgrass, Johnsongrass and Dalisgrass (all three a problem in the previous year.)
Over the winter, I also waged war with a major infestation of Barnyardgrass that had gone untreated for years. Barnyardgrass weeds are difficult to get eradicate because they propagate by both seeds and rhizomes. Untreated, they begin to form colonies or clusters of weeds in the yard. At the time, I didn’t know of a totally effective pre-emergent for them. The only known treatment that I knew was physical removal (pulling weeds) or a broad-spectrum herbicide like Roundup that kills everything.
By the way, in the weed exemplar shown below, note the heavy Houston Black soil still clinging to the roots of the weed.
So, beginning in January when the Barnyardgrass started emerging and turning green, I suited up in safety gear and began spot-treating the clusters every couple of weeks with small amounts of sprayed-on Roundup (as little as I could apply to the leaves themselves.) I also started pulling weeds whenever I walked around the yard.
Spot treatment and mechanical removal are pretty easy because, at this time of the year, Barnyardgrass is the only thing greening up in the lawn so the weeds are very obvious. Because of the low temperature, the Roundup is slow-acting so I had to remember the parts of the yard I had previously treated so I didn't double treat the same area. After applying Roundup, if I did pull Barnyardgrass a week or two later, I still wore my heavy rubber safety gloves and washed my hands well afterward in case of transferring any dangerous chemical residue. And, yes, I wore full safety gear whenever I worked with Roundup. I never apply Roundup broadly but I do use it for spot treatments in very controlled applications.
I knew I was going to pay the price for the aggressive spot weeding with Roundup in the spring. There would be brown patches because the Roundup would also kill the lawn grass too, but it was unavoidable. Contrary to popular belief, dormant grass in the winter can still be killed fully and Roundup will certainly do it. That is another reason I use Roundup in very controlled applications. Last year's strategy in turf triage was to choke out as many weeds as possible with healthy thick grass and it worked as far as it could. But there were heavy weed clusters that would persist well beyond that strategy. I simply had to take the next step.
Have you ever had cryo-surgery on your face for what my dermatologist simply calls life's "barnacles?" Ugly scabs result where the skin is frozen for a while that gives way to healthy skin underneath. Same thing with a lawn after aggressive spot weeding with broad-spectrum herbicide. Was not pretty at first. Lots of 4- and 8-inch brown patches all over the yard where Barnyardgrass had been before.
However, now, healthy grass has filled in all of the brown patches. Roundup does not poison the soil, only the plant roots so new plants readily grow back. All patches began to fill in from the edges and then across the middle as the St. Augustine runners grow in. My over-winter and early-spring weeding program got most of the weeds that survived the first growing season. Summer will be devoted to growing roots and grass. More feeding and soil amendments.
Johnsongrass and Dalisgrass are greatly reduced but not totally gone. I will have to repeat a weeding program next spring but I won't have to be as aggressive.
I also started leveling the low spots in the lawn and top-dressing the whole yard with more compost. Because of the heavy-clay nature of the Houston Black soil native to this area, topdressing with compost will go on for years. Also, more soil testing and adjusting pH again.
I also applied two courses of weed-and-feed fertilizer two months apart for the weeds the pre-emergents didn't cover.
Typical of many lawns with this heritage, this lawn is one of mixed grasses, mostly St. Augustine Raleigh but also some native Texas Bermuda grass mixed in. There are patches of several square feet each of almost solid Bermuda grass. My program has favored the St. Augustine and it does tend to crowd out Bermuda. Also, the weed-and-feed will knock back the Bermuda some. However, native Texas Bermuda is very hardy and very persistent, particularly in these solid patches. It gives the lawn an uneven look that I do not care for both in color and texture.
Therefore, my early July lawn project is to dig out the solid patches of Bermuda grass, prepare the soil substrate with compost and lay down solid patches of St. Augustine Raleigh sod.
I did this last summer with a large patch of about 220 square feet of solid weeds and got an instant lawn. This time, it will be a series of four and six square-foot patches throughout the whole lawn.
I first got a can of fluorescent orange spray paint and outlined the spots to clearly mark them so I would not miss anything. If the patches were 40% or more Bermuda grass, they got marked. These marked areas included some areas that are 75% or more Bermuda grass.
Next, I carefully and deliberately cut the patches to be extracted with nice straight square edges and to the exact sizes of the St. Augustine sod, which are 16” x 24” rectangles so it will be like fitting tiles into a floor. I am extracting a little extra dirt out of the substrate so I can level up with some extra composted organic matter under the new sod. When finished, there will be a couple of weeks of mismatched color while the new sod's roots and adjust to the soil but it is also basically instant lawn and I will be mowing it within a week or two.
I will do this kind of patch job again next spring and should have almost all of the Bermuda grass out of the lawn by the end of next Spring.
By the first of August, I completed most of the heavy parts of my summer including all of the things that were important but may have stressed the grass. With all of that done, the rest of this growing season’s program will be mostly devoted to growing roots and healthy grass for the whole lawn. Again, just like when I was a boy: mow, water and feed.
Come Labor Day, it should be one lush lawn.
I plan on repeating the same fall and over-winter program as I did this last season.
Then in late winter just as the grass comes out of its winter dormancy, I will scalp the grass like I did this year to remove the thatch and will core aerate. I will wait a week for the cores to dry out on the surface so they will break up (back into dirt or powder) and water-in easily. Sometimes, if I have to apply the compost soon after aeration while the cores are still mud, I will rake up the cores and set them dry out on their own in the far back part of the side yard, crush them and re-apply them by hand-casting as top-dressing after the compost. I will then heavily apply a half-inch course (or more) of compost and use a leveling rake to push the compost into the resulting 4"-deep core holes as best as I can. The organic matter in the compost is the only thing that will eventually break up the Houston Black clay. The deeper that I can get the organic matter into the clay and into the root zone the better and the quicker the soil will improve.
This aeration will be followed by patching-in more St. Augustine to get the last of the Bermuda grass that still hangs on. By April, all of the major work should be done and my third growing season will be one of almost entirely my basic mow-water-feed cycles.
In my third growing season, I should be making some real headway in improving the soil. Houston Black is particularly good soil and very rich once you can get its nutrients unbound from its clay. I should start reaping the benefits of tending the soil next year.
I should be relatively weed-free with a uniform lawn of thick and pretty grass that should reach the lush stage by the first of May.
Should be a good year with lots of highs from the smell of fresh-cut grass and cold sweet tea. Lots of highs to look forward to!
The lawn has been going along nicely. With all of the August rain, in addition to my normal irrigation, the lawn is lush, green and growing like crazy. Other than my residual Barnyard Grass and Johnson Grass issues (greatly reduced from last year but still present more than I want) there are no problems with the lawn. I had no pest problems and no fungus problems.
As healthy as the lawn is, I have had to mow every four days. If I go seven days, I have to cut off more of the grass blades than I should and it stresses the grass. I cut it at three-inches height this time of year as my standard procedure. You should never cut more than a third of the grass' length in one session or day. Mowing every four days means I'm taking the maximum that I should in any one session or day. If you ever have to cut really tall grass, better to do it in stages, letting the grass recover about two days between mowings.
Today, Sunday, September 6th, I started my usual fall lawn program but made a significant change.
I applied my first treatment of pre-emergent herbicide today and changed brands which changed the active ingredient employed.
I've heard good things about the use of Prodiamine (N3, N3 -Di-n-propyl-2,4-dinitro-6-(trifluoromethyl)-mphenylenediamine) as an active ingredient and that it can control both Barnyardgrass and Johnsongrass resulting from seeds, the two weeds that I'm trying to eradicate. As you have read above, these have been my main targets this last year. The trick that I'm trying is to get the pre-emergent down early to control any carry-over from seeds. This is a lot earlier than I usually apply pre-emergents but the recommendation made sense. Better too early than too late. To control both Barnyard Grass and Johnsongrass, the pre-emergent had to go down MUCH earlier than I did last year.
Also, Prodiamine is good at controlling other winter weeds as an extra benefit.
For a product brand, I selected "The Andersons Pro Turf Barricade Granulerar Pre-Emergent Weed Control" which has 0.48% of Prodiamine as its sole active ingredient. This is a professional product not typically carried in big-box retail stores so I bought mine from Amazon. It was delivered today.
I mowed this afternoon and applied the Pro Turf Barricade at the rate of 4.8-pounds per 1,000 square feet. That works out to be 1-pound of active ingredient per acres (ai/A) and is the "high-medium" application rate. I used my rotary spreader (Scott's Edge Guard) with a 5-1/2 setting. I set out small red flags (the type that is made of 16" wires with 3" square red plastic pennants on top) to mark my lanes of travel for the rotary spreader. With the spreader's Edge Guard appliance in place, I make a 30-inch pass along the entire perimeter of the lawn and then disengage the Edge Guard and make 60-inch passes in the marked lanes. Using the flags ensures complete and uniform coverage of the lawn.
When finished, I then applied a course of Milorganite 6-4-0 slow-release fertilizer at the recommended rate and setting for my spreader. The recommended rate is pretty heavy but this product won't burn the grass.
I also applied Ironite 1-0-1 mineral supplement, mostly for its iron, also at its recommended rate and settings.
Finally, I applied a course of Sta-Green Fast-Acting Gypsum at the recommended rates and setting for its essential calcium and sulfur. The components of Gypsum offset each other and do not typically act like an acidifier.
Yes, this was a lot of products to apply in one session but nothing conflicted or "stacked" and nothing was contraindicated. When everything was applied, I watered heavily tonight and the irrigation system will do its normal watering session in the morning too. That amount of water will ensure that all of the product has been washed from the grass blades and into the soil. The water also helps disperse and activate the Barricade granules.
Tuesday 09/08/2020 Correction: I just got the test results from the soil samples I took Sunday before I applied all of the products in the late afternoon. My lawn soil turned out to be more alkaline than I thought it would be at the end of the summer. The new pH results came in at 8.0 which is higher (more alkaline) than I want. I haven't tested for pH since early Spring when I last applied my early Spring soil amendments which included applying sulfur as an acidifier. The St. Augustine grass itself will grow in a very wide pH ranging from 5.0 to 8.5, but develops a chlorotic appearance from insufficient chlorophyll in highly alkaline soils above pH 7.5. A pH of 8.0 is too high for the best outcomes. Plus, the proper pH is important in my ongoing treatment of my clay-heavy Houston Black soil. To correct the pH, I'm going to applying an acidifier tomorrow. I'll be using Martin's Disper-Sul 90% Sulphur product (water degradable sulfur) which is elemental sulfur in the pastille form (small granules.) I am going to apply 5-pounds per 1,000 square feet, water it in and test again in the next week or two. In theory, an application rate of 5-pounds per 1,000 square feet should drop the pH a full point. That is only a rule of thumb and mileage may vary. If the rule of thumb works, the post-amendment pH should be about 7.0 which is pH neutral (the same as distilled water) and in the middle of my desired range of 7.5 to 6.5. My front yard is approximately 1,486 square feet. In reality, the recommended spreader setting of "5" delivered WAY less product than was indicated. I could tell by how much sulfur was left in the hopper of the spreader when I finished the first pass. I then did a second pass with the same spreader setting at "5." When finished and all of the unused sulfur was returned to its bag, I weighed to determine how much actual sulfur was applied. In both passes, I actually applied by weight 6.5-pounds of sulfur, which computed to an application rate of 4.83-pounds of sulfur per 1000 square feet. This was a tad low but close enough. After waiting for the sulfur to dissolve, diffuse into the soil and begin its work, I will test again in a couple of weeks and then adjust as need, maybe adding a bit more sulfur. My interest is primarily getting the proper pH in the root zone of the grass (about 4-inches down.) Deeper pH corrections are not needed. If I had gotten the results of the pH testing sooner, I would have not used the gypsum on Sunday and gone with the sulfur instead. However, no harm is done; the gypsum won't hurt anything, it is just not an acidifier. I just spent a little money that I didn't need to spend. BTW, that is why actually soil testing is important even if it is with the home kits. Applying the proper amount of soil amendments is hard to do in the blind without good measurements from testing and a calibrated spreader. By the way, the poor correlation of the actual delivered product to the spreader settings is why it is important to calibrate your spreader. If I'm applying Scott's products, like fertilizer, for example, using this Scott's broadcast spreader, I will go with the setting stated on the label of the product that I'm applying. However, when applying soil amendments, the application rates can vary based on the calculations of amounts needed and we're applying product based on the number of pounds per 1,000 square feet. In these situations, you simply have to calibrate the spreader to know what it is actually laying down. For soil testing, yes, the Texas A&M lab tests are the best (and highly recommended, I've used them for years.) For more information, please visit http://soiltesting.tamu.edu/. However, home tests are better than nothing and usually accurate enough to get you into the ballpark for gross readings like pH. Lab testing is recommended, but, as they say, any port in a storm.
Sunday, 09/20/2020 Update: After 11 days (and lots of rain) the sulfur application was spot on! The application rate lowered the pH to 7.1, very close to the rule-of-thumb projection. As the sulfur works its way deeper into the soil, the pH should climb a bit as the sulfur becomes more dilute in the soil (progressively interacting with a larger mass), as would be logical. However, it should stay in or close to my desired range until the late-winter application. If we get a lot of rain this fall that will leach the sulfur deeper into the solid, I will see the pH climb and if it gets out of my desired range, I may do a "top-up" application in December if needed.
Thursday 10/01/2020 Update: After all of our recent rain and with over three weeks of dilution of the sulfur into the soil, the pH is holding just below 7.2 but above 7.1. That is still in my desired target range. I don't plan on another treatment until I do my late-winter soil amendments.
These soil amendments will be the last of the season and by applying them now, they have gone down early enough to be of great benefit in the remaining growing season. Everything is geared toward building more grassroots and eliminating weeds.
I will do one more application of Milorganite during the first week in October and then that will be it for this year's growing season. Alternatively, in place of the October application of Miloganite, I'm also considering applying a double course of straight compost in late September so it can still settle in while the grass is still active and then most just sit there undisturbed over winter so it will be well-mingled with the soil come spring.
Other than the last feeding in late September or early October (Miloranite or straight compost), it will be just watering and mowing until the grass goes dormant when the temperatures drop in late Fall.
The 0.48% of Prodiamine active ingredient in Barricade will be effective in the ground of about four months or a little less. The reported half-life value for Prodiamine is 120 days. The degradation of dinitroaniline-type herbicides in soils to its half-life value is primarily by microbiological processes. Typically, compared with other herbicides, dinitroaniline herbicides have a longer persistence and lower dissipation rate that is favorable for long weed term control. That is why applying Barricade early during the first week of September still works with its dissipation rate.
My first application of Barricade should control all of the weed seeds carried over from the Fall and all Winter weeds. I will do another application during the first week in January just as the first application hits its half-life. I will use an application rate of 2.4-pounds per 1,000 square feet to "top up" and replace the dissipated Prodiamine. There is still half of the Prodiamine that hasn't yet dissipated in the soil so the lower application rate (compared with today's application) is indicated. The second top-up application should cover the germination phase of the spring weeds that would otherwise emerge through May. My application rates are fine and on-label. You're not supposed to apply Prodiamine more than twice a year or use more than 7.2-pounds of product per 1,000 square feet per year. I always follow the label when applying herbicides because it shows the safe and effective use of the product.
I am still researching a good program for the suppression of the remaining wild native Bermuda grass in my St. Augustine turf. There is still more Bermuda in the lawn than I would like. Eradication is difficult because Bermuda is so persistent so I will likely have to settle for several years of suppression. The chemicals that can do this are tricky and expensive so I may hire this job out to the pros. Alternatively, I may again cut out the bigger patches and lay down solid St. Augustine sod in 16" x 24" patches. Then, just keep the St.Augustine mowed high (3") and well-watered and try to choke out the Bermuda grass to a point where the amount of it still in the lawn is tolerable.
As the St. Augustine grass becomes active again, I will do another set of soil tests at Texas A&M, core aerate and then apply another course of compost and continue to use the leveling rake to work the compose into the core-aeration holes as well as deal with a few low spots in the lawn. Once the compost has settled in, then more fertilizer and next spring's early soil amendments as dictated by the soil tests. I'll judge the lawn at that time. I may (likely) be able to skip the use of the weed-and-feed product in the spring and go to straight organic fertilizer instead which I prefer if the lawn comes up weed-free which I think will.
I'm very happy where I'm ending this growing season. There is still a couple of months of grass to mow and sweet tea to drink to add to my enjoyment for the remainder of the season.
My war on the weeds appears to be working well over the winter. There is very little Barnyard grass coming out (almost none) as of the end of February 2021. If it was coming out, in the past, It should have started coming 30-45 days ago. It is too early for any Johnsongrass to show so Barnyard grass is my current indicator. The Barricade appears to be working well. I did my second application of Barricade a little late (my bad), 175 days after the first application. The 0.48% of Prodiamine active ingredient in Barricade has a half-life of 120 days so it still has an effective level in the soil. I used a slightly heavier application since I was late in the application (still on-label, though) to bring the amount of the active ingredients to higher levels. Also, the soil temperature is still under 55-F so weed seeds from the fall and winter should not be germinating right now; the Barricade should control them. The late application of Barricade means that it will help in the late Johnson grass and Crabgrass germinations in May and June.
The lawn should be good. I'll see how the next 60 days go. When the grass comes out of its winter dormancy, I will go directly into my fertilization and soil amendments programs to get the yard off to a good start. After the aggressive anti-weed program of last year, the 2021 growing season will focus, instead, of quickly establishing thick and healthy grass to choke out weeds.
As Spring sprung, I was shocked by how much damage that the Texas winter storm and deep freeze did you our shrubs and even the lawn grass.
Only about 20% of our shrubs can be saved. I will have a major replanting job over the summer. However, I do view it as a chance to improve our landscaping.
What really shocked me was the damage to the lawn grass. The freeze really knocked back my St. Augustine grass. It took a couple of months to begin to recover. In the meantime, the native Bermudagrass I had been fighting flourished. It set back my Bermudagrass abatement program significantly.
This summer will be spent rehabbing the lawn to recover from the freeze damage.
by Bill Anderton - June 10, 2020
Like a lot of folks during the pandemic lockdown, I watched a lot of streaming video. I'm blessed to have giga-speed fiber-optic networking at home and Roku boxes on all of my TVs so watching HD and 4K streaming video-on-demand is easy. I also have a pretty fair inventory of streaming services from which to select what to watch. We sure got our money's worth during the lockdown. Nancy and I did a lot of bingeing on movies and the better TV series; some new, some re-watching of the really good ones we had seen before. I like bingeing and seeing an entire series back to back.
A couple of weekends ago, we re-watched all of the episodes of all three seasons of Fargo in one binge in one long weekend. We loved the movie and it came out just as Nancy and I met. We saw it on one of our first dinner-and-a-movie dates. Much later, the Fargo TV series was one of the better things on TV. When the series premiered, I was skeptical at first; the Coen brothers are hard acts to follow and I was sure the endeavor wouldn't fare well in the move to TV. But, the series quickly won me over. I've watched all of the episodes as they came out. I then enjoyed bingeing on the entire series.
In Season 2 Episode 2, Fargo's gifted Music Supervisor Maggie Phillips provides a lesson in how music selection can advance the story and character development for a director.
For one sequence, Phillips selected Burl Ives’s “One Hour Ahead of the Posse,” to highlight a fateful change in Ed Blumquist’s (Jesse Plemons) character as he begins to clean up Peggy Blumquist’s (Kirsten Dunst) hit-and-run of gangster Rye Gerhardt (Kieran Culkin.) It all started in Episode 1 as an unfortunate accident while Rye was committing his own crime (the Waffle Hut Triple Murder) but became a deepening crime when Peggy makes a bad decision and fled with the only-knocked-out and unconscious Rye stuck in the windshield of her car. Events quickly spin out of control. Peggy gets home, puts the car (with Rye still in the windshield) in the garage and makes dinner for an unsuspecting Ed. During dinner, Rye wakes up, tries to escape, making noise that causes Ed to investigate. Ed finds the damaged car and the damaged Rye, Rye fights with Ed and Ed kills Rye in self-defense. For the love of his wife and the fear that Peggy will go to jail, puffy-hubby boy-next-door-type Ed makes his own bad decision and steps (nay, rushes) onto the dark side of the unspeakable to, according to Peggy, "clean up the mess" by first cleaning up Peggy's car and then by cleaning up Rye by grinding up his corpse (Ed's literally the town's butcher) to dispose of it.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-9jqYB-eUY
The stuff of high drama, black comedy and classical tragedy. Yep, stuff right in the Coen brother's wheelhouse even if they didn't direct the TV series.
The song was voiced by Burl Ives (June 14, 1909 – April 14, 1995.) Burl Ives was an accomplished character actor with 57 roles including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Big County. First and foremost, though, he was a folk singer and remembered today for the Christmas classic "Holly Jolly Christmas." He was also one of the first non-country singers to record in Nashville. "One Hour Ahead of the Posse" was recorded in Nashville in February of 1952 with guitarist Grady Martin's studio band, the Slew Foot Five along with the Anita Kerr Singers.
An old, obscure and long-forgotten recording, Phillips used a large portion of “One Hour Ahead of the Posse”, not just a short snippet, to score the entire segment. The portion of the song she cut out was off point for the Fargo plot so Phillips cut the middle of the song to not distract and left the first and last of the song to advance the Fargo story.
The selection of “One Hour Ahead of the Posse” was inspired. The song marks the change in Ed, sets the tone of the present time in the film and foreshadows its fateful outcome. At the end of the segment, the look on Ed's face while looking at Rhe's corpse temporarily stored in his garage freezer perfectly mirrors Burl's lyric, "May the Lord have mercy on my soul." All that hasn't yet played out is the gunshot in the song. It accomplishes a lot for just a 90-second sequence. The selection and use of the song was art.
Yep, this is how it's done, people.
The song also resonated with me. While I am the leader of a small team of independent developers/contractors, I am very much a one-man-band in my personal operations. And, yes, I frequently over-commit and over-schedule myself with nobody to blame but myself. I really could use a clone, or two, of myself to help out.
Like a lot of small entrepreneurs right now, with so much on my plate, I often feel that I am one hour ahead of the posse and that my pinto is hungry and tired. But, we must make it to the river, or there will be a hang'n tonight.
Empathy, brother, empathy.
One Hour Ahead of the Posse - Lyrics
Burl Ives
Full recording (listen to it remastered on Amazon Music if you can)
One hour ahead of the posse
The bloodhounds are hot on the trail
Last evening I shot down my sweetheart
This morning I broke out of jail
My Pinto is tired and hungry
And I'm feeling weary and gone
We started ahead of the posse
And we got to keep going on
The sheriff aswored he would get me
He's riding with 20 and 5
But I ain't afeared of that posse
For they'll never get me alive
One hour ahead of the posse
No turning to left or to right
We must win the race to the river
Or there'll be a hanging tonight
One hour ahead of the posse
No time for remorse or regret
But somehow her blue eyes still haunt me
Her laughter is taunting me yet
It started the night that I met her
She kissed me and vowed she would care
I traded the gold in my pocket
To fondle the gold in her hair
She lied when she said that she loved me
She lied with each kiss that she gave
She lied to the moment I caught her
And now she lies still in her grave
On hour ahead of the posse
The night is a-coming on fast
Just one little mile to the rio
And we'll shake that posse at last
We're nearing the end of our journey
We ain't got a second to spare
The hoofbeats are closer and closer
The barking of dogs fills the air
One hour ahead of the posse
And now I'm in sight of my goal
At last we've beaten that posse
- Gunshot -
May the Lord have mercy on my soul
Songwriters: Ray Golden / Philip Charig / David Ormant
One Hour Ahead of the Posse lyrics © Wb Music Corp., Wb Music Corp, Mca Music, A Div. Of Universal Studios, Wb Music Corp Obo Mca Music, A Div. Of Universal
by Bill Anderton - April 24, 2020
Personally, I'm waiting for common sense to breakout. I'm hoping for it but not holding my breath. It might happen but it might not.
by Bill Anderton - March 27, 2020
My development team has been virtual for more than a decade. We are scattered all over North America and all work from our homes or remote offices and link to each other via various technologies some of our own design and programming.
Being locked down is simply "Tuesday" for us.
We're equipped to work in this virtual landscape. We have the high-capacity fiber-optic communications, cameras, lights and media computers to deal with the loads. Our servers were already cloud-based and globally distributed. By design, our content management systems (CMS) can be operated from anywhere with only a browser and an Internet connection. Our media platform is distributed into 60 data centers all over the world. All of our communications (voice, text, fax, email and videoconference) are also IP based and works from wherever we happen to be located at the time; in our fiber-equipped homes or on the road with broadband wireless.
Our work continued uninterrupted.
We were blessed to be prepared for a lockdown just as the normal way we conduct our business in normal times. Not all were as fortunate. I have spent a lot of time helping family, friends and colleagues enter into this strange new virtual world for the first time. It has not been easy for some but even old dogs can learn new tricks. Almost all have actually learned to enjoy using these communication tools and see their benefits. I have a hunch that most will continue to use many of the remote virtual tools after they go back to their normal work routines.
My name is Bill Anderton. I am a career technologist who leads technical development and creative teams designing and building advanced interactive information systems. I am an information scientist and research fellow. I am a former c-level executive and co-founder of a national broadband company. I am currently semi-retired so I can focus my professional attention of a few challenging projects that offer interesting problems to solve. I also devote time to my creative, political and charitable interests.
I am married to Nancy Anderton, Facilities Director, Christ the King Catholic Church of the Catholic Diocese of Dallas. We have a daughter Austin who is a junior at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) majoring in 3-D animation for a Bachelor of Science degree in their School of Art, Technology and Emerging Communications (ATEC).
