Piqued

After planting trees, we next added some berries and grapes.  Teri’s favorite fruit are berries, including blackberries which generally grow well in Texas.  A specific variety of blackberry is the dewberry, which she grew up eating in pies.  And one of my favorite fruits is grapes.  So that became step 2 of our backyard improvement projects.

I planted them near the fence to take advantage of the posts for future trellising. 

Navaho blackberry on left, dewberry on right: April 3, 2011

Red flame grapes: April 3, 2011

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In case you’re interested, I thought I’d share who I’m voting for this year and the reasons why.  For the lesser-known races, I mainly used the Dallas Morning News’ voter guide to decide, although I did look up the candidates’ website if I wanted more information.  Since I’m registered in the Brazos County, some of these picks are specific to that region.

President: Bob Barr (L).  If I wasn’t sure McCain was going to take Texas, I’d be voting for him instead since I do believe McCain to be a better choice than Obama (on purely ideological grounds).  However, since McCain is almost certainly going to win here (and if he doesn’t, he’d probably be so far behind nationally that Texas wouldn’t even matter), I’m voting for Barr because I tend to agree more with his positions than McCain’s and I want those ideas to get more recognition.  Barr is not likely to win anywhere, but if he gets more votes than is usual for a 3rd party and thus shows a growing movement among Americans toward traditional constitutional principles, then I’ll consider that a victory.

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