Erosion control

One of the blog readers over in Countryside wrote me last week, "Friday at Countryside (subdivision where my family lives) the homeowners will be planting about 500 erosion control plants at the front pond. The homeowners opted to plant plants rather than install riprap to stabilize the banks of the pond." I did not get there when anyone was doing anything, but saw some of the results.

They do seem to have a problem with a good section of the bank sliding into the pond.I hope their stabilization efforts work.

National Night Out--Rensselaer Edition

The National Night Out event on August 3 was smaller this year than it has been in the past. The publicity was poor--I did not see anything about it until a few days before the event and I was looking for it.

This year the helicopter did not show--it apparently ran into bad weather along its route. A lot of people enjoyed the free admittance to the pool--the park probably should have a few more of those free times. I found several people I knew and had interesting conversations. Some lucky kids won free bikes. And the firemen and the police seemed to enjoy a gigantic water fight.

Here was last year's post on the event.

Small towns

I try to follow what is happening in the area small towns on blogs and Facebook. I am friends with Brook and Goodland, and am a fan of Morocco Times, Town of Morocco, Remington, Indiana, Wolcott Indiana, Wheatfield Indiana, and just about anything I can find in Rensselaer. There are two things that I found interesting enough to mention from these places in the past two weeks. The first is a series of comments about some old buildings in downtown Wolcott. I had a post on them a long while back, and the comments on the pictures provide some history of these buildings and the memories associated with them.

The second is a video from Remington, showing scenes from the 150th birthday party. It seems to epitomize small towns.



What other neighboring towns are on Facebook or have blogs?

Farmers' Market

Last week the first Tuesday night farmer's markets attracted people with a bouncy inflatable in addition to the usual assortment of vendors selling fruits, vegetables and miscellaneous other things.

One thing I noticed was the enormous blackberries. I have picked some wild blackberries, and they are tiny compared to these.

On Saturday I stopped by for the first time in several weeks and was impressed with how many vendors and shoppers were there despite the rain earlier that morning. One item that caught my attention was this strange-looking vegetable.

I had never seen eggplant like this before so I asked about it. The fellow selling it said that he thought he was buying regular eggplant and was rather startled when the plants began to produce these. I suppose that they can be used in whatever way that regular eggplant can be used. I have never had much luck growing eggplant, but since I do not know what you do with it, that has not bothered me much.

August already

How did July go by so fast? A couple weeks ago I was enjoying my day lilies, and then a few days later I noticed that they were done blooming. This summer sure is going by quickly.