Reefmonkey

11 hours ago, AnTonY said:

 

The answers weren't satisfactory because they failed the criterion. And then you bring up potential for conversion to MPCs, meaning that the prairie may not be preserved anyway, ergo you defeated your own argument. 

 

 

FINALLY a somewhat decent answer. I'd certainly agree that the estuaries and coast present important assets for the Houston metro. And as I mentioned earlier this thread, I despise the Chinese Tallow, and don't see them as quality forest trees here. Good to see them being wiped out.

 

But can you elaborate on these unique properties of prairies such that they help the water quality of those estuaries? Not seeing how they are any better than forests in that department, considering that the waterways that drain into those bays are already forested along their floodplains. I'd say industries like ITC are doing a lot more damage to water quality now than any habitat conversion ever will. As far as migrations, the birds need areas for stopover and rest, and what better for that than forests?

 

 

Check and verify if your hunch was correct. 😊

"failed the criterion," ie, your narrow criterion that is out of touch with the realities of the local ecology. August498 doesn't "defeat his own argument", he makes an argument for preserving the prairies and not allowing any more building on them. The threat of development is still no valid argument for turning it into forest.

Prairies are better than forests because they are the ecosystem that is adapted to that location, and no, it's not "just soil", it's rainfall, both total rainfall and rainfall patterns. There is a reason the Piney Woods give way to the Post Oak Savannah in the northwest part of the area and the prairies in the west and southwest parts. As you move east to west, rainfall is lower, surface water sources are farther apart, and groundwater is often deeper, too. Compare Sam Houston National Forest, with annual rainfall close to 140 inches, with Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, at around 55 inches.

Saying "industry is doing more damage to water quality than habitat conversion would" is still not an argument in favor of habitat conversion, even if it were possible to sustain the habitat conversion, which it likely would not be, see above.

As for migrations, dbigtex56 already touched on this, and it demonstrates yet another area where you are woefully uninformed. Not every species of migrating bird looks for forest. Sandhill cranes, for instance, don't ever live in forests. They breed on open tundra in the summer, and overwinter on our prairies. There are many bird species, both migratory and nonmigratory (as well as other plant and animal species) that require prairie habitats.

Wow, those reviews say it all. I was curious to see if they were a lot cheaper or something, but they're not, they're actually quite expensive. Hard to imagine why anyone would go here.

Has anyone heard of this place? Had a job applicant’s resume cross my desk with this in their education section. Never heard of it, googled it, looks like it’s in an office building, 100% acceptance rate, I assumed a for profit diploma mill, but it’s nonprofit, accredited, and seems to even have dorms on floors of the building. Odd. 

Accusing people of being defensive seems to be your standard canned response, but no, what’s happening here isn’t defensiveness, it’s incredulity that you are so blithely advocating the destruction of a natural habitat that doesn’t please  your aesthetic sensibilities. 

Biodiversity doesn’t just come from saving the ecosystems that are “the most” biodiverse, but also from having a diversity of ecosystems, and prairies are actually one of the most imperiled ecosystems in the country, while forests have been growing for the past 100 years. Not to mention, there isn’t just one “prairie ecosystem “, there is short grass prairie, tall grass prairie, black land prairie, southern prairie ecosystems, northern prairie ecosystems....once again, you really have no idea what you’re talking about. 

That's the very anthropocentric view of the world that has caused not only so much environmental degradation, but also imperiled human structures and lives, this idea that if a natural landscape isn't aesthetically pleasing or "useful" to humans there is no benefit to keeping it and it should be reformed into something else. This is what happened with the Everglades and mangroves of South Florida, just seen as ugly, alligator-infested swamp. Areas of glades were drained and tract housing put in, and mangroves chopped down to give people waterfront property.  The reduced surface water in the glades almost immediately led to saltwater intrusion in the Biscayne Aquifer, the Miami area's main water supply, and the mangroves had been buffering the land from storm surges, so their loss meant greater damage to property from hurricanes. If you want more information on this, The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E Davis is a fantastic read. Lots of unforeseen consequences to reshaping land to what is "better" for humans.

Well, we all now certainly know where you stand. 

So I’m guessing you haven’t actually maintained a garden in Houston. My read of you is you seem fairly young and full of yourself without the life experience to have learned how much you don’t really understand- Luminaire was right, “arrogance.” And he touched the surface when he spoke about the divide between what you know and don’t know, but it goes deeper than that, as this thread and the one on Galveston beaches demonstrates, you have a skill for regurgitating googled information, but very limited capacity for understanding what you’re regurgitating. If you really think prairies only exist because of the soil type and wiping them out and replacing them with forests would not cause any harm, you have so, so many deficiencies in your understanding of ecology that it would be hard to know where to begin, even if you hadn’t already displayed a resistance to accepting when you’re wrong. 

1 hour ago, AnTonY said:

 

It's not that challenging or complicated. The main challenge when it comes to landscaping here is the soil. Address that, and all the vision desired is free for the having.

 

The climate has indeed become more temperate and equable, all thanks to tropics expansion, with the Hadley cell expanding northwards.

 

While there have been quite a few snow/ice events recently, winter severity has been on an overall declining trend compared to the 20th century. Before 1989, the Houston would seen temperatures in the teens with quite some regularity, but since the 90s, such temperatures have only happened once (Jan 2018). The stronger Hadley cell is slowly, but surely, reducing the severity of the jet stream swings that result in these severe cold snaps.

 

Springs and falls are becoming much drier and sunnier, El Nino events not-withstanding. Houston and Texas used to see more regular severe weather threats during those shoulder seasons, but activity has since shifted north and east towards the Mid-South "Dixie Alley."  The same reduction in jet stream swings during winter also carry through spring and fall, leaving stronger geopotential heights in the Houston area during these transition seasons. This, combined with stronger influence from the Mexican Plateau, kills off the threat of severe weather events, including supercells and squall lines.

 

And summers have been rainier here since the 2000s compared to previous decades, even when factoring in that 2011 dry spell. The expanded Hadley Cell takes the apex of geopotential heights further north from Texas during summer, allowing stronger influence from the tropical easterly belt.

Can I ask you a question - how much gardening do you do? Do you have a garden? I'm pretty serious about it, and I can tell you soil is not the only issue.  My vegetable garden is a raised bed, I brought in compost and expanded shale, etc, to make my own good soil so I wouldn't have to deal with our native soil. I still have to deal with our extremely variable climate, sudden cold snaps as late as March, torrential rains that can drown everything out, followed by weeks of parched heat waves with temps above 100 and no rain in sight. Not to mention insects, fungal infections. Yes, winters have become shorter, summers rainier, etc., but it is still a highly variable climate. Any time you bring in plant species that didn't evolve to handle our variable climate, you're dealing with more than just soil.

1 hour ago, AnTonY said:

Another big problem is equating "natural" with "better" (A.K.A. appeal to nature). Wiping the entire prairie out, and replacing it with subtropical jungle forests would go against conserving nature, but would ultimately benefit the landscape here. Both objectively and aesthetically.

I am going to assume that you are employing extreme hyperbole here as a rhetorical device to make a point. I hope we've gotten beyond hubristic ideas like 19th Century "rain follows the plow" or early 20th Century attitudes like draining the ugly ol' Everglades to make South Florida a tropical paradise for people. The prairie is obviously there because it is the ecosystem best adapted to the conditions.

Now, giving you the benefit of the doubt that you were hyperbolizing, I am going to agree with what I think is your point. As a scientist I can appreciate the prairie ecosystem for what it is, and I also enjoy hiking and mountain biking through the native riparian woods along Buffalo Bayou and in George Bush Park. They're all natural and beautiful. But neither is the way I want to landscape my yard, and really I think that's what we're talking about here, landscaping, not our native ecosystems. I will use a native plant if I like the way it looks, partly because I know it will also be easier to care for, but I won't use a plant I would otherwise ignore just because it is native. As long as we aren't planting invasive species, I don't think we have to be zealots about only planting native species.

I think a lush tropical yard can look fantastic in Houston, fit in just fine aesthetically, if you have the money and patience to maintain it and replace plants that will be lost during cold fronts. I think where I differ from you is thinking that the tropical/subtropical look is the only appropriate aesthetic for our area. I can only think of a few landscaping aesthetics that would absolutely be a no-go for Houston. Xeriscaping, for one, if you're trying to make your yard look like you live in Santa Fe or Tucson, it's going to stick out like a sore thumb in our lush, humid green natural landscape (not to mention all the plants getting overwatered and succumbing to fungal infections). A Mediterranean yard...eh, there aren't going to be a lot of places where that won't be incongruous either. It would certainly look stupid in the Woodlands or the Memorial Villages, but maybe out in Katy you could make it work.

I think you also have to take into account your architecture and the dominant architecture of your neighborhood. If your neighborhood is all brick Georgians, palm trees and philodendrons are going to look ridiculous, you're going to want to go with a more traditional temperate American landscape. On the other hand, a red tile roof and spanish style stucco practically screams for tropical to me (but again, my mom grew up in Coral Gables) and would look dumb with more formal temperate planting. And then there are plenty of architectural styles that could go either way, like craftsman or modern.

1 hour ago, Luminare said:

 

I actually very much agree with @Avossos I used to think that there should be just one "ideal aesthetic" for Houston, but we are one of the most challenging landscapes to design for in terms of climate/environment. I would recommend driving the entire length of the Grand Parkway to get a sense of just how complicated our environment is. Houston sits on maybe 3 different biomes (wetlands, sub-tropical, grasslands) with many sub-categories within them. To the SE we have a lot of depressions with a lot of wetlands, to the SW / W we have a lot of grassy flatlands with very few actual wild trees that are very short, to the NW we start to get some sloping and intermix of Oaks and Pines, to the North we get a little more hills and pines, to the NE we get Pines mixed with sub-tropic groundcover / wetlands, and to the E we get more wetland/marshy terrain. T

Speaking of biomes of Houston, here is a great website which maps out all the different ecoregions of the area and describes them:

http://houstonwilderness.org/about-ecoregions

I live along Buffalo Bayou, so for my neighborhood, a lot of temperate deciduous trees would blend well into the adjacent mixed hardwood riparian forest that is Terry Hershey Park.

2 hours ago, Avossos said:

 

I have been designing landscapes for 3 years and have not once used St. Augustine. There is so many better options.

I really want to rip out my St. Augustine and replace it with buffalo grass. I think about what I'd save on water every summer. First I have to convince my wife, and then the HOA. Although, I'm not even sure buffalo grass is the best choice, especially for my backyard, which is fairly shaded. Avossos, what grasses do you recommend, and are there places I could go to see what these grasses look like in a lawn (especially to convince my wife)?

14 hours ago, AnTonY said:

I'd say landscaping in this city is better off sticking with the tropical/subtropical look. The coastal SE US flora is more than enough to satisfy this, with species such as magnolias, various green oaks, and pines. Very lush, and quite eye-catching when combined with graceful palms and colorful flowers. The plants do very well in the humid climate. It goes well with the bayou landscape.

 

Deciduous trees are okay under certain context, especially the cypress species, or semi-evergreen warm-climate types. Otherwise, they largely are ugly and white-bread, and are better off being wiped out. Same goes for scrubby stuff like Chinese Tallow, mesquite, and huisache.

I'll admit I have a soft spot for tropical landscaping, my mother grew up in Miami, which is my favorite city, having spent a lot of summers there growing up, even had my bachelor party there.

When I bought my house, I went very tropical in the backyard - bananas, philodendron, ginger, bird of paradise, etc. I was trying to recapture the feel of my grandparents' backyard. I even went tropical with the fish I stocked in the pond I installed - Central American cichlids. But, even though Houston doesn't get a hard or long winter, we do get enough weather to kill off a lot of the tropicals. Some of them come back, bananas, ginger, but others, no matter how hard you try, die with just one night in the 20s, no matter how well you try to cover them. And even with the bananas, ginger, and others that come back from the roots (even cannas, that look tropical but aren't), you have a period of time where your yard looks like crap (like right now) because they're all cut back. Oh, and elephant ear taro, even though they are very hardy and come right back, they are horribly invasive, will take over your beds unless you're always on top of them. I'm glad I didn't go tropical in the front yard, would be just too much work in the winter-spring to keep it from looking like an eyesore.

My backyard still has a somewhat tropical look, but as stuff dies off I replace it more and more with natives. There are actually natives that kind of look tropical, if that's what you want to go for aesthetically. Buchanan's is a great source. One plant I have really enjoyed is a black spanish grape, a hybrid (possibly natural) of an old world wine grape and a native American grape. The Spanish missionaries used to use it to make communion wine in Texas and other parts of northern New Spain back in the 1700s. Last year was the first year I got enough grapes to try making wine with it, ended up with a nice hillbilly wine from it.

Even my pond, I've gone full native. Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis), sailfin mollies (Poecillia latipinna), and various smaller sunfishes (Lepomis sp.) like orangespot and dollar that I catch from local water bodies. They provide visual interest in the pond, keep the mosquito larva population at bay, last through even the coldest Houston winter, and the mosquitofish and sailfin mollies replenish their populations on their own.

When we moved our trees were several water oaks that were put in when the house was built in the mid 60s along with one magnolia tree and two Chinese tallow. We took down the Chinese tallow almost immediately, Chinese tallow is a nasty invasive and should be exterminated with extreme prejudice wherever found. I hate the magnolia, it is so messy, sheds huge leaves all year round, and pods that have to be picked up as they fall or else my dog will eat them (seeds are poisonous, yes, my dog is stupid). The water oaks are all end of life now and the next few years we'll be taking one down per year. Other than the cost of taking them down and replacing them, I'm not sad to see them go, especially this time of year, they're so freaking messy. Because oak trees dominate in our neighborhood, I'm enjoying replacing the oaks with different trees. My favorite so far is a drummond red maple, a native to the area, a fast grower, and has consistently beautiful fall foliage. Other than cleaning those leaves up in the fall, which is more a joy than a chore, it's a very tidy tree as well. Also put in a redbud and a flowering dogwood.

He doesn't even know what he's advocating, he can't articulate it. Try asking him for any details at all:

On 12/10/2018 at 1:56 PM, Elseed said:

There should be a crystal blue lagoon development in Galveston. Along with some Hampton's type development. 

On 12/17/2018 at 6:56 AM, Reefmonkey said:

What exactly do you mean by “crystal blue lagoon development “?

And what do you mean by “Hampton’s type  development?”  The Hamptons are a bunch of 200-300 year old towns, how do we recreate that artificially and why should we want to try to become an inferior wannabe clone of a NY East Coast experience  instead of the authentic Gulf Coast town we already are?

On 12/23/2018 at 9:43 PM, Elseed said:

 What I mean is; there should be a a crystal clear blue lagoon development created in/around Galveston Beach. This project would be close to the beach and it will have a crystal clear blue lagoon anchoring it.

As for “Hampton’s type  development”, I mean; there should be a “Hampton’s type  development" in Galveston. No one said it has to be exactly like the Hampton's, that's why I wrote; “Hampton’s type  development." Notice the word "type." This development doesn't have to be inferior and it could essentially be just a neighborhood; at first. Then it can grow to whatever the developers or the city's hearts desires. Also, the "authentic Gulf Coast town" experience is a pretty crappy experience if you ask me. You've got to have vision Reefmonkey or you'll just continue to make the same crappy development that Houston and Texas is so used too.

Last year was a good year for me tax wise because I'm in a neighborhood that flooded (my street was the southernmost street in the neighborhood that didn't flood). Between properties around me being distressed (to put it mildly) and the district being so overworked they didn't have the time to put into a rebuttal to an unequal appraisal argument, and the fact that most property sales in my neighborhood were teardowns for land value, John Osenbaugh was really able to get me a major reduction. It'll be interesting though to see how the value of all the new two-story mcmansions built in my neighborhood will affect the valuation of my 1965 1-story ranch in the years to come.

So that’s a no then to civility. I’m sorry I wasted so much effort on you. 

Aw man, that sucks, Terry Hershey is practically my backyard, and I enjoy the Anthills a lot. And it's not just that these paths won't be there anymore, it also means they're going to do some serious resurfacing here that will change the nature of that stretch of the park. It's going to be less nature, more manicured. And if they're doing it there, they're sure to be doing it in other segments. And I love how the announcement makes a big deal about the Anthills having been created "without written permission and without compensation to the public" when the park's official website promotes the Anthills.

3 minutes ago, august948 said:

 

I'll have to give Las Ventanas a try.  Is it in that enclave of restaurants at the corner of hwy 6 and I10?

Yep, it's diagonally across the street from the original Lupe Tortilla.

12 minutes ago, august948 said:

 

Now that you mention Memorial at Dairy Ashford, our favorite there is La Hacienda.

There are people in our neighborhood who rave about that place. We went once when we hadn't been in the neighborhood all that long. I don't know if we went on an off night, or ordered the wrong things, but never went back. That was 12 years ago, so maybe its better now. One place I really like, though its more interior Mexican than Tex Mex, is Las Ventanas at Memorial and Highway 6. Good food and the best ambiance, a beautiful patio. I think they're owned by the same people who used to own Las Alamedas.

5 minutes ago, kbates2 said:

As mentioned, the Ninfa's on Navigation is not affiliated with or remotely similar to any of the other Ninfa's.  I think it is pretty fantastic and better than El Tiempo at a lot of things.  I think El Tiempo does great fajitas and that is about it.  El Real does the best cheese enchiladas in the city.  Los Tios does solid ones as well.  El Tiempo does the best fajitas (with Lupe pretty solid up there as well).  Irma's does the best Mole.

Now that you mention it, the fajitas really are the standout at El Tiempo and pretty much all I get. I used to also like their crab enchilada, but haven't ordered it in forever. For some reason I also want to think that it used to have snapper as well as crab in it. And I like El Tiempo's frozen margaritas with sangria, but I think Ninfa on Navigation's margaritas on the rocks are better than El Tiempos' rocks. And agree on El Real and Los Tios enchiladas. I think Sylvia's does a good job too. Haven't tried Irma's, always looking for a good mole.

1 minute ago, LBC2HTX said:

https://www.tonymandolas.com/our-story/

 

 

Ah, that explains it, thanks!

Ninfa Laurenzo and her husband had a tortilla factory in East End. Her husband died suddenly in 1969, and the tortilla factory wasn't doing well, so she closed it and started the restaurant that became Ninfa's on Navigation. She introduced fajitas in 1973, and is credited by some with popularizing them in Texas, leading to their national popularity. Ninfa's expanded to several locations in the Houston area, and then other parts of Texas, through the 80s. The business went bankrupt in the late 90s, and she sold off the name which was used to open franchises, though she kept the ownership of and right to the name of Ninfa's on Navigation. In 1998 her son Roland opened the first El Tiempo on Richmond. A second Laurenzo restaurant with pretty much the same food as El Tiempo opened on Main Street in downtown in 1999, but it was called Tres Caballeros Cantina instead. I'm not sure when it closed, probably sometime around when the light rail construction curtailed the initial Downtwon revitalization that had started in the late 90s. I think the second location specifically named El Tiempo opened sometime in 2000, on the south side of I-10 outside of 610, but had to close due to I-10 widening.  Mama Ninfa died in 2001. New El Tiempos have been popping up ever since. Apparently they also own Tony Mandola's Gulf Coast Kitchen now?

On 3/5/2019 at 11:28 AM, august948 said:

I wouldn't hold out much hope for the Ninfa's.  Every one I've been to has been sub-par.  I haven't been to the one on Navigation, though.

 

Is Los Tios going into the space at the end where Ciao Bello was?

The Ninfa's on Navigation is more for the experience than the food (kinda like Joe T. Garcia's in Fort Worth), tbh, because the El Tiempo next door has far better food. Not to say the food at Ninfa's on Navigation is bad (and it's quite a bit better than Joe T's), it's just there is so much better Mexican food, even from Ninfa's own family. And the Ninfa's chain is not affiliated with the Navigation location or the Laurenzo family at all any more, hasn't been for a long time. Some of them can be fairly passable, the one on Memorial at Dairy Ashford is okay (though I prefer Los Tios at Memorial and Kirkwood), but I went into one Ninfa's down on the Gulf Freeway and Bay Area about 10 years ago, ordered enchiladas suizas, and got some fluorescent green translucent sauce that was obviously right out of a can. It was worse than public school cafeteria food.

It looks like there should be a telescope inside the top of that turret thing, but then again, a telescope would be practically useless in West U (or most of the greater Houston area for that matter).

Sadly, it almost feels like we were overdue for one, there have been explosions and fires like this in the Pasadena area with such alarming regularity throughout my lifetime. When I first heard there was an explosion down there yesterday, my first thought was "was it at the old Phillips plant?", remembering the 1989, 1999, and 2000 explosions there. When was our last big explosion - the 2005 BP explosion? I guess there was the Kuraray explosion last May.

We understand them very well, enough to realize they are unworkable and irresponsible. Trying to convert Galveston into an artificial shadow of the Hamptons or Miami Beach makes far less sense than playing up its natural similarities to Savannah or Charleston, which is a hot destination right now.