a.d. elliott - Take the Back Roads

 Dear Henry, While I was in Oklahoma City, I made sure I saw the Oklahoma City National Memorial and the attached Museum. I have to say, it was an incredibly moving experience. The Oklahoma City National Memorial remembers the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that occurred on April 19, 1995, when two men (who will remain nameless), with the help of two accomplices ( who will also remain anonymous), parked a rented moving truck filled with 4 800 lbs of homemade explosives. They did this to protest the FBI and ATF's handling of the Ruby Ridge and Waco standoffs. The bomb was devastating. The blast immediately collapsed a third of the building, killed 168, and injured almost 700 others. Because the building housed childcare facilities, 19 of those killed were children.  It was a terrible few weeks for Oklahoma City, and the people of the area (and the rest of America, really) came together. Immediately following the blast, donations of shovels, ropes, hoists, helm...

 Dear Henry, The first gardening bed we created in the new garden was in the narrow space between the north side of the house and the fence. We decided to build this bed first, but the primary reason was that quite a bit of water was pooling on this side of the house, so we had to make installing a French drain our first project. We ran into a bit of a snag with the drain installation. This side of the house contains all of our utility connections. After getting the utility lines marked, we realized that we would be unable to use any power driver equipment, and we (Fish) would be digging the entire trench (about 40 feet) for the drain by hand.  The hand-digging turned into quite a job too. The soil in Oklahoma is very heavy and mostly clay. Also, because we were doing this during the early Spring, we (Fish) were digging in the rain, which was a serious, muddy mess.  Fortunately, all the work worked. The drain made an immediate and notable difference, the water stopped poo...

Dear Henry, Have I ever mentioned that I've always wanted to learn to play the banjo? But unfortunately, I seem to struggle a bit with the hand-eye coordination required to play the instrument. Still, I love the sound and  "all things banjo," so during my recent trip to Oklahoma City , when I discovered the American Banjo Museum, I just had to go inside. The history of the banjo is an interesting one. The instrument was created around the late 1600s or early 1700s by enslaved African people in the Southern United States and was likely based upon a West African instrument called the Kora. Americans of European descent learned to play the instrument from their enslaved people (it sounds like it was an easy way to entertain "The Master's" children). Robert McAlpin Williamson is credited as being the first Euro-American to play the banjo. It was Joel Walker Sweeney, however, who was the first Euro-American to play on stage. Sweeney played the banjo in the travel...

 Dear Henry, After we moved from Arkansas, realized, sadly, that while I had photographed many of the flowers I'd grew, I hadn't taken many photos of the garden design itself, and wished I had. I was determined not to repeat the mistake with this garden. I was also inspired by the many garden design books I had read while we were staying in the apartment and decided to make my own "garden book", I have even purchased a scrapbook to make it. I also planned, with this garden, to be more diligent about recording the specifics of the different cultivars I plant.  Our new yard is quite a bit smaller than the acre we had in Arkansans, after the footprint of the house, we have approximately 5,500 square feet. Initially,  because we moved in January there wasn't much to do, although I added some prechilled tulip, daffodil, and crocus bulbs to the front flower bed and waited for things to warm up. In the front of the house, there is a large flowerbed under the front-facing...

  Dear Henry, I've just gotten back from a quick road trip to Oklahoma City, and the question I seem to be most asked is, "Why would you want to go there?" And while I understand the question (Oklahoma, as a whole, is an underrated gem), I assure you there are plenty of reasons to stop in Oklahoma City. On April 22, 1889, Oklahoma City was founded when the "Unassigned Lands of Indian Territory"  were opened for homesteading to people of non-Native American descent. Naturally, there was a mad rush for this land, and, within a few hours of the gun start at noon, 10,000 people converged on the area to stake their claim. The movie "Far and Away" portrayed a different land rush, but the movie dramatized a land rush well.  Because of an early infrastructure build-up, including rail lines, Oklahoma City could support large stockyards and granaries. When oil was discovered in 1928, the city was able to really boom.  The Great Depression and the Dustbowl did a ...