Planter's Malaise

In the more than 3 years since I planted my first box (six months after starting), I have planted more than 300 boxes. I have no idea exactly how many as I don't keep track. Some were temporary (intentionally or not) and others have lasted the whole time.

I like carving; I like hiding boxes. I'm sanguine about them going missing--you stick a box out there you gotta expect maintenance workers, landscape revisions (who knew the city did so much relandscaping of its parks, though), flooding, critters and more. Things happen and I may have a moment of silence but I don't get too upset about a missing box. I can always recarve, although what I generally choose to do is plant a different box so that people may find the new one.

But lately, I've been getting "reports" that just are disheartening. After one of them, I lose a little bit more of my enthusiasm. For instance:

"I got poison ivy from your box. You should be a little more careful where you hide letterboxes."

Well, folks who know me know that I am highly, highly allergic to poison ivy. I don't hide where there's any signs of it--hairy vines, three-leaved plants, etc. I know the plant well and I avoid it, because I have had one too many uncomfortable encounters with it. I can almost guarantee that when I planted it, there was no poison ivy. In this case, it could have arisen afterwards...or, the accuser could have found it elsewhere.

"Logbook's wet. You need to replace it."

Could you say anything else? Maybe even just cool park or nice stamp. How about...we laughed at the crazy ducks? Or, we didn't know this hidden gem was here? Anything?

More often though, it's just a "found" with no details. It would take 30 seconds to write something...that's what I do, even if I have to stretch to come up with something nice. I do it. Because I know that someone put some effort (usually) into their creation. I benefited from their efforts, so a thanks is in order.

And so on. I do get lovely found reports--I got a very nice one from lionsmane yesterday in fact (even though he was also reporting a missing box). What do the nice found report people have in common? Pretty much always, they're planters too.

We all have to deliver negative news sometimes. But how you couch those communications has a big effect on how they're received. And too many of these negative notes have given me planter-itis.

A more personal blog

I like to keep this blog primarily about letterboxing. But, often over the last year and a half, I've wanted to comment about issues and things (pop culture, politics, education, parenting, etc.) that have nothing to do with that topic. I restrained myself, but no more!

Finally, I've created a more personal blog. The title is an homage to George Carlin's great book BrainDroppings. It's possible that letterboxing topics may seep in, but that's not the point of the blog.

dewdroppings

I'm not sure how often I'll use it or post. I listed it on AQ under my profile for those who want to subscribe, but I'm not expecting a lot of subscribers. It's really for me to work out some things I feel compelled to say.

~dewberry

LTCs

Well, we've all gone nuts for making these little LTCs (Letterboxing Trading Cards). ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) of course have been around for quite some time. And LTCs are the same idea, except for the restriction that they must include at least one hand-carved stamp. I've been trading them madly and having a lot of fun with it.

I had already made the decision to finish out the postal rings I'm in and then not sign up for more than one at a time. I love postals and love getting to know people through participating in postal rings--but honestly, after the last postal rate increase, I felt the pinch. That, plus the fact that rings creep along in fits and starts. Suddenly, I just didn't really want the long-term commitment that a postal ring necessitates.

So, that's what I'm liking about the LTCs. I can trade as much or as little as I want, and if I'm not in the mood, I don't have to. I still get to see the work of people from all over the US (and different folks, because there are people doing LTCs that never did postals).

The cards range from really simple to highly complex. Mine usually contain more than one image, and I like to create cards that are unexpected. I'll try to post some pictures, but scanning in and all of that isn't one of my strengths.

I like trading, so feel free to contact me via AQ if you're up for a swap.

New Year's Traditions!

Our family has several New Year's Traditions. We started this when the kids were small, because we wanted them to be a bit more adventurous, more open to new things.

Every New Year, we:

• Go somewhere we've never been
• Try an activity we've never tried
• Eat a cuisine we've never eaten before

We pretty took care of the first two, so now onto the third! Eating!!

One of the best things about living in Houston is how you can find any type of people, and thus any type of food. In one short trip down Longpoint, you see an ostioneria, a Colombian bakery, a Vietnamese coffee shop, a Korean deli and much much more. It's like one giant ethnic fondue melting pot. There are also 9998 Mexican restaurants, but that's just a given.

This year, my oldest son closed his eyes and pointed at a map. The nearest country? Morocco! We researched Moroccan restaurants and found two. One was very upscale, renowned for its elegant presentations. The other? A dive in a strip center behind a gas station. Naturally, we went for the dive. We like to order a big sampler off the menu and try lots of dishes, so the dive is definitely more to the budget.

Last night, we loaded in the car and drove to SW Houston to find our Moroccan restaurant. We drove past where it was supposed to be. We circled around again, only to realize that the Moroccan restaurant had become Mexican restaurant number 9999. Drat!

We decided to go somewhere nearby where we'd been before, and took off down the road. Only, a few blocks up, there was Blue Nile, an Ethiopian Restaurant. A little U-turn, and we were sitting inside perusing the menu. Not Moroccan, but still something we hadn't tried.

We had beef, lamb, chicken and a vegetable combination, adapted a bit to the kids' palates (they haven't learned to love spicy yet). The kids loved using the injera and their hands to pick up the food. They tried everything, and they liked most of it and loved some of it, including the chickpeas. I think I might crawl over glass to get some more of their collard greens. I could have made a meal off of just those.

Watching them becoming more adept at using the injera to pick up the food spread in front of them, and eagerly trying everything was exactly what we envisioned five years ago when we started this tradition.

Picking Boxes

For boxes on our home turf, we'll get around to trying to find them all at some point. There are not enough free weekends or days to find them all, but I do a decent job keeping up. If you plant more than one box in our area, we'll definitely find one of yours at some point (sometimes the singletons go missing before we can find them).

But, we do some of our best boxing outside our home county. On the road, the possibilities are just so enthralling--what's around the next bend? When I'm planning a road trip, I try to work in things that we all enjoy--a brewpub for Asterix, rock scrambling or exploring for the boys, letterboxing for me! And, if there's a somewhat-nearby diner known for its mile-hile pie, we've been known to drive more than a little out of our way too. (Someday I'll write the Roadtrippers Guide to Pie.)

There are two kinds of road trips...the kind where you're trying to get somewhere, like a vacation destination, and you have a pretty set route. You can't deviate too much or you'll never arrive where you're going. And then there's the kind of voyage where the road trip itself is the vacation, and the whole point is to tool around seeing sites and exploring. Although I'm fond of both types, the tooling-around road trip is something I truly love.

We went on a three day wandering trip to East Texas. In the year and a half since we'd been in the general area, there has been a box explosion! Trying to decide which boxes to attempt is difficult when there are so many.

Here are some of the criteria I use.

Location: Reading clues, I love it when a planter shows me the true gems of their area. Of course, I want to hit the hot spots (and it's great when there's a box somewhere we'd want to go anyway), but I love it when there's one hidden at a local treasure that isn't on the beaten path.

Planter: Have I found some of your boxes and enjoyed them? Then, I want more! Have I found some of your boxes and not had an enjoyable experience? Maybe your clues are unnecessarily confusing, the locations kind of so-so, or there's something just flat about the experience. If that's the case, I'll probably take a pass. And, if there's only one box by a specific planter, it often means that they dabbled a bit and letterboxing didn't really take. Experience has taught me to avoid those, as I think it takes a bit of planting before you figure out what makes a decent box.

Distance: My boys like to hike (as do we), so we are happy to have a nice walk for a box. But, when you're traveling, every box can't be a hiking box. We mix it up a bit. Even for drive-bys, I like them to be in interesting, unique locations if at all possible (although everyone likes a rest-stop box sometimes).

History: I am a total sucker for a box with a good story.

Variety: In a completely new area, I try to find boxes by as many placers as I can. I like "getting to know" people through their boxes...and I'm not likely to want to stop and exchange when I'm traveling through. I let your boxes be my small glimpse into you and your personality. I like to look at my logbook and see carvings by different people and their completely different styles. It's like a book full of mini postcards from the road.

Of course, even with that criteria, I end up with a pile more clues than we can manage. I make decisions on the spur of the moment, based on time and the moods of the people in the car, about what we'll be attempting. So, it ends up being pretty random which boxes we attempt in the end.

One reason I like driving and taking your time is that there's the stuff that happens that you don't expect.

When we arrived at Martin Dies, Jr. State Park at 2:15, there was a sign up that said there was a snake feeding at 3pm. Well, we had to stay for that! We managed to find a box that had survived Hurricane Rita in a recently re-opened section of the park, and then it was back to the nature center for the feeding.

From the looks on the boys' face, they found it pretty fascinating.

Unfortunately, it meant we had to curtail our boxing a bit, but I loved visiting Martin Dies and I'm sure we'll be back. But really, a snake feeding isn't something you get to see everyday, so that was well worth the trade-off in boxing terms.

From here, it was on to Lake Sam Rayburn, just before a beautiful sunset at dusk, to find petrified wood.

Really the highlight of that day? Being able to catch my youngest son's shoe before it floated off into the lake. I was pretty proud of that, especially as I realized I didn't have an extra pair of shoes. One thing we definitely learned about rockhounding is to wear old shoes!



Here's our load of petrified wood.




In the comments section, I'd love to hear how you pick your boxes when traveling.

Joy!

This photo of my boys running down an Indian ceremonial mound between Alto and Weches, Texas captures what I like about family road trips. Caddoan Mounds State Park was unfortunately and inexplicably closed for the holidays, but this mound was just down the road a bit, in the middle of two fields with a historical marker explaining its significance. Very serendipitous! The kids ran up and down, up and down, over and over again. They had a blast! For more information about this culture, see Boots Tex's Nabedache box.

We're just back from an East Texas letterboxing/rockhounding trip. We found a number of great and thoughtful boxes, and some fantastic petrified wood pieces. We had fun searching for sharks' teeth and fossils in Jacksonville, exploring the site of an old Iron Ore Foundry near Rusk, seeing the devastating changes wrought at Martin Dies State Park from the hurricane and generally traveling around and exploring. It was a great way to close out 2007.

I really appreciate boxes that are thoughtfully placed. When we're visiting from out of town, I like to find the odd bits of history and the interesting locations that we perhaps wouldn't see if you didn't plant a letterbox there. We've really learned to focus on these sorts of quality boxes, and not feel that we have to get every box in an area (we never could anyway!)

As a family, we like to go places we've never been, visiting towns with names we've heard but haven't seen. You never know where some jewel is, just waiting by the side of the road, like these mounds. We were lucky to have great weather--a bit cool, but fair and sunny. The only thing wrong with our trip? Somehow we never found a diner with great pie.

And just for mother of five, we did find this guy while on a great hike at Mission Tejas state park. My youngest stepped on its tail without seeing him. That's why you've got to keep your eyes on the trail!

Mission Tejas was a beautiful spot to hike and enjoy the day. I'd love to go back and camp there someday.

So for 2008, I wish you all much joy and happiness.