Living in Shaw – Truxton Is In Shaw

Memory Lane: Alpine Strawberries in the backyard

One of the things I miss about my Truxton Circle home* is my patio garden. I loved being able to pop out of the kitchen backdoor and grab a few herbs for cooking. I did grow other things, like alpine strawberries.

You will never find alpine strawberries in your local store or farmers market. These things are too fragile to survive transport. But they are supertasty.

They grow in not so sunny yards such as my backyard patio.

Now some of these plants made it to the Maryland abode and with a larger yard with sun, these things flourished. In DC I was able to get a few tasty fruits and was happy. Now with a few more plants because they like the sun (who knew?), I can snack on them when putting around in the garden. I can get a decent handful in one outing, depending on if anything has gotten to them.

What do they taste like? Strawberries. A mushier strawberry.

They do not have runners. They grow in clumps. They have survived several harsh DC/MD winters. The squirrels (and deer) don’t seem to be too interested in them. Slugs like them.

They do grow from seed, but it can be challenging. If you have room or just want the greenery, I recommend them.

*I moved to the suburbs of PG County in 2021 during the pandemic.

Memory Lane: Guys on the corner

I do not miss the old guys who sold heroin on the corner of 4th & Q. I do not miss calling 911 or 311 depending on the ever changing policy and not getting great results.

But they weren’t all that bad. One winter, Jimmy and the crew joined in with the snow shoveling.

They were better than the young men who sold drugs on my or other nearby corners. Young men attract more violence. With the old guys, I didn’t worry as much about drive bys and stray bullets. Slow moving men can’t fight turf battles.

I did worry when younger men started hanging out there.

Before the old men. It used to be the spot where screamy teenagers would hang out and….. scream.

Memory Lane: Lucky Kitty & the Contractor

Cat sitting on fence at 1616 4th St NW. Taken October 31, 2003

I wrote the post below back in the early days of the blog in 2003. I was undergoing my first major house renovation, the kitchen with a contractor I found via some swing dance friends who live (still live) in the H Street area.

That contractor had his own company and paired up with a fellow and they created a company. I see that company’s trucks all over my new neighborhood. But this post is about a kitty.

My neighbors down the street had a cat. They kept the cat outside most of the time. Lucky was a very sweet cat.

Lucky Kitty

My contractor has run off with the neighbor’s cat. She’s doing much better now he says. I kind of miss her. Lucky is an extremely affectionate cat. Of course she mainly wanted food and tried breaking into my house often. But now she’s in a warm house, the neighbors kept her outside, eating regularly, I used to feed her a little & thought her owners were too, and she doesn’t slobber anymore.

My contractor took her home. She was well cared for. She became an indoor all the time cat and got fat. She was in kitty heaven. Well she died after many, many years and is now in kitty heaven.

Memory Lane: Kittens on a rug 2006

The internet is for cats.

This could be anywhere, but it was my backyard on 4th St NW. We had a healthy colony of alley cats in the alley between New Jersey Avenue and 4th Street. Did they do a good job of keeping down the rodent population?

*shrug*

I had mice issues and used poison bait stations inside and outside to deal with the problem with varied results. But the cats were part of the fabric that made the neighborhood the neighborhood.

There were neighbors who cared for the cats, putting out food. I volunteered to try to trap the mother cat so she could get spayed. The kittens were hanging out in my yard anyway. However, momma cat was smart. She would rub up against the trap to set it off.

Eventually neighbors got all the alley cats spayed and neutered or adopted off (for the kittens) and the colony died out.

Change from 1920 to 1930, White to Black, Flynn to Keasley- 1735 New Jersey Av NW

I’ve been updating the blog and uploading posts from 2010. It’s slow work because I can’t figure out how to turn old Movable Type html files into a file the importer can read. Luckily I found what I was looking for in another spot.

I was looking for Mrs. Flynn. In 1920, Mrs. Rosa Lee Smith Flynn rented 1735 New Jersey Avenue NW, living there with her three adult daughters, Ethel, Edna (Florence?) and Frances and two sons, George and Charles.

She was a widow at the time (1920), as her husband Zachariah Taylor Flynn died in 1907. They had twelve children. Roley (1879-1905); George (1880-1929); Jane; Henry (1883-1969); Zachariah (1885-1961); Daisy (1887-1951); Benjamin (1888-1953/1962?); Ethel (1890-1924); Florence Edna (1892-1922); Frances (1890-1961); William (1898-??); and Charles (1899-1984).

Prior to living in the District of Columbia and Zack’s death, they were on a farm in the town of Scott in Fauquier County, VA. In 1910, she lived at 112 P St NW, in Truxton Circle. Son George, aged 29 worked as a bookkeeper for a dairy. Maybe the dairy on the 1600 block of 1st St NW? George (bookkeeper), Daisy (a dressmaker), and Edna (clerk in dry goods shop) appear to have supported their mother and younger siblings, Frances and Charles.

When we arrive at 1920, with the exception of Francis, her adult children are all working and supporting her.

I asked myself the question of why was there a 100% racial change on that stretch of New Jersey Ave from 1920 to 1930 and the Flynns provide a mundane answer. Life went on. Continue reading Change from 1920 to 1930, White to Black, Flynn to Keasley- 1735 New Jersey Av NW

Home and garden

The post below was for February 5, 2009. I’m going through my unpublished drafts and deleting several and publishing others. I’m only publishing this because I have fond memories of my small garden as I now deal with the challenges of a suburban garden.

It’s been horribly cold so the only thing I’ve been doing with my yard is look at it. I may occasionally pick up the trash that blows in.

I’m not as excited as I was last year about the yard. I am planning to do something new. The current yard is suffering from too much traffic, too little space. I park the bike on one end of the yard, causing me to trample on some things that don’t like being trampled on, arugula. So amazingly the most of the arugula that has managed to survive winter is the stuff in my way, so it is looking ratty and unappetizing. Late in the season I planted some plants that I should probably move. They too are in the way of things I need to get to. So the trick will be trying to get the front yard and the bike to live in harmony, without anything I may want to eat underfoot. Or undertire.

The untrampled arugula is small and for a while was getting eaten by some odd beetle looking bug. So its leaves are a bit ugly too.

I’m going to have to use more pots for the front yard. Why? Cats. The furry little bastards have been occasionally using the yard as a toilet. Also the company I use to control rodents have thrown in the added service of spraying. I was told the spray is for the house surface (stairs and doorways) and the ground next to the house. I could cancel the service and risk a return of mice or put my garden high above the spray and in pots.

Memory Lane: Richardson Place and Jim’s Garden

Before Common there was a long battle between the residents of Richardson Place and a developer named Mondie. And before Mondie, there was a garden where part of the current shared apartments sit.

View from alley near Richardson looking towards 4th St NW. Taken December 14, 2005.

The garden belonged to Jim Norris who owned the house next to it. It was a cute and sweet little garden perfect for a bachelor. The houses on Richardson back then were on the very small side. I remember one Christmas, Jim had his whole living room packed with many creches/nativity scenes. He managed to make the best of the small space. Jim owned it from 2001-2018.

Memory Lane: Shaw Library 2006- the ugly one

I was looking through my old Flickr account because I am going to either shut it down or something where I am not paying a large annual fee to keep it.

So flipping through some old photos, I found this old gem from August 2006. Above is the Waltha T. Daniels Shaw Library in 2006. There is a much prettier library in that spot now.

In praise of the Envirocycle Composter-Update

UPDATE- The universe has semi-answered my prayers. I must thank friend and sometimes reader of the blog Shawn for giving me his unused rotating composter. It sits next to the composter I bought. It’s sturdy and I look forward to turning it into a turny worm paradise.

_______original post below________

Sometimes you never know what you had until it is long gone and you can never get it back. That is how I feel about my-no-longer-mine Envirocycle composter.

Taking another break from the Black Home Owners of Truxton Circle, again. Face it, it’s long and tedious. Also rewarding. Anyway..

When I first moved to Truxton Circle, a co-worker (now department head) gave me his composter. He and his partner had no use for it. They lived a couple of miles where I live now in the Maryland suburbs. He was nice enough to throw it in the back of his truck and deliver it to my Truxton Circle home.

I dumped my old plants in it. I dumped some cherry tomatoes from a house warming party in it. That resulted in having accidental cherry tomatoes growing in the front yard. I put shredded paper from shredded documents in it.

I took earthworms found on the concrete patio in it. At another point I bought some earthworms in the mail and put them in. This resulted in the great worm escape on an unusually hot day where worms were oozing out of the slits en masse. It was a sight.

I used the compost tea and the compost for my container garden. I also donated compost for one of the sidewalk trees Brian and crew placed on 4th St. It was a lovely thing to have.

Did it stink? On occasion, when I failed to balance the ‘greens’ and the ‘browns’. The greens were the romaine lettuce butts, egg shells, whole avocados gone bad, remaining parts of avocados gone good, and all the raw veggies that were composting in the refrigerator. I’ll also include tea bags, loose tea, and lots of coffee grounds from nearby coffee shops, when the neighborhood starting having coffee shops.

The browns were the shredded papers, dryer lint, and maybe the odd batch of leaves.

I took it for granted.

When we decided to sell our Truxton Circle home I had to find a new home for the composter. By this time, 19 years had passed and around year 17-18 some urban wildlife tore a hole in the side.

I suspect it was the big bag of fruit I threw in there.

I put the composter on Freecycle, with pics of the hole, and a fellow with a pick up truck picked it up and took it away.

Fast forward 1 year.

I was in my new suburban home and getting tired of putting food scraps down the garbage disposal drain or in the trash. The place where we moved has a composting program, however, I wanted to get back into gardening, and I want my own compost, where I know what’s in the compost.

So I went looking for a new Envirocycle and holy heck those suckers are $500! I could buy similar tumbling composters and I really don’t need the feature that made it great for my urban back patio, the system that captured the compost tea and kept it from staining the concrete. But I really like the door for the composter. I like that all I had to do was turn the composter, no lever or having (but I did) to go in and turn the compost myself.

I don’t really like the new style of Envirocycle. The old model had several little slits, and this new one just has a vent at the top. I guess that would prevent the hole problem I experienced.

Since I’m not paying $500, I bought a $80 stationary composter. It’s eh. I’m just happy I’m not throwing perfectly good scraps away. I might break down and buy a tumbler. I just don’t see one that I like for a price that makes sense to me.

I miss my old Envirocycle. I guess you really can’t appreciate what you had until it is gone.

In praise of the Envirocycle Composter