Frank Schulte-Ladbeck

This can be considered a throw away post, but I thought someone might find it useful. On Saturday, I had an inspection for a Vietnamese client. After we had finished going over the report, I said thank you in Vietnamese, and she smiled broadly. How did you know to say that?! She exclaimed. My son and I will always ask people how to say thank you in their native tongue, and we try to remember it then. We are not always successful (Turkish has two forms for our thank you, and I still do not remember either one), but it is a simple way to let a person know that you appreciated them. After having to deliver an inspection report in Spanish today, my thoughts were directed once more to making a connection with my clients.

Houston has a quite a few different ethnic groups, and I would not be able to include them all with my limited knowledge, so I want to give you a few ways to say thank you, so you can make your own connections. I will spell them out as they sound to English ears. Spanish is the most known: grah-see-ahs. We are having more Vietnamese immigrants to our city, and their phrase sounds like gum on. The Chinese are next with shay-shay. If you are feeling adventurous, you can say nee how mah, which is Chinese for hello and how are you?

We have been having more Arab speakers enter our community, so you can say shook ron. However they may speak Persian, which is similar to French in its thank you: mare-see. Now, if you meet anyone who speaks the ancient tongue of Sanskrit, you can say dahnk ah, which also happens to be the same in German.

Alright, it was a quick tour. I still have to learn to remember the Urdu version of thank you, but with so many languages being spoken in India, I think that I can stick with thank you. Well, thank you for reading this post.

I wrote a post for my blog listed under the links here of touring African American history and culture in Houston, which has been a popular post. One of the places that I mentioned as worth seeing was the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum. Now I hear that the museum is planning on moving because its collection of materials showing African American military history is growing. I wanted to mention this fact, because they are in need of some help. They have taken out a loan to purchase a more appropriate larger location (an old armory building closer to downtown).

My charity of choice has been the Houston Food Bank, where I denote my time and money, but if you are fortunate enough to have received some benefits recently, would you please consider joining me in donating to this worthy organization.

Here is the site, if you would like to check it out:

http://www.buffalosoldiermuseum.com/

Thank you in advance if you check out this link.

Active neighborhoods undergo active changes. You can see old friends, but you can quickly miss the departed. I discovered that a nice little cafe in the River Oaks area of town has closed down, to be replaced by an interior design firm. The change occurred over the course of one month. I have been busy of late, so I did not wander about this section of town as much as I have wanted. These changes caused me to linger on the streets, before entering the home, which I was scheduled to inspect.

I like driving through a neighborhood to get a sense of it before my inspection, and sometimes I walk around the block to get a better feel, and I did that yesterday. I also like talking to the residents. Usually, I just introduce myself, in order for them to know why that man is climbing all over that house, but every so often, people want to chat. Maybe it had something to do with the nice weather, or my fetching smile (alright, I do not have much of a smile, so that could not have been it), but several people wanted to talk to me. In fact, we had quite long conversations, so I was glad to have arrived an hour early for the job. However, I do keep thinking that I have to get back to the task at hand, because I have a client coming. One talk provided me with a font of information for my client, which made me happy to have taken the time to discuss the property with her.

A former Realtor lives next door to the house, where I was scheduled to be. She had been responsible for the sale of some of the lots about her home, and she was actively watching the market for home in her area. She had a dossier on my property. It turns out to have been a mortgage fraud. She had observed the house being built, and what the fate of the tenants was. It is good to know your neighbors I thought.

She did not have high praise for the builder, and my initial impression drove me to a similar conclusion. Here was a three story town home with a lovely courtyard design, which included beautiful materials, but there was plenty of evidence that he rushed through the job. The home was just over a year old, and it had quite a honey-do list compiled. For all of the gorgeous features, the moment you see a flaw, your eye is drawn to it. I wonder if the foreman did a final walk-through to check the quality of his work. How could he have missed the paint dripping down onto the wood door, or the poorly laid tile on the balconies? The list goes on; all items which did not have to do with my report proper, but I included them to let my client know about the tasks that will be ahead of her. I just had to stress that most of these items were cosmetic.

Hopefully, builders in the current market will learn to check their work, and buyers will be more conscious of these issues. It helps to talk with the other homeowners around the house that you are considering, you may never know what you will find out.

My son comes back from a walk through our subdivision with two grapefruits in hand. They were hanging over the fence he protested. They had a lot, and they were not picking them. Lately I have been flooded with citrus from different friends who have more than they know what to do with. I planted my citrus trees last year, so they are not producing yet, and these fresh fruits are a great treat.

On another walk, my son notices that swiss chard has been planted in the front beds for an office building. Should we have some chard for dinner? We can get it from our own garden, I respond. Along the walk we find another building with kale in their beds. He just smiles and points. We have that too. Dessert he says when he spots some johnny jump ups and pansies. Well, if your sister would stop picking them to splay across our floors, we could enjoy them. I notice more fruit trees in the neighborhood as we head back home.

There are groups who go through areas collecting fruits and vegetables from wild spots, or the houses next door, but there is an etiquette to this practice. You have to ask before you pick. I send my son back to the grapefruit house with a bundle of herbs as an apology for the theft. Herbs are great in the garden since most garden pests do not attack these plants. Their foliage and colors can add some interest in the garden. My daughter has discovered the Lamb's Purse. Soft grey leaves which spread to make a pretty ground cover.

Later in the day, a friend stops by my home to pick up papers for her son. We are sitting in the front garden bench talking about the school, when she notices a tree in the yard. That's an apple tree, she exclaims. Yes, there is a variety we can grow in Houston that is self-pollinating. I have loved apple trees since my youth in Chicago. I nearly lost a finger once in a folding lawn chair when I was four by trying to find a way to grab an apple off of a limb. My apple addiction has not abated over the years.

I am in the process of preparing some of my garden beds for the coming year, and I am planning on adding chard and kohlrabi to some of my flower beds. I think that I will mix them in with the day lilies. The flowers of the day lilies make a great thickener for soups, and the vegetables have interesting forms.

Fruit trees can make nice shade trees to sit under, but I like them for another reason. You see the typical American yard is too short for our large trees. I love maples and oaks, but they need to be placed at least forty feet away from the home if you do not want them to effect your foundation. Trees will suck the water out of the ground, and in most of Houston, we have expansive clay soils which will shrink when dry, and expand when wet. Branches of larger trees can damage roofs, while shrubs can damage walls. Since many fruit trees grow to about twenty feet, you probably have enough space for them in your yard. The benefit is that you may produce fruit soon. I will warn you about plum trees. The flowers on these trees last for such a short time that you should take a small painter's brush from flower to flower to pollinate them. The bees may not be around when it flowers, so this is a good way to get plums for yourself.

Well, I have to go and prune my bay tree now. I make reefs each year for family and friends, but I have been producing too much. I have to find more victims, I mean friends, to give these reefs to.

I thought that it would be nice to do a post honoring the birthday of our first president. Here in Texas the news is all about our upcoming presidential primary, and indeed, I just came from seeing my parents, where discussions about who should be president were the main topic. The other topic of conversation was how I was serving my country today.

Today, I participated in an event that many dread: jury duty. My wife was running through the list of possible excuses that I could use to obtain an exemption. She admonished me to look into every possibility. She knew that I would not. She called me in the afternoon to find out if I had been picked for a jury. She found out that I had not been picked. She did not disguise her pleasure, but she quickly added that she knew that I would not be happy. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I like jury duty. I think it is great that I live in a country where I can assist the legal system in such a way. I enjoy hearing the judges give their spiel, and for the attorneys to present their questions to see who should be on the jury. I like the drama of every trial. It might not be the stuff of Law and Order or Boston Legal, but the lives of the people in the courtroom is far more interesting to me. I was watching intently as the lawyers were trying to decide who should serve (maybe my stare scared them off from choosing me, but smile is reminiscent of Lurch attempting a smile).

One of the things that I have enjoyed since entering a real estate profession is the fact that I can have the time to serve my community. I volunteer at a Food Bank on almost a weekly basis. I am involved in politics in a minor way, and I go happily to serve on a jury, knowing that many parts of the world have no such opportunities. I do not think that I am alone in this feeling. In fact I think that others in real estate feel the same way towards service to their country and community. I offer the following two posts as examples:

Sean K Robison Sr.'s take on giving back to his community: http://activerain.com/blogsview/387398/Giving-back-to-our

or Rich Dansereau's post http://activerain.com/blogsview/374322/-VOTE-Are-You , which also connects to a post by Christina Williams with a similar theme.

Please read them to see that my opinion of this profession is not wrong. I am offering two, but look around this site, and you will find many more.

So I ask you, how did you honor Washington's birthday today? Many in the real estate industry honor it all year long.