Bamboo at MAC

I went up to the Margaret Austin Center to see if they needed another volunteer to wrangle bamboo at their grove-thinning wingding today. They did.

This stand of green-streaked gold culms is Painted bamboo/Bambusa vulgaris vittata. The organizer of the bamboo maintenance assault, Jill, thinks it makes the best sounding flutes. She says that Margaret Austin came back from a visit to a monastery in Thailand with two rhizomes. Now look at it, thirty years later:

Here is bit of the other bamboo grove, of a species I don’t know. The architecture dominates the scene, no? If I have the history straight, that building was designed and constructed by University of Houston architecture students who later became part of the Ant Farm Collective. The Ant Farm doesn’t ring a bell? Maybe you know one of their projects, Cadillac Ranch, in Amarillo, Texas:

The cars were painted pink for breast cancer awareness, summer 2006.

Another funky building, the meeting hall at the Margaret Austin Center:

These canes will be crafted into flutes, fences, and furniture.