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FBA provides a Christian environment, where children from diverse backgrounds thrive spiritually, academically and socially. We’re a Biblically-integrated, college preparatory school offering classes for Pre-K through 12th grade.

Our students study in the midst of the downtown Dallas Arts District. Our classrooms include the Perot, Dallas Museum of Art, Meyerson and Winspear, all within walking distance.

We’re small, but mighty. A small school means your family is part of a larger family. One where everyone cares about one another. It also means seeing your child get in the game.

FBA offers high academic standards. But we’re also fierce competitors. As a member of TAPPS, the Saints made the playoffs in nearly every sport last season, landing a state championship in football.

Give FBA a look. Then make a statement you’ll never regret. For information about enrolling for the 2014-15 school year, contact the Admissions Director at 214-969-7861 or visit us at fbacademy.com.

Meet Ryann

Class of 2014

• All State pitcher, led team to state softball final

• National Honor Society

• Cheer captain

• Incoming freshman, University of Oklahoma of it — the camaraderie. It was something you kind of cussed in the morning, but then once you’re done, you just have that great feeling. We would knock it out in a few hours, in about a three-hour window. Now with one individual walking around, it takes about four days for him to get them out.

How much does it cost to do this every year?

David Bush: It costs about $2,500 for the cards, the flags and the labor. We put out about 3,500 flags.

So people can expect to starting seeing them around the neighborhood starting July 1?

David Bush: Yep, around that time.

What areas do you cover?

David Bush: It’s everything east of Abrams, north of Gaston, south of Mockingbird. And the Cloisters, and the area around Hillgreen.

*This interview was edited for clarity.

—Brittany Nunn

Garden guru

Lori Martinez may have spent 25 years asamanicurist,butthesedaysshe spends lots of time getting dirt under her nails. That’s because she traded in her emery boards for gardening tools about six years ago when she started Backyard Produce, her edible garden business.

“I just wanted to start doing something else,” the East Dallas resident says of her rather successful — and sudden — career change. She had been working on her own garden and showed some pictures of it to one of her manicure clients, Cindy Rachof- sky, who lives in Preston Hollow area with her husband, Howard. “She said, ‘I want a garden,’ “Martinez recalls. “First I did 15 pots, then I did the whole backyard.”

The Rachofskys, who are prominent Dallas art collectors and philanthropists, were thrilled and quickly spread the word. Martinez’s business took off from there — so quickly that, she says, “practically overnight I was having to say no.”

With Backyard Produce, Martinez designs,installsandmaintainsgardens, mostly in raised beds, that provide their ownerswithavarietyoforganicvegetables. She also does consulting for DIY gardeners.Martinez’sspecializationin edible gardens came about organically, sotospeak.Gardeninghadbeenher hobby for years, but when she started working for others, she found out they wanted to grow their own food. “Before, I had very few vegetables,” she says. She taught herself through experimentation, by using internet resources, and by talking to her gardener friends. But mostly, she says, “I just keep working at it until it works out.”

So what grows best in the Texas heat? “Everyonewantstomatoes,”Martinez says, “But the biggest surprise is that fall and winter gardens are the most successful.” In the fall, she says, “there’s every lettuce you can think of. There’s no reason to buy it. Also broccoli, kale, spinach big, green leafy things — and root vegetables do well.” She says asparagus is another vegetable that loves the Dallas climate. “You don’t have to do anything,” she says. “If you never wanted to touch it, it would come back.”

MostofMartinez’sclientsareinthe Park Cities/Preston Hollow area, with one on Swiss Avenue. Her clients “are very healthy — they eat every single thing out there. If they don’t get to eat it, they’ll juice it.” Several of them have chicken coops, too. Martinez highly recommends chickens: “They have great personalities, and they’re easier than cats and dogs,” she says. Her husband, Trini, designs and builds the coops in his free time.

Martinez is thrilled with her success, even though the isolation of gardening can be lonely for a person whose previous job was so social. “But when I put [the gardens] in, I grab everyone I know to help,” she says. That includes friends and her three children — two teenagers and a 7-year-old.

Martinez feels extremely lucky that she was able to make the transition to gardener so successfully. She says that without the help of her generous clients, she couldn’t have done it: “The good part of my story is that these people just trusted in me.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION, visit thebackyardproduce.com.

—Larra Keel

Underground THRWDown

Both Valadez and Escobedo were heavily engrossed in the arts underground of Dallas, and Valadez wanted to give their creative friends a boost. He wanted to start an independent publication that featured artists, musicians, fashion designers, actors and the like who hadn’t managed to garner the attention of major Dallas publications.

“So we saw a niche,” Escobedo says. “We saw an opening.”

Valadez is a graphic designer and Escobedo had experience writing for Dallas publications, but neither had truly had creative control over their work. So together they formed THRWD, with Valadez as creative director and Escobedo as editor.

They started THRWD as a zine (a smallcirculation, self-published magazine), which consisted primarily of essays about the arts — most of which were written by Escobedo.

At first they had trouble focusing the content, but as the magazine picked up momentum, they began taking the publication more seriously. A shift happened with the third issue. The content was tighter, more professional, more focused. They changed the stories from essays to features, Q&As and op-eds.

“We took more of a journalistic-type mentality,” Escobedo says. “That’s also when we decided to up the ante and make THRWD a brand.”

THRWD hosted its first event — a poetry night at Lucky Dog Books — and the people who showed up were exactly the type of audience Escobedo and Valadez envisioned.

“It was kind of confirmation, like, ‘Wow, we can actually take this and make it an event — an experience,’ ” Escobedo says.

They began throwing monthly events, which were well attended by hundreds of Dallasites and artists of all stripes.

“There’s something for everyone,” Valadez says. “You’d see musicians with fashion designers with high schoolers, all hanging out in the same atmosphere.”

Now, the magazines are limited edition and can be purchased only at the issue-release parties. Every issue also is available online from cover to cover on thrwd.com.

—Brittany Nunn

Melodic memories

“She made me a better person,” Michael Cox says of his late wife, Lindy, and his eyes fill with tears. “She was a phenomenal woman.”

As Cox talks about Lindy, and his life after her, it’s hard to not compare their tale to a particularly poignant Nicholas Sparks novel. Everything about their story — the flirtatious first meeting, the onagain-off-again love affair, the diagnosis, the wedding in Italy and the brain tumor that took Lindy away too young — seems made for print.

But Cox struggles to put the magnitude of her influence on his life in black and white. Except perhaps in song.

Cox, the former lead singer of the Dallas band Speedtrucker, explains in an online bio that he’s “happy that God has given me the gift of expressing my true thoughts through music, even if it only sounds good to me.”

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After Lindy passed away in February 2013, Cox wrote the album “L” in her memory, and it was released in midMay. The first two songs are about his childhood, and the third song is about the first year of their marriage, when he didn’t quite understand what marriage meant. The rest are about her, including a cover of Leonard Cohens’ “Hallelujah,” which Cox feels perfectly describes their marriage.

Part of the proceeds from the CD go to the National Brain Tumor Society, which is an organization Lindy was passionate about. For four consecutive years after her diagnosis, she was the No. 1 fund raiser.

Cox met Lindy in 2005 when he was the lead singer for Speedtrucker, a band that Lindy made no secret of hating. Despite her lack of affection for his profession, the two formed a close friendship, which eventually blossomed into romance.

Not long after their relationship grew serious, Lindy had an MRI scan to try to find the source of a splitting headache. The doctors didn’t find the source of her headache, but they did find a brain tumor. In August 2009, they told her she had a year to live.

Even though neither of them truly believed Lindy was going to die, they decided it was now or never for wedding bells.

“I mortgaged my life to give her everything she wanted because she didn’t have much time left,” Cox says.

The couple tied the knot in Italy and spent months traveling and enjoying life. Lindy loved horses, so they bought her a horse.

She lived 41 healthy months before she passed away in February 2013.

After she died, Cox went to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, which is a pilgrimage to the shrine of the apostle St. James the Great in Galicia in northwestern Spain.

“I didn’t know anything about this walk. I just went and did it,” he says.

He spent 21 days walking 250 miles in the dead of winter. As he walked, he wrote songs and prayed.

“L” is the heartfelt result. —Brittany Nunn

TO LEARN MORE, or to buy a copy of Michael Cox’s CD “L,” visit michaelpaulcox.com.