The Oak Cliff Cultural Center has several interesting events on its calendar this spring.

Poet, writer and journalist Josué Gabriel de Montemayor is teaching a writing class from 3-6 p.m. every Saturday in March. Bring a pen, notebook and your favorite story or book.

The annual Dia de los Niños art exhibit, April 7-21, features work from students at several DISD schools.

Oak Cliff-based jazz band Yells at Eels performs at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 27.

An exhibit titled “Tiny Spokes: the Oak Cliff Bike Experience” opens May 7. The show, which runs through June 1, features bike-centric art from Oak Cliff residents Andie Comini, Bryan Gooding, Cynthia M. Daniel, Duke M. Horn, Jess Peri, Jonathan Fontenot, Maria Belen Gonzales-Rodriguez, Nick McCoy, Richard Doherty, Seth Lawrence Victorious and Travis Kincaid.

Where do I begin to praise the Trocard ($10, purchased, available at Spec’s)? Cheap wine does not get much better than this:

• It’s a previous vintage, and it’s still yummy.

• Classic white Bordeaux, made with sauvignon blanc. That means not much fruit and certainly none of that New World grapefruit stuff. That’s something one doesn’t see enough anymore because too many French producers are on a misguided quest to make their wine taste like it came from somewhere else.

• Clean, crisp, grassy and fresh. Just enough of everything to make it stand out, from aroma to finish, but not too much of anything. And only 12 1/2 percent alcohol.

• A simple wine that proves the adage that simple does not have to mean inadequate.

Serve this chilled on its own, or with almost anything that goes with white wine, whether seafood, chicken. or salads. And it’s probably a good match with an uncomplicated cream-style sauce (chicken fried steak or chicken pot pie, for example). Highly recommended and almost certainly in the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame.

Neighbor Katrina Whatley shared these pictures of the 100-foot palm tree in her front yard, on Zang near Beckley.

High winds Monday morning ripped off the top of the tree.

Trinidad “Trini” Garza Early College High School at Mountain View Community College was named one of the nation’s best urban schools.

The National Center of Urban School Transformation awarded Garza High School its 2012 Excellence in Urban Education Award. Garza is one of three high schools in the nation to win the award.

Garza’s 400 students are working toward high school diplomas, and simultaneously, an associates degree or 48 credit hours toward a bachelor’s degree from Mountain View.

Friend of the Advocate Lisa Keith shared this map on Facebook, along with a succinct rant about elitism in 75208. There is more to Oak Cliff than the ’08, is her point. This is the map, which I’d never seen before, of the 31 neighborhoods included in the Old Oak Cliff Conservation League.

Keith, who lives in Oak Park Estates (No. 21 on the map), says she feels a sense of neighborhood discrimination from certain Winnetka Heighters and Kings Highway-ites, who don’t consider her neighborhood part of Oak Cliff. That she’s so offended by it shows how much she feels Oak Cliff is part of her identity. She’s got Oak Cliff in her heart.

We noticed there are two neighborhoods on this map, Glenn Oaks and Oakland Terrace, that are not part of the Advocate’s coverage area. Our boundary is Ledbetter, although there are exceptions.

There is one neighborhood here, Ruthmeade Place, that I’ve never actually heard of before. We also didn’t know that the neighborhood south of 12th Street is called South Winnetka Heights.

I live in 75208, and I take Keith’s complaint to heart. Sometimes I worry we write too much about Bishop Arts and Winnetka Heights and not enough about Kiest Park and Wynnewood. The map helps, though.

Davis Street Mercantile, a new furniture store and design studio, opened Saturday. It is the work of husband-and-wife Joe Ramirez and Amy Thomasson Ramirez. She is an interior designer, and he is a real estate broker with a talent for refurbishing vintage furniture. They started designing furniture together about two years ago.

The Oak Cliff residents bought the two-story building at 443 W. Davis in October. They leased one of two upstairs studios to Nikki Cotten Photography, which also celebrated its grand opening Saturday.

Police shot a dog wreaking havoc on the Bishop Arts area around 5 p.m. Thursday, resulting in one dead dog, one hospitalized police officer and one bystander who possibly was shot accidentally.

Police answered a call that two dogs were attacking people in the neighborhood near 12th and Llewellyn. Patrol officers found the dogs surrounding a 60-year-old man in a wheelchair near Eighth and Llewellyn. An officer fired on one of the dogs, which later died. The second dog ran off.

One officer was bitten amid the melee and later went to the hospital. The man in the wheelchair also went to the hospital with a knee injury. It’s unclear whether he was accidentally shot or injured another way.

Loose dogs can be a problem in our neighborhood. Since I moved to Oak Cliff less than three years ago, loose dogs have attacked my dog four times on our daily walks, twice in Sunset Hill and twice in the neighborhood where this shooting happened. Twice she was seriously injured and had to go to the doggie ER. We see a lot of stray dogs on our walks too, which is heartbreaking, but the dogs who attack are never strays; they’re always someone’s dogs who got loose. And that’s true of the dogs who attacked Thursday, according to Avi Selk’s report in the DMN.

My go-to pizza spot has been closed for several weeks, but Oak Cliff Pizza & Pasta is expected to reopen next week.

Owner Jason Laxon sold the restaurant to his former cook, David Ramirez, and Ramirez’s brother, Juan Ramirez. The Ramirezes are remodeling, making cosmetic changes to the interior, and they’re waiting for their Certificate of Occupancy to be approved.

The menu, prices and hours are expected to be about the same as before. We noticed the name has changed on the website to David’s Oak Cliff Pizza & Pasta.

Laxon opened Oak Cliff Pizza & Pasta  in 2008.

Lemon triage pot:

I was trying to say “lemon trio pot” when “lemon triage pot” came out; I thought about it and decided my utterance was correct. I was presenting a garden talk for a fun group of ladies who asked me to do a class just for them at Repotted. I usually incorporate a companion plant/apothecary pot of some kind in my classes.

I’ve noticed lots of folks lately complaining of sore throats, for which a honey lemon tea is great to sooth. I found my trio: lemon thyme, lemon balm and lemon verbena, at Repotted.

In addition to having medicinal qualities these plants also are great in edible creations. Lemon balm, lemon verbena and lemon thyme can all be made into teas or used as aromatics to add lemon flavor to desserts, oils, vinegars and liqueurs.

Lemon balm and lemon verbena both contain a lot of vitamin C, and as a tea, they can help with indigestion and nausea.

Use lemon thyme to flavor olives and can soothe a sore throat if you gargle with it.

Teasing the root ball:

The proper technique for planting is to first “tease the root ball” before you place it in the soil. To tease the root ball, gently massage it with your hands until it no longer looks like the shape of the pot you pulled it from. This will stimulate the plant and roots into spreading out and growing a stronger plant, and don’t worry, you aren’t hurting the plant.

When I know I have some newbies in my class, and I’m explaining how to massage the root ball, I always ask “Does anyone know a good joke?” I usually get a few laughs, but the group last week caught me off guard when one of them told a funny joke. It was even funnier that I misheard “prawns” instead of “blondes.” Here is the joke:

“Two prawns are walking across a bridge where they notice a one-eyed dog. One prawn says to the other, “Look at that dog with only one eye.” The other prawn puts her right hand over her right eye and says “Wow!”

Garden Lady’s green dates to remember:

April 14 at 11 a.m., garden Talk at Repotted — Follow-up on plantings from March 3 class.  We will specifically focus on tomatoes.

April 19 at 6 p.m. — A Community Cooks at the We Over Me Farm at Paul Quinn College

The owners of Veritas and Restaurant Ava have renamed their planned Bishop Arts restaurant. Boulevardier is the new name for a French/American bistro in the space formerly occupied by Decanter and Cafe Madrid. The owners originally had announced the restaurant would be called Left Bank.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports the restaurant, from chef/owners Randall Copeland and Nathan Tate, will open this summer.