Maybe it was all those Hemingway stories we read as a kid about big-hearted rivers, but there's something about fly fishing that tugs at our romantic soul. In theory, anyway. Actual fishing experiences – at lakes, bored, sunburned, stinking of bait and bug-bitten – have never been good. Still, a trip to Orvis always sets us dreaming about doing manly things in Montana. Fishing is sort of like eating at Olive Garden that way. Let enough time lapse between experiences and you end up telling yourself it wasn't really that bad. Listen, take our advice, forget the fishing and just go for the clothes at Orvis, whose two-level store offers fly rods and flies alongside suits and sporting wear and coats and rain gear fit for a sail on the Atlantic. (Don't get us started about how miserable boats are.) Their casual summer shirts are our favorite – linen and cotton numbers that'll make you look fashionably outdoorsy and keep you cool at the water's edge, which if you're smart is either on a golf course or a pool, with a gin and tonic, not a rod and reel.

Suburban Plants is a kind of inside secret among landscape designers and serious gardeners as a place where you can find good, strong, heart-hardy plants at very reasonable prices. For years it has been tucked up into a hard-to-get-to corner of the Dallas Farmers Market, adding to the insider cachet if you ever did succeed in finding it. But now the city in its we-know-better rush to re-design the whole Farmers Market is kicking them out, so Suburban Plants is venturing out into the big world of easy-to-find major suburban arteries. Their new place, opening before year's end, is at the southwest corner of La Prada Drive (not La Prada Parkway) right where Northwest Highway turns into Northwest Drive. Suburban Plants offers a lot of seasonal color and a full stock of perennials. They have shrubs and some small trees for sale, but, even better, they have good sources for larger trees. They can find anything you want and get it delivered for you at a good price.

Because you were born and grew up in the South of France and now you're here, because you went to school there, you visited once on vacation, you read about it, whatever reason you may have for missing the Midi, Rise No. 1 is ingeniously fiendishly designed to scratch your itch. It's a full-service restaurant specializing in savory and sweet souffles, brie and cornichon baguettes and other dishes that will take where you wish you were. Rise No. 1 is also a shop, offering a variety of French textiles, antique tableware and other merchandise imported from the South of France, as well as a nice selection of new and antique books and magazines. If you want to go back to the Midi or visit a little bit of it for the first time, this is the way to do it without buying a plane ticket.

Kendahl Airey is a specialist with training in deep tissue/sports massage, lymphatic, pre-natal and hot stone massage and oncology massage, for which she was trained at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. She has clients who are NFL players and clients who are desk-bound journalists, all of whom need help with tough issues like scar tissue, torn rotator cuffs, knee or back pain. Her lymphatic massage is directed at reducing swelling of any kind, as, for example, in recovery from cosmetic surgery. Pre-natal massage helps expecting mothers deal with stresses and strains their bodies endure before giving birth, and the oncology massage is designed to boost the immune system and help the body fight the good fight.

Really old clocks are cool inside, all kinds of retro-looking gizmos clicking up and down, spinning and rocking together to keep the time. But old clocks are sort of like old people. They get kind of crazy sometimes, and just looking in there yourself, it's not easy to tell if your problem is your gong or your bezel, your pendulum or your bellows, your weights or your head-dressing, to say nothing of whether you'll need a hand-remover. When your old clock turns cranky on you, best to leave it to the trained professionals at Tic Toc Clock Shop, in business for 45 years. The shop always offers an array of antique wall and floor clocks including lots of wonderful cuckoo clocks well worth going in just to watch as they mark the hour. The only thing is, if you want to check out several of them and really observe them closely, you have to keep coming back every hour on the hour. But you know what? After you watch the first one strike the hour, you might just come back for the rest of them.

Not too many years ago Whole Earth Provision and REI were great places to go because it was otherwise so hard to find a lot of hiking, paddling and general outdoor gear in Dallas. Now they're good to know about because there is so much outdoor gear for sale all over the place, and most of it is crap. The problem is that the outdoor recreation market has grown big enough to make it worthwhile to knock off everything from headband flashlights to dry bags, with the knock-off stuff selling at way cheaper prices. And that stuff is OK — maybe even a good deal and preferable — if you think you're suiting up for a single outing, maybe two, and then it's all going into deep storage anyway. But if you need to buy gear that will stand up to repeated beatings, then you should at least pay a visit to Whole Earth Provision. Sometimes the cost difference is less than you might expect, and the quality difference is almost always huge.

If you need a lot of advice and guidance, you have to go to some place like The Cultured Cup, but if you sort of know what you're looking for in a loose-leaf tea or you know what you'd like to explore, Central Market offers a broad selection at fairly good prices. And this is not to say they don't have tea specialists working in the department. It's just that on busy nights you may have to hunt a bit to find one, and don't expect a long conversation. They also keep their tea department clean and tidy — a trick some other stores have never mastered. What is it about tea that makes it the grungiest department? But not at Central Market.

Did you know one of America's largest importers of British goods is in Grapevine? Well, now you do. The British Emporium has every horrifying British food you've never wanted to try, from steak and kidney pie to prawn-cocktail-flavor chips, alongside a smattering of Doctor Who merchandise and pictures of the British countryside. You're guaranteed to find something there you have never heard of before, or even conceived that it could be a thing. After all, remember how famous British cuisine is!

When you're heating up the wok, head to Hong Kong Market for all the ingredients for dinner, plus some amazing entertainment while you shop. On one occasion, an Observer staffer went to check out what they were told was an amazing special on lobster. While waiting at the seafood counter, another customer in line ordered live catfish. The guy working the seafood counter fished out a catfish, but it got away from him and fell on the floor. Without blinking, he reached for the baseball bat that had been leaning against the wall, beat the flopping-on-the-floor catfish senseless with it, turned to the line and asked, "Anyone want half-priced catfish?" Not only do they have fresh produce and all the Asian dry goods you could ever ask for, Hong Kong Market will always deliver a magnificent, WTF-just-happened-to-my-eyes experience.

Sooner or later you will tell yourself, "Yeah, this house is authentic and historical and all that good stuff, but I need to be able to open a window." As soon as you say that, you are off down the road to re-do Hades. The windows you've got won't open because they have been painted, nailed and puttied shut, and when you look really close at them they're halfway made out of old banana crates anyway. But as soon as you touch hammer or pry to one of them, you just made yourself a much bigger problem. Next way-station on the road to Old House Hell: How easy do you think it's going to be to find a replacement for that dude? Pause here. Before you pick up the phone and call the Jolly Roger Skull and Crossbones Carpentry Company to come out and build you new windows for the price of a Harvard undergraduate degree, go to Orr-Reed where you will find a wonderful trove of old windows carefully salvaged from old North Texas houses. Tell your problem to proprietor Hannah Hargrove. She'll probably take you to just what you need. Same goes for doors, lintels and anything else. Never have it made for you until you've checked with Hannah.