drawing, hot, docs, shoes

I did spend time this past weekend on drawings and I have a composition for one of the shadow box ideas. This one will be bigger, 5” x 7”, horizontal presentation. 

I like the composition but it’s going to be harder to construct because the elements are much narrower so I’m not really sure exactly how I’m going to put it all together. I may set it aside and work on the other two sketches before I commit. I didn’t do much else over the weekend except draw and read and play The Vault, a puzzle game, on my phone. I've made my way through 49 so far. You have to find hidden objects that activate the puzzles which you have to solve to be able to open the vault.

Monday morning when I went out about 8 am it felt a little cool. Whoa. Checked the weather app, 74˚. So I got the shovel and turned the ground where the four tomato plants were, added some compost and turned that in trying to get a jump on preparing for the winter garden. Then at 12:30 it was 88˚ felt like 109˚ and continued to get hotter. Still no rain, the ground is cracking, the grass in the sun is turning brown, high temps 99˚, feels like stepping out into a blast furnace with the wind from the south. The next chance of rain is Saturday. Tuesday morning I dug up four small coral porterweed volunteers put them in pots (two days later they seem to be fine). 

The dirt was so dry it just fell away from the roots so I don’t know if they will make it even though I saturated the little pots with water but little things don’t like to be bare rooted. There are two more fairly big volunteers but the ground was so hard I watered them first. I’ll see about digging them up later. Yesterday I watered the porterweed and it burst into bloom this morning. The individual little flowers are only about 3/8" across.

Next Monday I go in for fasting bloodwork and the next Monday after that I go in for a six month check up with my PC doc. My dexa scan last February showed the osteoporosis getting worse. It’s been three years since the last one and only one number out of six changed more than a tenth of a point up or down but she wants to talk about going on the medication which I do not want to do for several reasons. I have been inundated on SM with ads for calcium and other supplements. The ads are all the same, very long testimonials that after taking calcium and still having continued bone loss I took this supplement because it has this special ingredient that helps the body absorb and direct the calcium to your bones and in just six months my bone density improved markedly. And of course, the only place you can buy these miracle bone building supplements is from their online shop exclusively sometimes with an automatic reorder. So I’ve written down some of the claims about the added nutrients and supplements to talk to my doc about and see what she thinks. 

Next month I have three appointments, first is with the ophthalmologist for my annual eye exam and to see if the other eye is ready for cataract surgery and then my sixth month check up with the EP (electrophysiologist, heart rhythm specialist), and last is the dermatologist which I thought was Wednesday and got up at 7 am, left the house at 7:25 to get to my 8 am appointment in Rosenberg and then drove right back home. I wondered why they hadn’t sent me a text to confirm. By the end of September I should be good to go for another 6 months.

There used to be two things I would never buy online, clothes and shoes but now I've started buying shoes online. The thing about shoes is I wear 7.5 or 8 depending on the shoe. I did buy some sandals online two years ago and judging by their sizing guide I ordered an 8, the size was fine but the quality was not and 6 months later I needed new sandals. New company that offered 3 month trial and easy free return. Their sizing guide indicated an 8 which was too big. Returned them and got a 7 1/2 which fit great. So the CostCo online sales catalog came, $7 off hands free step in washable sneaker type Sketchers. 

No problem, I have a pair of Sketchers 7 1/2, ordered a pair. Did they fit? No, too small. I ordered another pair size 8, fit great so now I have something like 6 months to return the first pair to CostCo. I’ll drive by there on my way back from the EP next month and do it then.

trivia and 50 years

The little tree frog is still in the birdhouse or was last Sunday when I took this picture. Apparently it didn’t care for having its picture taken because now when it sees me it scuttles back into the birdhouse instead on hanging out on the doorstep. 

So apparently, Christmas in July is a thing occurring on or around July 25th originating at a US girl’s camp in 1933 and, unsurprisingly, embraced by retailers as a summer sales event to clear out summer stock. News to me, how did I not know about this? 

Here’s an interesting little piece of trivia, the bullwhip was the first human-made object to break the sound barrier, producing a small sonic boom heard as a crack when flicked quickly. If you are interested in the science behind it you can watch this short entertaining video. 

Now that I finished Artemis, I’ve taken the first steps towards another shadowbox, very preliminary steps as I don’t have a completed drawing or even settled on a subject matter but I did some resizing of some drawings with which to do a couple of compositions. I’ve drawn in the main focus for three compositions I’m considering. Now to work on the surrounding elements. Maybe I’ll get around to that sometime this weekend.

Another item from the 1440 newsletter…Scientists Release Biggest 2D Map of the Universe.  Two links, one of the map that you can zoom in and out of, 

the other an article  about the map and a guided tour of the universe.

Today is our 50th wedding anniversary, got married at home at three in the afternoon, invited everyone we knew and had a big party that lasted until midnight. 

We had a small amount of finger food that people brought, two kegs of beer, the Bride’s keg and the Groom’s keg, floated the Bride’s keg. The next day we went to a movie though neither one of us can remember what we saw and an internet search for movies that week of that year did not ring any bells. When we got back to the house, my parents were there planning to clean house as a surprise which we did not appreciate since we had some illegal drugs sitting around which, thankfully, they had not come across yet. We told them thanks, but no thanks, packed a bag and spent the next week at the family beach house on the far west end of Galveston Island. When we got back a week later and opened the garage with the leftover contents of the Groom’s keg, omg! That leftover beer cooked for a week in a closed garage in the middle of August and the smell was awful.

So yeah, 50 years of not just being married but working together. Feels more like 150. I came close to calling it quits a couple of times and he actually packed a bag and left once but was back several hours later but underneath it all we remained devoted to each other, that or we're just two stubborn people. We’re going out later for lunch and ice cream.

it's hot and that's about all I have to say

Not quite true, have a lot to say actually.

Coming home from yoga class I pass a new shop that opened this year, sort of a combination of general store, close out new clothing, rental space for other vendors, and outside in the parking lot, a small plant nursery. Coming home one Wednesday evening near the end of last month they were setting up a fake christmas tree under the canopy where the plants are. The next evening, it had ornaments on it and christmas swag above the windows on the building and around the canopy. Two days later, christmas lights adorned the building. In July. Granted, the last few days of July but…JULY! Seriously? Can we not start the christmas crap in the middle of summer? I drove by there yesterday morning on the way to SHARE and the swags were gone as were the ornaments on the tree. The tree and lights on the building were still there though. I wonder if they just had some kind of event over the weekend.

Meanwhile the white wing doves have made an appearance at the bird feeder, not allowing smaller birds access. They emptied it Tuesday and it will stay empty until they leave. I was only providing seed every other day as it was so that the birds wouldn’t become completely dependent on it in the summer. Get out there and forage!

Mississippi kites summer over here, and I see them occasionally soaring overhead. The past week or two when I go out in the mornings there’s a juvenile, I assume, in one of the pine trees across the street calling constantly, again I assume, for it’s parents and food. I have not been able to put eyes on it until last Monday morning when I finally located it high up in the tree and only because there was a pair of mockingbirds mobbing it, swooping down and pecking it on the head. By the time I got back out with my phone camera the mockingbirds had moved on but I did get a picture of the kite at high magnification. 

Here’s a link to its call and a much better picture. 

It’s hot out. Been hot out but now it’s August so officially the Dog Days, the hottest, most humid, and sluggish days of summer although September can be almost as rough. If I want any work done outside I have to go out soon after I get up which these days is nearly 8 am. This morning I went out about ten after and it felt almost pleasant. Amazing how just a few degrees less than hell can feel almost cool. I set up the sprinkler and then pulled grass out of a neglected narrow section of a flower bed, cut dewberry vines and pecan and hackberry tree sprouts down to the ground in various areas. Forty minutes later sweat was dripping off me and I came in. That was Wednesday I guess.

Just a few of the things happening in the upside down world:  

The Thxmp administration was crowing about the expected job gains of 85,000 in July's jobs report, gaslighting us of course. The actual July jobs report that just came out showed not even a single job gained but a loss of 23,000, and another 100,000 loss via downward revisions. The only people stunned by this are the incompetent idiots in charge of the government. 

Apparently the New York Times got tired of people complaining about all their news stories being behind a paywall so they instituted a new item in their Morning Newsletter, three free articles every day. Sound great, right, until you get to that part and so far every free article is just fluff BS.

Scientists have used AI to create new viruses (that infect bacteria, not humans…so far) that don’t exist in nature, touted as a possible therapy alternative to antibiotics and drug resistant infections. What could possibly go wrong? How long until the military gets involved? Chemical and germ warfare is universally illegal but when has illegality ever stopped this administration?

There’s way more but that’s enough. 

I've been seeing more butterflies lately, mostly fritillaries and black swallowtails and skippers but either I don't have my camera/phone on me or they don't cooperate.

I finally finished Artemis. I was wrong about the sequence of Andy Weir’s books. Artemis came in-between The Martian and Project Hail Mary. Plus he’s written a bunch of other stuff.

And speaking of books, here’s two more book reports:

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley - This is the third book of hers I’ve read and the one I’ve liked the best. Her writing style is to tell the story from the viewpoint of various characters moving back and forth from the past to the current timeline. Four couples…Giles and Samira, Miranda and Julian, Emma and Mark, Nick and Bo and one single Katie…friends for nearly two decades dating back to their Oxford days are spending their once a year getaway over the New Year’s Eve holiday, this time at an extremely remote and isolated Lodge in the northern Highlands of Scotland. This year’s getaway was chosen and planned by Emma, the newest member of the group when she hooked up with Mark three years previous. Aware of her lack of history with the group of friends she hoped the trip would cement her position. This year though, relationships seem strained and the joviality seems a little forced as the aging beauty Miranda tries too hard to maintain her position as the fun girl of their youth. Cracks appear, old resentments bubble up, secrets get revealed as everything disintegrates and then Miranda goes missing, her body discovered by the gamekeeper. The story is told in turns by Emma, Miranda, Katie, and the manager of the Lodge Heather and the gamekeeper Doug. 

Spasm by Robin Cook - the blurb on the inside cover sounded interesting and the book is ok but the author has written a buttload of books, 41 others to be exact and I gather the main character is a recurring character. Nothing wrong with that but I found the writing to be simplistic, all the characters are men with the few women being mentioned as wives and having nothing to do with the actual story. So with that, Jack, a forensic pathologist in NYC, gets a call from an old medical school buddy practicing in a small town in upper state New York and also acting as the county coroner and asks for his help doing an autopsy on a man who died suddenly with poisoning symptoms. When Jack and his wife arrive he also learns that there is a forming epidemic of rapid onslaught dementia and death in people too young and test negative for Alzheimer’s which the symptoms mimic. When Jack starts a full scale investigation he stumbles on a plot and a race against time that endangers his life. 

 

high grass, toddler in the house, water issues, a frog and a flower

You might remember that my neighbor on the east side sold his house in January 2025. Montreal had an acre, the house on one half and a fenced backyard. When he owned it he kept it tidy and mowed and the low tree branches trimmed and kept the wild space on the south border in check and I had a clear view across the property to the crop field on the other side of the county road. It is a corner property bordered by my street and the county road it ends at. I thought the new owner, who lives in a different small town, was going to live there after they did some renovation and fixing up of the house but no, they rented it out. The people that live in the house only mow around the house and the fenced backyard. The rest of the property should be maintained by the owner and yet they don’t. It has only been mowed twice in the last 19 months. One of the native pecan trees now has branches grazing the ground, all kinds of small and large branches hidden by the various grasses which are waist to chest high on me, the wild space continues to creep across the property line unchecked, and my view from where I sit in the mornings of the corn or cotton field is blocked. I’ve taken pictures but they just don’t really convey how high the grasses are. It does have some goldenrod growing in it so at least something will be blooming this fall unless it gets mowed between now and then. I don’t really mind it being overgrown though since it’s providing habitat.

Friday night was my night to fix dinner and I had been planning on making butternut/sweet potato/cashew soup. I know, summer and hot outside, but I had a butternut squash from the garden and I had bought two sweet potatoes previously with this in mind since the one butternut I had wasn’t enough for the recipe. So, of course I started a little late and cut the butternut in half lengthwise, scooped out the seeds, and put it in the oven to roast while I peeled and cut up the sweet potatoes and put them on to boil when I was looking over the recipe and realized I didn’t have any coconut milk. Poot. I usually review any recipe I’m considering for my two nights before I go to the grocery store on Tuesdays to add whatever ingredients to the list. Apparently I failed to see the coconut milk. So turn off the stove, jump in the car and get the coconut milk. Back home I’m ready to add the spices and realize I don’t have any coriander. Well, double poot. Called my neighbor at the other end of the street who I thought would have some because I know she’s a good cook, turn the stove off again and rush down to her house. Anyway, I got the soup made and dinner was only an hour later than we usually eat. I had originally planned to make a small salad to go with it but by that time I was all, yeah, no; soup and naan will have to do. It was really good.

Sarah came Saturday with Paisleigh and 18 month old Harrison. Paisleigh, who will be 5 in October, starts preschool on the 11th, has already met her teacher and classmates. The teacher would not allow the parents in the room for the two hours or so they were there. Six year old Carlie from the other end of the street came down to play and then soon they ran down to her house because…toys, which Great Grandma doesn’t have much of. Harrison had the house to himself to explore. Pics...Harrison with his Granny, in the kitchen, sleepy boy.

The rain we hoped would come this weekend did not so I’ve been moving the sprinkler around once again. Sunday late morning it was 88˚, real feel 108˚, predicted high 100˚ and who knows what the real feel was. Read a headline the other day, farmers are already sounding the alarm, crops are failing or doing poorly. The planet is poised to tip over into the uninhabitable region for humans heatwise. Rivers are drying up, too hot, too damn hot and they are building water guzzling data centers in regions that already barely have enough water. People’s wells will dry up but hey, the surveillance state needs a place to store all our movements and social media posts. Speaking of water, Txxxx and Hxxxxxx bombed water infrastructure sites in Iran and all signs point to Iran being behind the cyber attacks on US water supplies in Michigan, Minnesota, and five other states (why would they not retaliate in kind?) Guess who Txxxx blames, Iran? No, of course not, he blames democrat Governor Walz for the attacks in Minnesota. 

When I was watering in the front yesterday I spotted this tree frog hanging out in this birdhouse. Once the birds are through nesting tree frogs often take up residence.

This bearded iris surprised me yesterday. They are supposed to bloom in the spring and they do but now this and another one I saw earlier in the summer long after they would usually bloom.

Still not motivated to start a new drawing or shadow box, reading instead, halfway through Artemis by Andy Weir.

 

dealing with issues, in-between, object #11, and a surprise

I spent Tuesday morning dealing with two issues. One was reordering one of my meds through their website and they’ve changed the secure log-in to a different system and the website refused to recognize me so I finally called and got that taken care of and then I created the new account (we found you!) with the new system so hopefully I can just go online next time. The other issue was trying to find out why I had not received any royalty payments since last November. I inherited some mineral and oil/gas rights that had been played out long before they came to me but new technology had an oil company looking again and they brought in three wells so that was a nice surprise. These wells have changed hands several times and so in early May I emailed the current owner asking why I had not received any royalty payments for the past 5 months. They responded that my inquiry was assigned to a case manager who would get in touch with me. Three months later, nothing so I called and pleasantly, I didn’t have to wait more than about 15 or 20 minutes to talk to a human. While I was waiting I went on the owner portal only to discover we had received a payment that morning. The woman who answered my call told me that the case manager was still investigating my inquiry but she looked at whatever she looked at and while it wasn’t a complete answer she did say that it looked like the wells hadn’t been producing much. I know that when the price of oil gets too low per barrel, oil companies will shut down some wells until the price goes up and maybe that’s what happened. 

Other than that I’m back in the in-between state, finished one project but haven’t started another. There’s a drawing I’ve been wanting to do for a friend but I’m also jazzed by the shadow box. I’ve done a few little thumbnail sketches of some possibles. While I thought about that yesterday I spent a good deal of the day reading Artemis by Andy Weir, his third novel after The Martian and Project Hail Mary.

Until I decide this might be a good time to do a 100 objects post. I just did a brief count, 32, of the paintings/prints or sculptures I have either bought or traded for in our collection excluding the four paintings I inherited from my parents, the bowl forms which I think I will present as one object, and my own work. I’ve pondered if the entire collection should be considered one object or each piece a separate object. I guess we’ll see how desperate I get for an entry. So, object #11 is this lithograph bought in 1979 at an outdoor festival, Elephant March by Nancy Louice (or Louwie, hard to read the signature). 

Not the first piece I bought but a very early one. It is desperately in need of reframing, currently in the frame Marc made for it out of rough cedar. It’s a little the worse for wear having never been professionally framed.

One more thing. I was out walking around the yard yesterday and this caught my eye.

That green leaf sticking up from the stubs of the bridal bouquet plumeria that froze to the ground last winter because it was just too heavy and big to dig up the sunken pot and haul it to the garage when it would have to be cut back to even fit in the garage is new growth. You might remember I did eventually dig the pot out of the ground because I wanted to use it for something else and when I did I just plonked the root ball back in the hole because orange cosmos were growing in it and I had to fill the hole with something. There’s actually another little leaf growing just below and to the right that is hard to see. So, I’m amazed. We’ll see how big it gets before winter comes back around. 

the big reveal

Ta-da! 

All the pieces glued on the background/spacer.

Here’s what it looks like from underneath.

The shadow box.

The finished shadow box.

I think it came out pretty good for a first try. It looks great straight on but if viewed from the side you can see the thick foam core backing on the robin. 

I hadn’t anticipated that. Maybe it should have been a much smaller pedestal. Something to consider on the next one. I had a hard time getting a good well lit picture with no reflection. I finally had to hang it on the wall in my bedroom. I’ll have to use a white oil pen on the black back to sign it.

I got another plant repotted Saturday, sweat dripping off me by the time I finished. I moved the two angel trumpets back to their previous spots after sitting in complete shade for a week while they settled into their new pots. Later I went out to check on them looking a little droopy and spotted this cluster under one of the pink angel trumpet leaves…baby spiders! They’re about the size of the head of a pin.

And then I saw this little green tree frog perched on the stem of the same leaf. It’s about an inch long.

A few more, the swamp lily is blooming.

Saturday’s sunset.