now I'm ready for a nap

I finally got out in the yard Friday to do some maintenance which is constant around here. I have been needing to clear the spray nozzles from the septic system of grass and weeds. They sit inside a concrete donut and one of the spray heads needed to be replaced which was done last week. So I got my trowel and nippers and a bucket and a shovel for something else and headed over to the shop yard. Audra was over there with the great grands while she detailed a car and when Paisleigh saw me she came running with open arms…Gramma! She helped me pull grass and dig with the trowel. 

When that task was done we pulled all the roots and weeds from a pile of dirt from when Mikey dug a little trench in front of one of the bay doors to help with drainage so rain wouldn’t seep under and into the shop. Then we transferred the dirt to the bucket, me using the big shovel, Paisleigh using the trowel, and used it to fill one of the holes in the flower bed around the fringe flower tree that I had weeded and bordered with bricks previously ay my house. After that it was time to come in and cool off and then a run to the Evil Empire.

I have another couple of chores to do over at Pam’s house this weekend. The tallow tree that grows on the fence line needs to be pruned back because the branches have completely swallowed the weatherhead on the power pole that brings electricity to the house and Virginia creeper has grown up under the house and is coming out at the top from under the siding. 

I’ve already been out this morning at my house cutting down all the water sprouts from the four crepe myrtles in the front yard.

Last night after getting hot and sweaty during the day I wanted something easy and light for dinner. I paged through my binder of accumulated recipes twice and the penne pasta with grape tomatoes, olives, and spinach was the only thing that appealed to me. No after picture but here’s all the ingredients waiting to be combined in the skillet. L to R front row: pasta water (only used about 1/2 cup), red pepper flakes, garlic thinly sliced, coarsely chopped kalamata olives, fresh basil leaves; middle row: vegetable broth (also only used 1/4 cup), black pepper, salt, grape tomatoes halved, parmesan; back row: olive oil, penne pasta cooked al dente, baby spinach.

I sat down after lunch on Friday and made another stab at the other violet drawing and I’m much happier with it now. I didn’t erase the whole thing just most of it to get it back to where it started from and then went from there. It’s better. I’m happy enough with it.

Later…I am too damn old to be crawling under that house on my elbows and knees. But first I pruned the white orchid tree, a volunteer from mine. I gave it to my sister who planted it in the ground next to the house and while it freezes down to the ground every winter it comes back bigger and bushier than the year before. It’s more like a shrub than a tree so about twice a year I have to prune it so the branches aren’t rubbing up against the house. Then I cut back all the Virginia creeper that was growing among the bulbs she planted along the front of the house. And then I raised two of the skirt panels on the end of the house so I could get under there and cut away all the Virginia creeper growing under there and up under the siding. I had to crawl under the struts and beams more than halfway down to get it all.

After that I got the 12' ladder and cut as much of the tallow branches as I could reach around and over the weatherhead. It's clear for now but I need to see if one of my neighbors has one of those pole chainsaws to get the branches hanging higher above it. All that debris can just stay because after an hour and a half my hair, sweat rag tied around my forehead, clothes, panties, all soaked, not to mention dirt encrusted knees and elbows. I'll drive the truck over tomorrow and haul it all to the burn pile. 

 

white flowers, purple pencils, pink sky, brain remembers something obscure and forgets something important

The white orchid flower tree in a pot this morning.

This is how crazy my brain is. I woke up in the middle of the night with an earworm refrain from Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel. Do you know how long it has been since I heard that song? Decades, so long I can’t tell you how long. Seriously, where did that come from, dredged up by what?

I’ve done almost nothing the past four days. I went to yoga Monday night and tonight and grudgingly did the week’s grocery shopping yesterday. That’s the most ambitious I’ve been especially since I completely forgot about my primary care check-up yesterday morning. Even after getting the bloodwork done early and did the check-in online on Saturday, checked my calendar Monday to remind myself of the day and time and still I completely forgot until almost noon. Damn it. So now I’ve rescheduled for the end of August.

I liked the drawing of the woodland violet so much better after I worked on it while looking at the image on my computer that I decided to do the same to the other of the four violet drawings I did that I plan to go forward on, rejecting the other two for various reasons. Did it come out better? Oh hell no, in fact it’s worse to the point that I’m discarding the whole thing. It’s beyond repair at this point. Better to start over. I guess, maybe, I don’t know. I’m just disgusted with it right now.

We made our errand run earlier today. The Michael’s only had two of the five of the purple pencils I wanted but I selected 8 more of various colors I didn’t have just at random.

The display for the pencils was about half empty so maybe later they’ll have a better selection. Then onto the liquor warehouse where besides vodka, tequila, and whisky, we also bought some of those new THC beverages (and so of course on the way home the news reported that the Texas Senate approved the second reading of a bill to ban THC products with the final vote on Friday. Our governor has already vetoed one bill to ban those products telling them to regulate them, not ban them so we’ll see what happens). Then it was on to Costco and I saw there was a Michael’s across the street in the shopping center which I knew was there and forgot. That bigger store in a bigger populated area would probably have had a better selection of pencils. Oh well, might have to make a special trip out there. Anyway, our small freezer and the pantry are now stuffed. 

And once again the coolant in the car AC has all but leaked out, each can only lasts about two weeks so I hope Mikey can get to my car this weekend.

Tonight’s sky.

good things and horrible things

Fridays sunset. It was just past peak before I could get back out there with my phone to take a picture.

I’ve been seeing juvenile cardinals at the bird feeder; small, slender, don’t have their full adult coloring quite yet, unsure, looking around for mom or dad to feed them before tentatively pecking at the sunflower seeds but getting bolder. Just now a juvenile male and an adult female, mother and son?. He is spotty with color, raggedy looking fluttering his wings at mom, beak open. She turned her back on him, it’s right there in front of you son. Finches, sparrows, juvenile cardinals tussling for position until an adult male cardinal flies up and they all scatter.

It rained Friday, maybe about an inch, and a short shower today but still overcast and thundery, so it’s been relatively cooler. Yesterday was overcast and only got to 90, relatively being the key word here. Haven’t really been working out in the yard this week though I did dead head the zinnias again and moved some concrete mortar bricks to the barn, moved the white orchid tree in it’s pot to a shadier area. The pot it’s in is too small and it dries out fast in the sun. I’ll repot it this fall. Did a little weeding. These less hot days would have been good to be out there doing stuff but I just didn’t feel like it.

I’ve been working on my violet drawings, still in the pencil stage. Enlarged one in a 4” square and transferred it to the sketchbook. Been reworking another paying more attention to the whole photo and I’m liking it a lot better, also in a 4” square. New version looks much like the previous version. 

When I did the initial drawings I cropped the photo on my computer to a 6” square, made four copies and then cropped each to one quadrant and that’s what I looked at when I did my first small drawings 2.5”/3” x 3”. I probably need to do that with the other one too. I need more variations of purple pencils before I do it in color so when we go to Costco next Wednesday I’m going to stop at Michael’s on the way. Last time I was there they had a fairly large selection of individual Prismacolor pencils so I made a list of what I have and the ones I want.

My daughter and Paisleigh came over Saturday. Paisleigh, who will be four in October, wanted to paint so she and I got out her watercolors. She has a box here that holds her paints, crayons, colored pencils, sidewalk chalk, her own little art box. The first time we got out her watercolors I taught her to clean her brush between colors and that way the colors wouldn’t get all muddy. So I asked her if she remembers what to do, how to paint and she said yes, to clean her brush between colors. The child is so sharp and she’s very good at doing just that. There was some discussion of which brush she wanted to use. My good brushes are not an option so I held up brushes until she finally chose one. Others rejected for various reasons, one because it looked like a makeup brush. 

The wolf spider living in my bathroom has regrown its leg. I looked it up and yes they can regrow legs if they are not fully grown, are still molting, but I’m pretty sure this one is and was grown when I first spotted it and it was missing a leg so who knows, maybe it was just tucked away where I couldn’t see it. It seems to like being in the trash can as I find it in there often, though I don’t know if it can get out once in as the inside of the trash can is very smooth while the outside has some texture. Anyway, I will generally scoop it out when I see it in there.

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Just a few of the myriad horrors here: Ghislaine Maxwell, a woman who procured and abused children for Epstein’s rape culture and who lied on the stand and was charged with perjury along with sex trafficking of children was interviewed for two days by Trump’s ex personal lawyer now 2nd in command at the DOJ in an effort to ‘get the truth’ and dispel the controversy surrounding Trump’s participation and the client list while Trump dangles the power to pardon her. And why wouldn’t he? He’s already pardoned other sex traffickers and criminals. 

It’s costing us $10M for Trump to go cheat at golf for 5 days at his club in Scotland but there’s no money for food assistance for hungry people here in this country, all that has been slashed. And get this, he thinks the Palestinians suffering from starvation should tell him thank you for food they aren’t getting because Israel is using starvation as a weapon. FEMA has designated $608M to states to build detention centers to hold people whose only ‘crime’ is being here and not being white after denying aid to Americans in several states suffering from devastation due to natural disasters because Kristi Noam already blew through the DHS’s budget for ICE raids.

I commented on a post on SM about why people are distancing themselves from friends and family if they had voted for and support Trump. Someone called foul on that, that you shouldn’t cut off your family over politics. My comment was that it wasn’t about politics but a difference in morals. One guy replied that if Trump was so immoral why did so many people vote for him? Unfortunately and sadly, the answer to that is self evident. 

 

busy start to the week

Saturday’s sunset.

Another weekend of working outside in the yard. Not on the wild space though. Saturday I finished weeding the area around the Chinese fringe flower tree on the front east corner, dug up some of the easter lilies and planted them closer to the tree but kept others to plant elsewhere where they will get more sun, got the tomato cages cleared of vines and hung in the barn, drove the truck over to the burn pile and Mikey and Eric emptied it for me, pruned off the low hanging branches off the crepe myrtles along the side of the barn. Sunday I set up the sprinkler moving it every thirty minutes. Even after all that rain we got in June and early this month the ground is already dry and cracking. I mowed the little backyard, finished putting bricks around the fringe tree, still have a couple of holes to fill where the pine tree stumps rotted away and spread pine needles. 

Monday I hardly went outside. I had an early appointment at the lab in town to get blood drawn for my upcoming PC appointment next week. When I got there there were three people waiting outside and the place was closed. One of the people waiting happened to have the tech’s phone number and learned that she was going to be out until Thursday, that she had told them so but no replacement had showed up on Monday. Well, damn. Went home and got another early morning appointment for today (Tuesday) at the lab in Richmond, about 30 minutes away. So I got up early, again, jumped in the car and now I’m home having my coffee. No time to fill the empty bird feeder before I left and a cardinal just came and fluttered in front of the window right in front of me. So, yeah, now the bird feeder is full.

What I did Monday was work on resizing all the images I had previously sent to my friend who is writing the book on pate de verre. Turns out the ones I sent previously while they were all 300 dpi and big enough length and width they were all in the kilobyte range and she needed megabyte range for publishing. Don’t ask me to explain any further because I can’t. I had to find the raw images from when I took the pictures and figure out how I could crop/resize them without dropping in the KB range. I won’t go into detail but I did manage to crop and save most of them between 1.2 MB and 1.6 MB which she says is big enough. I had Photoshop Elements 11 but my new computer doesn’t support it and it would cost me $80 to upgrade. Worked on more today so hopefully she has enough the right size to pick from.

Today the faucet in the kitchen finally broke completely. It was one of those one handle things that swivels from side to side and back and forth for temp and flow and it’s been leaking for a couple of months getting worse and worse and last night it was gushing water from the swivel part but I could still turn it off. This morning it could no longer be turned off. Marc took it apart to see if it could be repaired but, nope. The weld that held the pin (that the handle attached to) to the ball completely broke so we went out and got a new set and Rocky is supposed to come by in the morning to install the new one. 

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As usual, I wrote all this off and on during the day yesterday and never got it posted. Rocky is in the kitchen, head buried in the cabinet under the sink getting the new faucet installed. Yay! New faucet.

One last picture. The pinecone ginger, also called shampoo ginger, that Mary Moon sent me the roots for is blooming. Later when it’s done sending out the small creamy little flowers the cones will turn red. 

drawing and doing battle with the wild space

I did another drawing of a woodland violet. That makes four. The first two I drew on a separate piece of paper and then thought what the heck am I doing? I have a sketchbook. So I transferred those two over. The other two I drew in the sketchbook. Now that I have the small sketches, longest dimension 3", I’m less than enthusiastic. I think that I’ll do at least one in colored pencil after I enlarge it  maybe to 4” and then see how I feel about doing a watercolor.

      

I have my paints back out, did a little touch here and there on the pomegranate and zucchini even though I had considered them done. Not sure it made any difference and so yeah, they are really done now. I have small frames for them that give a small margin around the paintings but I think, for originals, I want bigger with a mat so I need to see what I can find online. 

Yesterday at SHARE was busy, 22 food orders in the first hour and a half. We open at 9 and when I got there shortly before that the little waiting area was already full, all seats taken and people standing. By 1 PM, I think we had 43 food orders alone. I don't know how many people came for clothes or other assistance. We're expecting it to get even busier with all the cuts to food assistance perpetrated by this administration. We are fortunate that we have grants that allow us to buy food at retail prices since the regional food bank is offering less and less. We still have to pay for the food from the food bank but at a reduced price.

I spent another hour and a half or so outside today, got the rest of the big limb transferred to the truck and then started back on the area behind the big cedar at the back corner of the property. 

There’s a small wooden shed behind it, which you can barely see, that we abandoned after we built the barn. The wild space between properties is behind that, and back in that wild space is poison ivy and wild grape, virginia creeper, and a bazillion rain trees and other trees growing unrestrained all of which I am trying to keep from taking over the shed (a lost cause), the cedar tree, and from it the big pecan tree. Back when Montreal owned the property to the east of me, the guy who mowed it for Montreal kept that corner pretty much in check but the woman who bought it last December has had the property mowed only once and the grass is almost waist high right now on the half acre to the left of the tree. The woman who rents the house has had just the area around the house mowed only twice. Needless to say, where our two properties meet on the SE/SW corners is quickly being swallowed by the wild space. 

Mainly what I’ve been doing is pruning all the low hanging small cedar branches and trying to cut all the grapevines that are growing into the tree. You can see at the top in the picture of the tree where the grape vines have turned brown from what I cut last week. I’ve cleared it out enough to be able to walk under the tree back there, cutting more vines today, but the plan is to prune back the cedar branches away from all that wild growth.

You can see what I’m dealing with here. The marker for the property line is behind that shrub like thing in the middle.

I know it’s a losing battle but I really don’t want the grape jumping into the pecan tree.

 

more of the same and this is what finally got their attention?

It’s currently 86˚ with the ‘real feel’ 20 degrees hotter at 10 AM (this was yesterday). I’ve been working outside the past week but only for an hour or hour and a half at a time. Have I spent that time on any one thing getting it done? Hell, no. I’m jumping around leaving little piles of debris all over the yard. I’ve pulled up all six tomato plants and only cut up three of them and tossed on the compost pile and put away those three cages. The other three are still laying on the ground as is the cucumber which finally grew like gangbusters and bloomed profusely all male flowers, except for two that didn’t get bigger than an inch before they disappeared. I deadheaded the zinnias for seeds for next year. I tackled the completely overgrown area under the big Chinese fringe flower tree that turns in a glowing torch in the spring on the northeast corner of the property getting the grass and weeds out of only half where the gerber daisy and easter lilies grow and bordered part of that with bricks (you can see the part that didn’t get done bottom right). 

I cut the water sprouts off the fringe tree and two of the crepe myrtles. I’m slowly cutting up the big limb that fell off the pecan tree one wagon load at a time and tossing it in the truck for eventual dumping on the burn pile. I cut some of the low hanging branches off the big cedar tree in the back. And Monday I discovered the ants had invaded the garage and the bag of bird seed, building nests under the foam mats, two big piles of eggs, so all the mats had to be taken up, the garage hosed out, the mats hosed down, the concrete swept after it dried, 

swept again yesterday morning because the ants weren’t completely discouraged, and the mats laid down again. 

A pain in the butt but the mats are absolutely necessary because while the concrete apron where we park the car and truck has a texture, the concrete floor in the garage is smooth and very slick when condensation gets it wet, dangerously so, slippy slidey so. Just as well, that whole area under the mats and against the wall needed to be swept out.

I’ve had no AC in the car for a week but Mikey looked at it Sunday and it’s leaking in two places. Seal kit is being ordered but in the meantime it’s all windows down.

That’s about all that’s going on around here and no political commentary because it’s all horrible and seemingly unstoppable and every time time you think that’s it, that’s the bottom we discover that no, no it isn’t. I’m a little heartened to see the rift in MAGAtland over the Epstein files/client list but confused about why that. It’s not like we didn’t know Trump is a rapist and sexual abuser since he’s bragged about it and we know he raped 13 and 14 year old girls on Epstein’s island because those grown girls have told us so. Trump was big buddies with Epstein and plenty of video to back that up. Of course Republicans and Pam Bondi were never going to release any of that because of who is on the list but they made a big mistake during the campaign promising to release it and bring all those 'pedophile Democrat liberals' to justice. And that’s why I believe the cultists are enraged, not necessarily because girls were raped (apparently rape is fine in MAGAtland as long as the women are grown) but because they believe it’s liberals on the list and now Trump is protecting them. We can only hope that this is the rift that allows some of his base to abandon him, something bad enough to let them save face, because obviously kidnapping and cruelty and loss of freedom and rights hasn’t been enough.

So I guess some political commentary. Anyway, here’s some random photos that have been piling up.

I enjoyed the Hamish Macbeth series so much that I thought I would read some of the books so the next time I went to the library I looked to see what they had and thinking I would start with the oldest that they had and work my way forward I picked this one. Think it’s been around a while?

Haven’t posted a pic of the prisms that the crystals throw on my walls and everything else in the mornings for a while. The summer canopy of the tallow tree prevents most of the direct sunlight but there is one little opening that allows a ray or two between 9 and 9:30.

Sunday’s sunset.

The rangoon creeper in full bloom.

The spider lilies are also blooming.

And the porterweed (was, it’s between bloom cycles now).

FYI, I didn’t answer comments for the most part for years but this year I’ve really tried to start doing that. You know, in case you haven't noticed and are interested.

easy money and general stuff

White orchid tree flower

More rain Friday but not too much (the new crop of mosquitoes are tiny but they still bite and their small size makes them harder to kill). As soon as I loaded up the trunk of the car with all the plastic containers it started sprinkling but I went ahead hoping that the rain I drove through would not be happening on the other side of town where the recycling center was and it wasn’t so I got that taken care of without getting wet. It had already stopped by the time I headed back through town. On the way home I stopped at the Easy Lube to get a pound of okra. Weird, I know, but one of the guys that works there sells it from his garden. 

And believe it or not I finally got all the accumulated metal taken to the metal recyclers. When I got home from taking the plastic I loaded up the truck with three tubs and one cardboard box of aluminum beer cans, one tub of other aluminum cans and containers, two tubs of miscellaneous steel cans and containers, an ironing board, and two rusted out wheelbarrows. Came away with $11.41. Should have loaded up my rusty old bike which is never going to get refurbished. Next time. I’m so glad to finally get that taken care of.

I stopped by the Hesed House market Thursday afternoon to get some local honey and they’ve already sold two packages of the note cards during the one week they’ve had them so that seems promising.

Not much else going on. The sky has been white and hazy the last week or so from the Saharan dust that blows west every year. Joe returned the next day to finish mowing the shop yard. Paisleigh came over for an hour or so until her Granny got home from work and helped me fix dinner until she got bored and then entertained Marc or he entertained her or both. The corn has turned completely brown in the field across the road so I guess they will be harvesting soon. I slept for an hour or so after I went to bed last night and then woke and could not go back to sleep so I read until 3 AM, a kind of strange book that I’m nearing the end of and can’t imagine how it will end. Another very big branch fell during Wednesday’s storm from the one pecan tree that last summer’s hurricane did not damage. It’s the only one of the three that has developing pecans as nearly as I can tell.

I have yard work to do outside but I may stay in today and finish that book or draw or paint or both or all three or not. I’m moving very slow on four hours of sleep.

Per Codex’s request, here are some close-ups of the Mexican bird of paradise flowers.