fall bloomers and WTF

While it still gets in the low 90s during the day, mornings and evenings are cool and all the fall bloomers are, well, blooming. I don’t usually take pictures of the whole expanse of these plants so I am plus the close ups of the flowers I usually post.

I planted the rangoon creeper on the section of fence beside the drive into the shop yard where it can get all the sun it wants.

The pink trumpet flower, also planted in the shop yard for the same reason, it’s the only place that gets full sun. It’s just starting its bloom cycle and later will have more flowers.

Pam did not want the cutting from my morning glory bush, also a sun lover, which I thought she could plant in front of her house so I planted it last spring. It is glorious.

The white phillipine lilies are really kind of invasive sprouting up everywhere and after they finish blooming I’ll probably dig some of them up.

The next two are just coming into bloom. The shrimp plant has really taken over this section of the yard.

And the orange cosmos. In a couple of weeks it will be covered with flowers and I’ll post another picture of it when it is.

The mist flower doesn’t look like much in the big picture but it’s one of my favorites. 

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This post was just supposed to be about flowers but things are getting more extreme by the day and I have to add, just what the fuck is wrong with people in this country. 

Meteorologists are now getting death threats for explaining why hurricanes and the weather in general is getting more extreme. Mention global warming or climate change and the MAGAts just go insane because violence is the only way to deal with anything they don’t like and they don't like people talking about climate change.

Over the weekend FEMA had to pause their recovery efforts in two counties in North Carolina, the areas hardest hit, because of threats to the workers helping people on site. In one instance FEMA personnel were ordered out of the area after National Guard members reported encountering 2 trucks of militia members out ‘hunting FEMA’. Btw, FEMA does not have the power to either condemn your storm damaged property or confiscate it. 

And finally, Trump held a rally in Coachella, CA on Saturday in which he went full on fascist informing us of his intention to denaturalize citizen immigrants and using the armed forces, if necessary (and of course he, or rather Steven Miller, will find it necessary) to round up illegal and legal residents as well as anyone he considers a ‘radical left lunatic’, you know the Hitleresque ‘enemy within’. This rally was held in the desert five miles from the parking lot. He had attendees bussed in only when it was over, there were no busses to take people back. Report is that the bus drivers were only paid to take people to the rally. Trump left without a backward glance stranding all those people in the desert in the dark. So who are his supporters blaming? The democrat mayor of Coachella and democrats in general.

long day and rummaging through more tubs

Monday I called two people and another on Tuesday for bids on cutting down, cutting up, and hauling away the hanging limbs on the two pecan trees. One Monday and the one on Tuesday came out the day I called. The second guy I called on Monday didn’t return my call until Wednesday afternoon after I had the work done Wednesday morning. He called again yesterday evening. Too late guy, should have returned my call on Monday.

The man I hired and his two helpers did an excellent job and very reasonable. The one limb hanging by a shred of bark came down quickly and was cut up in minutes. It probably took the about 30 minutes of discussion and moving the extension ladder around to finally decide how to approach the more dangerous dangling limbs on the other tree though Tuesday afternoon the two limbs that were detached but hung had fallen on their own.

When those two limbs came down with a whump I guess I jumped because John looked over at me and asked was I nervous; yup, little bit. This is what the trees look like now. I hope the one closest to the house will regenerate because I’d hate to lose it completely.

Wednesday was a long day. After the crew drove off with the trailer full of more than half my pecan tree 

I went ahead and emptied the truck onto the now really big burn pile (went wide instead of tall) and Marc went out to run some errands. I got a phone call later…car trouble, car wouldn’t start. After a series of phone calls between Marc, myself, Robin, and car mechanic grandson Mikey, Mikey’s domestic partner Audra showed up to jump the battery with the fancy little battery charger gizmo and then followed Marc home with Paisleigh and waited until Mikey got off work so I got a nice little visit with my great granddaughter. When Mikey got here he and Marc went off to get a new battery and he switched it out for us so, car fixed.

Earlier this week I was looking through more of the tubs in my sister’s shed and found more christmas ornaments, a fancy elf or fairy as the case may be, 

her antique plastic Mr. Snowman that you can put a light inside, 

a tub full of santas and nutcrackers, all of which will go to SHARE. I pulled out these crocheted and starched snowflakes that Pam made to see if anyone in blogland wants them.

Also found her soap making stuff and another tub full of her genealogy research…documents and pictures. Her younger daughter took all the binders of the family lines that were in the house right after Pam’s death and she’s coming to get the rest of the genealogy stuff today. The soap making stuff I’m going to post on the local chat page on FB free for the taking. 

Now that the weather has cooled off somewhat, key word here ‘somewhat’ since it’s still getting into low 90s during the day but the mornings are nice and cool, the shrimp plant, the white philippine lilies, the rangoon creeper, the morning glory bush, and the pink trumpet flower are all blooming but this post is already heavy on images so can wait until the next post.

dinner disaster, done all I can do, drawing dissatisfaction

Back to more pleasant topics, sort of. I fixed dinner Friday night, my night. I bought a little eggplant Tuesday and decided on the spot to make eggplant parmesan so Friday when I got out my recipe I had to go back and get another one and the mozzarella plus the tomato sauce since I lost all my homemade sauce when we lost power for three days during hurricane Beryl. The recipe I have is for baking the eggplant beforehand in stead of frying it and calls for chunky tomato sauce. Anyway, it’s a process and I started early. There’s no such thing as commercially available ‘chunky’ tomato sauce so I also bought a can of diced tomatoes to add in which turned out to be a big mistake because the end result at dinner was terrible. I should have use either stewed tomatoes or just plain spaghetti sauce. Anyway, I not only threw out the leftovers but also the recipe. I need a new recipe for eggplant parmesan.

Last Wednesday I got out the big boy chainsaw and worked on the pecan tree by the back of the barn cutting up the fallen big stuff and what I could reach that wasn’t weight bearing and made this neat stack of cut logs.

Then Saturday I went to work on the tree close to the house. There wasn’t nearly as much to deal with since none of the big stuff has fallen, still dangling, and made this not so neat pile. If I could carry it, I didn’t cut it up into smaller stackable pieces. 

Now I need to get someone who does tree work to get those big hanging limbs on both trees down, cut up, and hauled away.

Yesterday I mowed the little backyard and around the tree fingers holding up the limbs on the tree closest to the house, cut to the ground all the hackberry, and pecan trees that had sprouted up this summer in amongst other shrubbery some of which I swear I cut last spring and poisoned the stumps. I still come in hot and sweaty even though it’s not getting as hot. Now that I’ve done all I can do on the trees I can turn my attention to the overgrown flower beds.

Speaking of overgrown, this is the half acre next to me that belongs to the Wicked Bitch of the West. I think this lot has only been mowed twice this whole year. It’s easily thigh high.

A week or so ago the wind knocked the bird feeder off the platform which has happened several times but this time the bird feeder broke. I went to the feed store for a new one and the cheapest ones they had were $44 and not that attractive. So I went to Tractor Supply and got one for $15. 

I put four little nails around the perimeter into the platform to keep it from falling off. I like this one but the four slots that feed the seed into the little circular tray aren’t high enough to let the spanish peanuts and the bigger sunflower seeds easily pass through so I’m going to take my dremel tool and grind the openings a little larger.

I finished the butterfly and penciled in the scrappy leaves in the background. My original thought was to do the leaves in watercolor but the paper in my sketchbook is not very heavy so I decided watercolor wasn’t a good idea and went back to colored pencil but after I got one and a half leaves done, I very much didn’t like it and erased as much as I could so that now it’s faint which I like better but still not best pleased. Now I’m trying to decide how to proceed, I could probably get more of the colored pencil off if I continued to use the erasure. I’m going to sit with it a couple of days. I’ll have to finish the other half of the one leaf and maybe pick a third and then darken the pencil lines and maybe I’ll call it done.

the photo I’m working from

the finished butterfly

where it stands now

lies, dirty lies, dangerous lies

This is long, folks, sorry. I’ve been writing this for about a week and a half and every day it just gets worse, the things Trump says, the lies and false accusations he and his rabid followers make about Harris and the Biden administration, they are just plain nasty and frankly, unbelievable and yet a large part of the population believes them.

Trump, self proclaimed sexual abuser and adjudicated rapist is now claiming to be the protector of women saying we will be happy, healthy, confident, free, and no longer thinking about abortion if elected. He’s also getting more and more extreme, advocating that a day or ‘one rough hour’ of intense police brutality will put an end to crime, you know, because the message will get around. Aaron Rupar, a journalist I follow on social media, basically called a Trump’s rally in Wisconsin a hate fest laden with heinous dangerous lies against immigrants, legal and undocumented, saying with relish “getting them out will be a bloody story”. And of course after the disaster in North Carolina Trump is lying that the governor, a democrat, is refusing to send aid to the republican areas of the state (which is something Trump did to various democrat regions asking for federal aid after a disaster, California after wildfires and Puerto Rico after the devastating hurricane Maria for example), that President Biden has refused to take Georgia’s governor’s call when in fact Biden has talked to him several times, has accused Biden and Harris of ignoring the devastation when Biden already had FEMA personnel on the ground before Helene hit. 

Since I wrote the above about a week ago Trump’s rhetoric and campaign against immigrants has gotten even worse. He intends to not only deport illegal residents, he will revoke the legal status of other immigrants and deport them as well. His lies about Biden’s hurricane response now include accusing Biden of stealing all the money from FEMA and using it on illegal migrants. What he’s referring to is a separately funded program, the Shelter and Services Program, part of Customs and Border Protection but administered by FEMA, set up under his own term as president. Secretary Mayorkas has called out Trump’s lie saying that FEMA has all the resources it needs to help those affected by hurricane Helene.

The fallout from his and Vance’s lies about the Haitian community in Springfield OH that has resulted in bomb threats and hate towards the small legal Haitian community that helped revitalize the town has now been directed at one businessman who defended his 30 Haitian employees as being the best he has. Jaime McGregor, a two time Trump voter, who owns a factory making tractor parts is getting graphic death threats directed at him, his family, and his business, credible enough that the FBI showed up and directed him to start taking certain precautions. McGregor, who has never owned a gun, now does and he and his family have been taking shooting lessons. Story here. 

MAGAts are spreading malicious memes about Harris’ proposal to give a $25,000 down payment credit to qualified first time home buyers with an emphasis on first generation home buyers claiming that if any member of your family; parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles; own a home you are ineligible, a claim that is patently false, and that your tax money will go to allow illegal immigrants to buy homes instead when it is against the law for illegal residents to access any government aid programs.

MAGA republicans are also lying about the excellent economy…continued job growth, record low unemployment, rising wages, inflation down, stock market at an all time high (and yes I know a lot of people are still struggling but that's as it ever was)…with Marco Rubio calling the just released report fake and when Trump was asked if he would acknowledge that the economy was improving replied, ’no, it’s not’.

All this is just a drop in the bucket of Trump’s vileness. I haven’t even touched his disastrous plan to increase tariffs on all imports which economists say will be devastating to the economy as will his mass deportation plans, his continued and increasing incoherence, his litany of complaints about how poorly he is treated, his refusal or inability answer questions replying instead with a word salad that has nothing to do with the question, his support of Putin and other heavy handed authoritarians, his intention to refuse to come to the aid of our allies, his desire to abandon South Korea, his denial of the brain damage sustained by 100 of our service members in Iraq when Iran bombed our base there calling the attack during his presidency ‘a very good thing’, and on and on. 

And while we mostly focus on how unfit and old at 78 Trump is to be president, and rightly so, what we need to be talking about as well is how fucking scary J D Vance is if Trump is elected and becomes completely senile or dies in office.  Besides his archaic opinion of women that their only role in the human experience should be childbearing and homemaking, his dismissal of women who work and their contributions to leadership, education, medicine, science, technology, the arts, etc.; his belief that people without children, who he calls sociopathic, psychotic, and deranged, should not be able to vote and should have their taxes raised and should be punished; he demonizes immigrants and supports Trump's plan to rid the country of them, is a christian nationalist and absolutely will implement Project 2025. The republican party has already requested information from different departments about employees in a bid to determine who won't be loyal to Trump. 

I have no doubt that if Trump gets elected republicans will do everything they can to shitcan him and install Vance.

When it comes right down to it, Republicans are more about power than the country, more about staying in power than the will of the people and they fully intend to force their unpopular world view if they gain the presidency and majority in Congress and will engage in threats of violence, voter suppression, and intimidation at the polls to achieve that end.

Once again, I urge everyone to check your voter registration to make sure it’s active, understand the assignment, and get out there and vote.

 

another truckload, anoles and toads, I visit

Last weekend I finally got all the debris piles off the ground and in the truck ready to be dumped on the burn pile if and when we can burn again, cut the rest of the canopy and small non weight bearing branches that I could reach on the second damaged tree cut up with my baby chainsaw and also in the truck. 

Now I’m ready to get out the big boy chainsaw and go after the big fallen limbs and the bigger non weight bearing dangling limbs. Once I get that done then it will be time to get more qualified help to get the dangling limbs cut loose and on the ground. Once on the ground, I can deal with them.

Saturday while Robin and I were out walking Minnie and we got to the end of the street, my friend’s 8 year old granddaughter was out in the yard. Miss Ellen! She came running over, look what I have.

These two anoles were quietly just sitting in her palm, making no effort to escape. The day before she showed me two toads in a glass jar half full of water she had scooped out of the little pool in their front yard. I told her not to leave them in the jar as they would drown but to let them go after she was through watching them which she did.

Sunday afternoon I went out to my daughter’s place about 20 minutes from here out in the county to visit and to get some fresh eggs. 

My grandson Mikey and Audra and their daughter, my great granddaughter Paisleigh moved back here from Arkansas in August and they recently bought a 35’ travel trailer, two bedroom and 1 1/2 bath, to live in until they get more permanent living quarters built on the property. This gets them out of Sarah’s house and gives them and Sarah and Mike personal and private space. So I drove out to visit and see the new trailer. Paisleigh gave me a grand tour and then wanted me to color with her.

Later Sarah and I and Paisleigh were sitting out under the canopy when Paisleigh announced she had to go fix her hair. She ran into Sarah’s house and came out with this bow on her head and her little pick bead bracelet on. 

Then she announced she was going to fix my hair and she put the bow and bracelet on me.

After about five minutes I took it off. Oh no, Gramma, she says, you have to wear it so I dutifully put it back on.

A few miscellaneous pictures. Current progress on the drawing.

My neighbor’s Halloween display. It’s been up since mid September.

The top part of the yellow bells shrub over at the shop yard that gets full sun. It’s as tall as the banana trees next to it.

blast from the past, burn ban, rain but not on us

This little tidbit from the NYT newsletter this morning amused me: “Crowds of people are lining up outside a suitcase shop on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to get their turn with an exciting piece of technology: an analog photo booth from the 1970s. The booth, called Old Friend, snaps four photos, which take about three minutes to develop. The throwback has resonated particularly with members of a younger generation. “It’s cool to think that this is how our parents took their photos,” one visitor told The Times.” I still have the strip of photos Marc and I took when we first started going out, falling in love.

It’s been pretty uneventful around here this week. I got two more debris piles in the truck 

and plan to dump them on the burn pile today but no burning as they did call for a burn ban but not until yesterday. Still have two more piles to go in the truck and that will be everything I’ve cut so far so next I’ll cut the rest of the canopy off the second tree. After that I’ll get the big chainsaw and start work on the bigger branches that aren’t supporting the weight of the hanging limbs.

Wednesday I had a follow-up appointment with the EP, all is well, made sure I had the follow-up TEE scheduled for next month after which he will take me off the eliquis and put me on plavix instead for 6 months so a slow weaning off the blood thinners, told me to come back in 6 months. Drove through some very hard rain coming back, going 45 in the far right lane on the highway and still could barely see the lane markers ahead of me while people in bigger vehicles sped past me on the left. Fortunately I drove out from under the downpour fairly soon. This is what the sky looked like when I got home.

Another cool front came through yesterday, even dipped below 60 last night and nice and cool this morning though it’s already warming up. It looks like a nice low humidity blue sky day out there today. Doors and windows currently open listening to birdsong.

I haven’t worked on the drawing this week so maybe I’ll make some progress this weekend. I sat down Tuesday morning to work on it but realized after the first five minutes or so my mind was not focused on it and put it aside for later. I’m trying to finish the book I’m reading since someone is on the waitlist for it and the sequel to the last Preston and Child Pendergast novel has arrived at the library and is being held for me.

Time to get out there and take advantage of the day.