weekend activity

Baby Blue Eyes are blooming and the flowers are 3/4” - 1” wide. First try with the camera on the new phone. 

Saturday morning my daughter called…what are you doing? Finishing breakfast and then I’m going to go over and feed Robin’s cats (Robin is in the city for the weekend). this was the opening weekend for the spring Farmer’s Market and did I want to go with her and the grands. So yes. Sarah and Paisleigh and Harrison picked me up and off we went. Lot’s of fun stuff for the kids; a bouncy house which Paisleigh only stayed in for a few minutes, too many bigger kids; a train of sorts with a four wheeler pulling the little cars; free balloons and popcorn for the kids; face painting, Paisleigh opted for full face.

Lots of vendors, mostly baked goods and arts and crafts since no one has a producing garden yet. We went mostly for the food. A Muslim family selling middle eastern dishes from which I bought two gyros, another family selling empanadas from which I bought four, another woman selling tamales which I also bought. All of it very good. Then we went over to Hesed House for the kids to play on the little playground there but it has recently been closed, fenced off, for more work on the levee behind it. The levee project is a result of practically the whole town flooding after hurricane Harvey. the kids just ran around the HH grounds, Harrison being able to get out of the stroller, and then we checked out the market. After we returned home we walked the kids down to the other end of the street so Paisleigh could play with Carly, one of Rocky’s grandchildren that live with him and Melissa, for a little while, and then back home and I was done. Ate my empanadas for lunch and then took a nap. I never take naps. Well, hardly ever.

Sunday I watered pots and ground, front and back, checked on my tomato plants, clipped off all the dead leaves and noted that three of the five are starting to show some new growth, 

cut back the dead Mexican bird of paradise and the dead limbs of the already growing white orchid tree/shrub with the mini chainsaw across the street, still have two more things to cut back over there having done the banana trees on Friday. I meant to replant my green beans but I’ll get to that today (now done).

And I finally finished the one bookmark so here are the latest three.

Tomorrow I have a dermatologist appointment (8 am! but my choice so I don’t have to wait an hour or more) and Wednesday my bi-annual follow up with the electrophysiologist. Thursday my niece is coming in to spend the day with us before she checks into her hotel for the weekend in the city. She’s coming in from Albuquerque so I hope she’s traveling through Hobby and not IAH with the new deployment of ICE to catch all the illegals that can afford airfare and have to go through customs, because yeah all the illegals are doing that fooling the customs agents. Most the videos show them just standing around (without masks!) though I did see one of them wrestling a latino looking woman to the ground while her little girl stands there crying. I don’t know if she was flying out or arriving or just laying over. You’d think if she was flying out they’d let her go but no, the point is cruelty, treat them inhumanely as long as possible before deporting them.

unexpected freeze, a movie, flowers

While it was only supposed to get to the mid 30s Monday night I still sustained some freeze damage. The foliage on five of my six tomato plants froze, the sixth untouched right next to the ones that froze, but the stems seem fine so I hope they aren’t dead. Regardless, I’ll probably buy new plants just in case. Most of my green bean sprouts and the top half of the basil froze and all the new banana tree leaves so I have to replant my green beans. The garden is out in the open towards the back of the property; everything close to the house and more protected is fine. Tuesday I woke to temps in the 30s, Wednesday it hit high 80s. Typical weather in this part of Texas.

I guess I need to go to the chiropractor. I’ve been having some aches and pains in my left hip which started popping a couple of months ago, though that seems to have subsided mostly, with aches spreading down my thigh and after sitting the first few steps a little painful but once moving is fine. The last few days the hip and leg are better but the ache has moved to my lower back. So yeah, something is going on down there that needs to be adjusted. Probably sciatica. 

I’ve been working on the bookmarks, have two finished and working on a third which is taking me days, needs a lot of drying time between and I’ve been entertaining Paisleigh two afternoons this week. Paisleigh's rainbow, sun, and sunset.

Once again I am behind on reading/commenting on blogs. SHARE Thursday being one reason. Surely I was attentive on Wednesday but really don’t remember. And today (Friday) is also going to be a blank because we’re leaving in a little while to go see the movie Project Hail Mary which is based on the book of the same name by Andy Weir, the same author that wrote The Martian. Both books are excellent, The Martian had me hooked after the first sentence. Project Hail Mary is about a space 'bacteria' that is eating the suns in a region of space including our sun that will doom everything on Earth within 30 years and so a last ditch effort sends a team into space to the one sun that is not being affected to find out why. Unfortunately, once at the destination, only one man of three survived the coma during the journey and he encounters an alien spaceship with also coincidentally a lone survivor on the same mission to save its sun and planet. The two completely different life forms must learn to communicate and work together if they are to succeed. The movie starts today and that is usually how we do it. Opening day matinee. Chose our seats and bought our tickets online yesterday. I tried to embed the trailer with zero success, sometimes I can get it to work, others not. This time not but here’s the link to the trailer.

Aaaaaand, now we're back. It's good, really good and Ryan Gosling is really good. 

On the way home, we stopped by the Verizon store and got a new phone for me, one with the better camera and the macro lens, and then stopped at the liquor store and finally home where the little dog had been cooped up all day and was demanding a walk during which we stopped to visit with my friend at the other end of the street and at the end of the walk fed the cats and then it was time to fix dinner (my night) and then dinner and then cleaning up the kitchen and then I was done. So now it's Saturday.

Flowers in the yard…

and for Steve, the nun’s orchid plant.

puttering in the yard, arting in the house

We had a couple of nights cold enough for the second quilt and the days were mild, clear, and low humidity. I puttered around in the yard Friday and Saturday; cut back the banana trees and some other stuff I had neglected, watered everything in the ground and in pots, separated one pot of the nuns orchid into five small pots, repotted into bigger pots my pink and yellow angel trumpets, repotted another pink angel trumpet that had two rooted cuttings into separate pots. Every winter before the first predicted freeze I dig up volunteers or take cuttings to root of things that might not return even protected. So far they always have so this year I have three morning glory bush, three coral porterweed, two confederate rose, two pink angel trumpet, three firespike (which I may keep and put in the ground), and the five nuns orchid (because I don’t need three pots of that) 

to donate to the garden club plant sale even though I am no longer a member. I’ll take all that over to a member’s house at the end of April. I also started to tackle the big table in the garage that has been the catchall for tools and things that need to be dealt with but ignored for years. Next post.

Today, Sunday, is overcast and windy, 20mph sustained, 40mph gusts, clearing later with a 40˚ drop in temperature accompanied by a thunderstorm. Tomorrow night supposed to get near freezing. The only thing I’ve accomplished outside today is to drag all the cut back banana stuff to the back edge of the property and deal with the big widowmaker that has hung in the red oak by the driveway just behind where we park the car for nearly two years, a gift from the hurricane in 2024. I was in the barn when it came crashing down today. It would have done some serious damage to anyone unlucky enough to have been standing under it when it fell. That long piece had a diameter of about 5"- 6" which I had to cut in half to be able to lift into the truck and even those were almost too heavy. It’s all in the truck now. 

The rest of the day was indoor stuff, started another bookmark (not shown below), read some in the book I checked out Saturday, Joe Hill’s new novel King Sorrow. I must be fucking insane as it’s 866 pages and lately it takes me a month or longer to get through a book half that length.

I have three new bookmarks, two of which are no great shakes. One was just something quick to test several clear acrylic spray sealers to see how they affected the paint/paper which was mostly not at all and couldn’t really see any difference between gloss (top third) and flat (middle third) but satin (on the bottom third seems to have yellowed it a bit). I chose flat to seal them since I didn’t want to laminate them. The other is a John Lennon quote (attribution on the back) which I cut short because I didn’t like what I did at the bottom. 

Monday today, the new front blew in last night but no thunderstorm. I had my bedroom window open and listened to the long whooshing gusts of wind accompanied by the wind chimes during my wakeful period. Hadn’t put the second quilt away yet so it was in use. It’s in the 40s today so I had to dig out my winter clothes that I had so foolishly put away before April. I won’t be working outside today so I’ll work on the bookmarks and try to make some headway on those 866 pages.

 

fiery cloud, the next arty thing, and spring marches on

future peaches

Overcast, damp, and coolish Wednesday morning. A storm blew through Tuesday night, mostly high wind with minimal rain but that didn’t stop the little dog from keeping me awake while she panted and trembled and tried to sit above my head on my pillow and when I won’t allow that she sits next to my shoulder as close as she can get which makes me cranky! I have no idea how long that went on until she finally settled down and went to sleep and I went to sleep and slept until my morning pill alarm went off at 8:30. I should have taken advantage of the overcast and be done stuff outside but I’m just not feeling it and we did get some rain later in the day. This is what the sky in the north and east looked like at sunset while the south and west was a clear fading blue. This cloud was immense stretching from north to east I no longer have the app to stitch these together and didn't think to take a panorama. Images move from north to east.

Went to the tai chi class Tuesday night. The first two sessions there were +/- 15 people. Last night only 5 which really made it a little better I think, either that or the repetition is starting to sink in. Still not remembering everything and didn’t do a damn thing Wednesday morning, tai chi or yoga. There’s no yoga class in El Campo this week during spring break. I should have bet money. Every year Abby says yeah, we will have class, I’m not doing anything and every year before Monday she cancels the class for the week. I’ve been thinking about not attending the Wednesday evening class. My total drive time is about 46 - 48 minutes and as long as the class lasts the 45 minutes originally scheduled way back when I first started going I was ok with the time investment but more often than not, class only lasts about 30 - 35 minutes especially Wednesdays, the least attended class of the week. Anyway, now that I go to this tai chi class on every other Tuesday, that’s 4 evenings in a row that I’m out (including the Thursday evening yoga class at Hesed House). So I was glad there was no class that night and I think I’ll start cutting out the Wednesday night class on tai chi weeks to start. 

I wasn’t a complete slug Wednesday. I painted two bookmarks (and one on Tuesday).

I was home from SHARE yesterday (I know but they just have to struggle along without me sometimes). My niece and namesake, Pam’s oldest daughter Denny (Ellen Denise formally), texted Tuesday that she would be in town on Thursday the 26th and she was coming to visit. One of her step-sisters is getting married in Houston and she is coming in a day early to spend time with us. I haven’t seen her since July 2024 when she was here to clean out Pam’s house and the rest of the family came to disperse Pam’s ashes at the beach. So I texted Jan on Wednesday that I wouldn’t be at SHARE the next day because the date completely slipped my mind. I kept thinking she should be here by now and finally looked at her text and oops! They’ll have to struggle along without me for two Thursdays this month. To tell the truth, it’s been nice this week, like I’m on vacation; no yoga, no SHARE.

redbud tree I planted in front of the shop

So instead I ran errands, taking three of the mobiles to the Market and while I was showing them to Stephanie and we were discussing how to display them the woman doing the tai chi classes was there and she bought one on the spot. I wasn’t intending on leaving them but we found a place to hang the other two. The other thing was picking up the basic bookbinding book I ordered through the bookstore here so we’ll see where that takes me. And then I finally put all the sheets, tarps, and plastic bags in their tub and put them away until needed again and swept out the accumulation of leaves that always blow in and rearranged the garage after Mikey moved the cereus outside for me. The garage is now in its spring/summer/fall configuration.

wisteria 

 (The formatting is killing me today).

creating for fun and the appearance of green

I’m at that point again, that in-between place. Done with the crystal mobiles, my little obsession with an idea that perked around in my head for a few months until I finally made them, except for pricing. I did these for fun, not for income, but I don’t mind selling them. So I need to come up with some sort of formula and then tweak the results. And that will be it. I have no plans to make more having worked through the idea. The times I tried to force another expression of an idea after I had explored it the result was always a little ‘faded’, less satisfying. The most recent lesson was with the boxes. I had been working on this form for years creating each box as the idea unfolded. They sort of built on each other getting more complex until the Heron box, the most difficult and elaborate, and I knew, this is it, there is no more after this one. But then I had promised my one remaining gallery the Heron box when it was finished and as it turned out I finished it the night before the last day of our last annual December open house with our other glass artist friends in 2019 and I took it just to show it to the small crowd before sending it to the gallery when a woman who had bought smaller pieces from me before walked in and bought it. The gallery owner was understandably disappointed and asked if I would make a box for their anniversary show the next year and I agreed. But there was no blooming idea for one, I had to decide on something I thought would fit into the Ode or Reliquary theme and eventually chose the decline of coral reefs and because of the piece coming through a search instead of inside me I didn’t have the emotional attachment to it. It was still a lot of work but it’s probably the I like the least and all these years later it still hasn’t sold. Of course one of my cast glass boxes and bending wire to hang crystals aren’t remotely the same except when they both become ‘work’.

And now thinking what to do next, what little act of making will I focus on next. I have an idea but it’s still forming and I need to get ’stuff’ together. While I ponder that maybe I’ll do some quick little bookmarks.

Now it’s the next day (see? days to write a post), cool and overcast. A good day to work on the rest of the winter debris. I can get out there and work without melting into a puddle of sweat. Or not. Ventured out after hearing a long thunder rumble and it’s not just cool, it’s chilly and damp and starting to sprinkle. But I noticed this on my brief foray which seems to have happened overnight. 

I was out a lot yesterday and didn't notice the tallow was leafing out. The other two are still bare. The ash trees in the neighborhood burst out with a pale green haze last week. But now that I look around the ginkgos and little purple crepe myrtle (picture at top) are also sporting new little leaves. Looking up, the red oak is blooming.

I saw the wren today after not seeing her, well, since right after I started keeping the back door shut. I have checked on her progress on the new nest in the maidenhair fern, a nice cozy little tunnel of a nest and no eggs yet that I can see. I try to water the fern gently so as not to soak the nest but I didn’t know if she was still active, until today. I saw her perch on a small plant in a pot on the outdoor étagère beside the pot stand the fern is in, look around carefully and then drop out of sight. I can’t see through the bottom pane in my window because it has textured glass in it so I assume ms wren dropped down to her nest.

 

spring!, spring garden, boxing mobiles

Those of you who post every day, I don’t see how you can do it. It takes me days to write a post and some days going through my email inbox and reading blogs is all I can manage. Just don’t have the time, not if I want to get anything else accomplished.

And speaking of other things, I got everything planted I intend to plant except for more green beans in a couple of weeks. My six tomatoes are in, the first round of green beans, carrots, the basil I bought at the grocery store, and four of what ever is sprouting in my compost bin but I’m not sure they are going to survive (three of them look like they are going to make it today). Moving them from the compost bin to the ground in the middle of a sunny day was probably not the best time. I was going to try potatoes again but the feed store didn’t have any more loose seed potatoes and the tractor supply only had big bags. Maybe next year.

The azaleas are blooming, I’m starting to see some evening primrose and red bud trees around, my peach tree is putting on flowers, and the bluebonnets in the front have started blooming. We had more return this year than I thought since it’s been so dry. 

When we bought this place the entire easement in front of the house was solid bluebonnets that returned every year until the year that the county mowed the easement before seed had been set and dropped. I had stopped them the previous year but they came when I wasn’t here. Since, we get maybe a tenth of what we had. These drought years aren’t helping either.

I’ve been dividing my time between outdoor work and packaging the mobiles. Besides planting the spring garden, I still have a lot of winter’s dead to cut back like the banana trees which once again froze to the ground and now are laying on the ground from the strong wind we had. That and the rest of the wild Mexican petunias are all that’s left to deal with at the house but have bananas, the white orchid tree/shrub, the thick branches of the morning glory bush and the yellow bells I need the little chain saw for over at the shop yard.

So boxing the mobiles:  I worked out a packing system. First I converted this

to this. 

Then I laid out the mobile on 2” thick foam and drew around the shapes,

used a hobby knife to cut out the shapes in the foam which the crystals will nestle in,

glued the foam in the box (oops, mis-measured the width but it’ll do) and taped several layers of bubble wrap to the top. 

All I need do is place the mobile back into the foam

and close the box.

And that's your 'how to' for the week. Still have to price them and number them and their corresponding boxes or maybe print out and tape a photo on the top. 

Today is the benefit for my friend who is fighting cancer so I’m off to buy our two dinner plates.

weekend activities, good and bad

We had our second tai chi class this past week and I’ve put together a routine of about 7 movements we’ve learned in class. The movements have long fancy names, like Two Hands Hold Up The Heavens. I generally think of the ones I’m doing as standing, stretching, floating, bending, pushing, pulling, and walking. I also looked up a series of movements called ‘8 pieces of brocade’ which our instructor talks about. It’s eight movements, each one affecting, clearing, or strengthening specific parts of the body, organs, and chi (life force energy). I’ve watched videos of the eight brocades by three different practitioners and while the flows all have the same name, the movements vary a bit by practitioner. I’m doing the tai chi every morning, well, except Thursday, and sometimes some yoga as well but I’m still going to the three evening yoga classes so I’m not too concerned about doing a full yoga routine every morning. I’ll reserve judgement of whatever difference or benefit I’m feeling from the tai chi until I’ve been doing it consistently for about a month. 

The last two mobiles are done, 9 in all, and now I need to figure out how to price them. Right now they’re all hanging in the west and north facing windows in the corner in my workroom. They look pretty good hanging there, they make me happy to look at them. I guess I’m going to have to keep one but deciding which is going to be hard. I also need to figure out packaging, some sort of box for people to transport it easily without it getting all twisted up. It won’t do to just stick it in a bag. Anyway, here’s the last two. One is not crystals but strips of colored glass from a previous project.

I knew I was done with them because that last one, being the last and mainly doing it just to use up the last of the crystals, was days in making, I was all but over bending wire, but I finished it last night then scooped up all the bits of wire and other trash, put away the spools of various wire, and put away the tools so now my table is clear and ready for the next whatever. I think I’ll start with the art journal while I consider my options.That clever and artistic Linda Sue is thinking of making shrines with the 8 cigar boxes she has and I thought that was a cool idea. I don’t have any boxes suitable for that kind of thing but it got me thinking about shadow boxes, 3 dimensional dioramas, painting and cutting out the elements and layering them with space between. 

There are now 6 tomato plants sitting on the end of my desk that need to go in the ground. 

Plus I still want to transplant some of the healthy looking I don’t know what’s, maybe cucumber or possibly a squash out of the compost bin. 

I did get out there earlier today and finished weeding and turning the big garden area, weeded and turned the small plot where I had zinnias last year. Yesterday I went to the feed store and got potting soil, composted peat, composted manure, and some landscapers mix. The mix is to work into a flowerbed in the little backyard where I want to put a coral porterweed in the ground, get it out of the pot. It’s a volunteer I dug up two years ago in case I’m unsuccessful in protecting and keeping it alive but I’ve had the one in the ground for 4 or 5 years so I think I don’t need to keep it in a pot.

Wren report, denied access to the house, she has started to build a new nest in the pot of maidenhair fern by the backdoor. At least I think it’s the same one. I’ve seen her going in there four or five times with dead plant material in her beak.

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Once again our illustrious leader Trumplethinskin, the so called Peace President, the man who claims he has ended 8 wars in his first year, who feels slighted by the Nobel Committee because they have not awarded him the Peace Prize he thinks he so richly deserves, the self appointed supreme leader for life of his new Board Of Peace, has illegally, without the consent of Congress, and unprovoked bombed the shit out of another sovereign nation. This time Iran, a nation that imposed no immediate threat and during ongoing negotiations, without warning and in conjunction with Israel starting Saturday morning and continuing through the weekend killing 150 Iranian little girls. I’m sure we all feel much safer now that those heinous elementary school girls are dead. They did succeed in killing Iran’s supreme leader and many in the upper echelon of the government but Iran is not Iraq or Venezuela. Iran is a big country with a strong military and some powerful allies and the whole region is going up with Iran retaliating against not only Israel but every Arab country that deals with the US and allows US army bases in country. Trumplethinskin is an idiot and a dangerous one. He has no concept of history or the delicate balance in the Middle East and how easily it goes up in flames. Not only is he Putin’s puppet in Putin’s attempt to dismantle NATO and destroy American influence, now he is Netanyahu’s puppet, goaded into this aggression by Saudi Arabia’s lap dog Jared Kushner whispering in T.r.u.m.p’s ear how this will be great for future real estate opportunities in the region. So the man who has been sidelined by the nations of Europe and Canada creating new defense networks and trade agreements excluding the US, whose ego demands he be the biggest bully and the most feared, who equates threats with statecraft has given the hornets nest a big whomping. And he doesn’t give a fuck who dies, how many Americans and other innocents he has put at risk in the Middle East. It won’t be him and that’s all he cares about. 

This is a link to an essay by an Australian. Worth the read I think.

To end with something more pleasant, Cat sleeping on the lap blankets on the back of the couch that we no longer need but haven’t been put away yet.