my life in 100 objects - #5 and spring

My shovel.

I like being outside and gardening gives me something to do while I’m outside listening to the bird song, feeling the wind, gazing at the clouds. I like planting seeds and small plants, watching them grow, making flowers or food. And I like physical labor. Weird, I know, but I like to use my body, feel its strength and endurance (probably why I also like yoga so much) and so the part of gardening that gives me the most pleasure and satisfaction is digging. I love to dig, I love getting out there in the spring and fall turning over the ground that has become compacted over the summer or winter, crumbling the clods with my hands, getting the weeds out, getting it ready to plant. One spring day a couple of years ago I came in from a day out in the yard and plopped myself down on the couch. Today was a good day, I said. Why, Marc asked, because you got to dig? The man knows me.

And so that’s what I did Sunday and Monday, turned the soil crumbled the clods, tossed out the weeds, getting that area between the two flower beds ready to plant the spring garden. And it was perfect, not too hard and dry, not too wet. I still have one small area where the ants have not vacated completely yet but maybe by tomorrow. They got another dousing with diatomaceous earth. I still have to turn in some fertilizer and soil improvement, a mix of compost and other stuff, because the dirt here is clayey before I plant but the feed store and the co-op already have plants out. The time is now because it is, without a doubt, spring. 

My native peach tree thinks so. 

I don’t get any fruit off it. The peaches it makes are just a little bigger than a big pecan so I let the birds and squirrels have them. But my hybrid peach tree over in the shop yard is also starting to bloom.

The other thing I did Friday and Sunday was take all the plants in the house and garage back outside.

And remember how I said I didn’t think the banana trees froze to the ground and thought they might grow from the center? Saw this yesterday. 

yard work and the shaming of a nation

The daffodils are blooming.

I spent the entire day yesterday working outside, mostly across the street. I cut back the confederate rose, the mexican bird of paradise, trimmed some low branches off the small sycamore tree, cut a limb off the tallow that was brushing up against the house, cut back the two purple orchid tree shrubs and the two hummingbird bushes, cut back the enormous yellow bells. This was all between the back of the house and the shop. I have debris piles scattered all over that need to be moved to the burn pile. I still have to do the front of the house…the morning glory bush, the white orchid tree/shrub, the pink trumpet flower shrub, and the rangoon creeper; each one an enormous job, and the banana trees in back. I also dug up more of my sister’s narcissus and rain lily (I think) bulbs and some of the hidden ginger roots and then at my house treated 5 enormous fire ant mounds with diatomaceous earth and then an organic ant poison and watered that in and potted up the green onions I never used and a ginger root that had a little growth bud on it, my second time to try and grow ginger from the grocery store.

Friday I finally tackled the banana trees in my yard. I didn’t cut them all the way to the ground, well the little ones yes, because the trunks still seemed firm so I just cut them down to that point. We’ll see how that works out, if they grow from the center. If not, I’ll cut them to the ground later. 

Unfortunately, hauling that debris through the high growth at the back of the property to throw it all into the wild space was fatal to my garden cart. You might remember that last year I foolishly left it behind my granddaughter’s boyfriend’s car while I worked on something and he backed into it. I managed to beat it back into a semblance of shape and use with a hammer but the wheel that took the brunt of the collision finally succumbed. I noticed it had become very wobbly and on closer inspection, well, it just came right off. The center with the ball bearings was totally mangled and detached. I could possibly get a replacement for the wheel if I could get the rusted nut off which seems unlikely. So now I’m using Pam’s little wagon until I can get a new cart.

------------

I was going to lead with this but changed my mind. You can skip it if you want, the whole world was witness.

Trump is nothing more than a two bit thug, a bully, with delusions of grandeur. We all knew that but it was full-on on display Friday in the oval office of the White House as Trump and Vance embarrassed, mortified even, this nation with their behavior and made it plain to the world that the United States no longer held any kind of moral high ground and cannot be relied upon to support its allies. The lies and the shouts and the threats; the contempt, belligerence, and ignorance with which they spoke to Zelensky, all planned in advance, was a disgrace. They disgraced this nation. Trump intended to beat Zelensky down, to show him how powerless he is so that he would grovel for whatever crumbs Trump might be willing to toss him. Trump expected Zelensky to fold like a cheap tent and relinquish occupied territory to Putin and give Trump Ukraine's mineral wealth with no guarantees of security in the name of peace, of ending the war. It was clear to everyone, especially our allies, that Trump stands on the side of Russia. But Zelensky, the leader of a democratic nation fighting a war for their sovereignty in the face of Russia’s unprovoked aggression intended to bring Ukraine back under the control of Russia, would not be cowed even as he insisted on telling the truth to their lies. In the end Zelensky refused their demands and Trump in his fury at being denied canceled the press conference and lunch that was to follow and ordered Zelensky to leave the White House. It was heartening to see that condemnation of this grotesque display was swift both here and world wide and caused an immediate outpouring for Ukraine by the democratic nations and organizations of the world.

Nothing enrages Trump more than to be denied what he wants and this is the second time Zelensky has denied him what he wants, the first being an announcement that Ukraine was investigating Hunter Biden during Trump’s first term. Trump desired and tried to extort that out of him in order to cast shade on his opponent Joe Biden and ended up being impeached for that act. And when Trump doesn’t get what he wants he reacts with vengeance and retribution. I fear for Ukraine. It would not surprise me if Trump ordered our troops to enter Ukraine and take what he wants, just like Russia.

And then because Trump thinks this is some kind of reality show he remarked that the whole debacle made good television. No you miserable boil on the backend of a baboon, it did not make good television. You shamed this nation in front of the whole world.

 

more minutia of my life and the giant might be stirring

I had brought my now potted camellia in for the winter, the one that is infected with whitefly which no insecticidal soap or other stronger organic insecticide has had any effect on. You might remember I rubbed the backs of every leaf vigorously before bringing it in. When we had that warm spell I took it back outside, still looked good. Brought it back in for this recent freezing cold front. I looked at it Monday and it had bloomed white fuzz. Fuck. So yesterday morning I did what I should have done when I brought it in for the winter the first time, I used cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol and went over the back side of every leaf. It cleaned off so much of those back/brown spots so I have high hopes that maybe, just maybe, I’ve got rid of the white fly. I’ll have to keep a close eye on it, check it every day and repeat if necessary.

I spent Sunday out in the yard weeding the front flower bed. It was still overcast and wet but warmed up enough. It’s been colonized in part by fleabane which I left and the goldenrod that showed up last fall though the purple coneflower is not as dense as it has been. Since the roses and yellow bells and lantana have not come out yet I could get in there and get the weeds out and dig up the dewberry that grew unrestrained last summer while I was forced to it on my butt and had already started growing. I dug it all out last fall but the roots go deep and now it’s become one of the perpetual tasks. At one point I looked up across the street to see the feral black cat Ghost directly across from me sitting just behind the fence patiently watching, waiting for me to come over and feed the cats.

Also Sunday the neighborhood roaming peacock was on my street. I was visiting with my friend on the other end when it came strolling up to eat the birdseed that had been kicked to the ground underneath the bird feeder. And then Minnie and I followed it down the street home until it jumped on the fence and over of a neighbor at my end. The last time I saw it, it was molting and looked terrible but Sunday it was very fine looking indeed.

From the Department of Now I’ve Seen Everything - I did my week’s grocery shop yesterday. Our grocery has a sushi bar where they make it fresh every day, even with a time stamp on the label. Tuesday is Sushi Tuesday for lunch and they had a new offering…spam sushi. And no I didn’t buy it.

There’s finally activity over at Montreal’s old house. Last week a guy was doing something to the septic system we surmise. He was seated on the ground doing something about where the pump for the septic is. The contractor showed up Monday and has been here all week so far. I think I misunderstood the situation. When I met Sam and Eileen the day they were at the house I could have sworn Sam said they bought the house. But yesterday, Sam came to the door and asked if he could use our hose to get a couple of gallons of water. They had been working on the bathroom I think and that house is on a well and he said something about priming the pump. Yes, take all you need. I asked him when he thought they would move in and his response made me think they aren’t a couple after all. He said he thought she was going to rent it out to her family. So maybe Sam is just the guy she hired to fix up the house.

Yesterday morning my hair was long enough to twist it up tightly, poke a hair stick through it and hold a tiny little bun getting it off my neck and out of my face. Then I called and made an appointment to get my hair cut today.

I’ve been staying away from the news and SM for the most part. It’s all just too depressing though it is encouraging to see that the people are rising. They are showing up at the town halls and they are pissed and not just democrats. The illegally unnamed and unlabeled private security firm in Idaho where the republican representative had a woman dragged out because she shouted ‘women deserve a voice’ lost their business license. Congress is being flooded with phone calls and letters. There is some dissension in the ranks with a few republican legislators starting to speak out and Trump’s department heads pushing back against what they feel is Musk’s overreach to their authority. The courts are still kicking Trump and Musk in the butt. When Musk posted on X all the billions of so called savings he’s produced the NYT published evidence that the top 5 were patently false claims and the next day he removed those from the list. And a very fine moment when French President Macron interrupted one of Trump’s bald faced lies about Europe’s aid to Ukraine and corrected him to his face twice on the spot during the press conference. Trump is just a fucking embarrassment slouching in his chair with that sour face, disrespectfully waggling his hand while Macron spoke and his retort ‘if you want to believe that’. Trump is so obviously just a shell being controlled by Putin and Musk. 

By all accounts Trump is not running the country, just watching TV, signing what they put in front of of him, and playing golf which he’s done 27% of the 37 days he’s been in office. And if you had any doubts about his raging malignant narcissism and delusions of grandeur and power, as if referring to himself as king didn’t do it, the AI video of Trump Gaza he posted on TS should leave no doubt about his dementia addled brain. And then there's the Gold Card which gets you an automatic green card and guaranteed citizenship for a measly $5M. How much do you want to bet that that money goes into his pocket and not the government coffers, as if someone would actually take him up on it. He's convinced wealthy people will be flocking here in droves, his brain is going ka-ching!

SIM card and library mystery

Another cold day today, overcast, expecting some rain, high in the mid 40s but at least it isn’t getting below freezing again. We’ve had nearly a week of this weather with three nights below freezing, even in the 20s. It’s not slated to warm up until Monday. 

As mentioned the SIM card on my phone died Wednesday morning, removing it and putting it back in had no effect, but the weather was not conducive to going out and I didn’t think I would die from not being able to make or receive calls or text or get on-line (which I could do on my desktop) so I figured I would go Thursday afternoon after SHARE to the Verizon store and get it taken care of. Except it was 27˚ when I left for SHARE Thursday morning and it barely made it into the 40s during the day. OK, I won’t die from another day without my phone. Still cold but I finally went yesterday after breakfast driving the 30 minutes or so to the nearest Verizon store in Rosenberg where they replaced the SIM card. While there the guy told me we were eligible for a better plan, unlimited data (which we didn’t have) and for $20 less a month and Marc was eligible for a free iPhone 16 with a trade in (we have 13s) so it was a win all the way around. He didn’t know why only Marc’s number was eligible for a 16 but thought maybe they would offer it to me down the line. Which is fine. I don’t need to have the latest and greatest.

I’m not spending any time outside, have no pictures to take or show except for this, the game trail that cuts across the back end of my property. It emerges from the wild space on the east, passes right by the compost pile, and disappears into the overgrowth behind the Wicked Bitch of the West’s little storage buildings. I’ve never seen anything cross using it except for one time when I caught a quick look at a couple of foxes crossing to the west but it is definitely a well trod path.

And here’s some narcissus that bloomed before this last frigid cold spell.

And a mystery of sorts. I’m currently slowly getting through Harlan Ellison’s Greatest Hits, a selection of his work, some of which I remember reading way back when and some I don’t think I’ve read before. Before that I checked out two books, The Book of Elsewhere co-written by Keanu Reeves and China Mieville about the 60,000 year old immortal warrior which I gave up on before getting even halfway through and a new collection of short stories by Stephen King. Marc returned both books for me. When I dropped by the library to return a book he had checked out since I was driving right by there I told the librarian I had a book out that was way overdue but was almost through with it. She looked up my account to renew it and there was no record of my having it, it showed it was there in the library. It was one of the other librarians that scanned my card and we even talked about the book as she had just finished reading it herself. So weird, right? But the other thing was that the brand new Stephen King book came back damaged, the first endpaper when you open the cover was all torn up, and it was on my record as having been the last one to check it out. I have no idea how it got torn. I didn’t open it when I pulled it off the shelf and when I got home I put it on my desk and there it stayed until Marc picked it up to read it. Now this was a couple of months ago so our memories are foggy. I assured assured her I didn’t damage it, that I never even opened it the whole time it was in my possession. When I got home I asked Marc if that page was torn when he opened it and he recalled that it was and I think I remember him telling me that and he says he’s pretty sure he mentioned it to the librarian when he returned it. So I may be on the hook for replacing a book I never even opened.

 

tech problem and other miscellania

Monday when I went out to cover a few things in advance of the hard freeze tonight this white iris was blooming confused by the unseasonably warm weather earlier.

This morning my iPhone was functioning perfectly. I turned it off to go clean up the kitchen after breakfast and then thought of a text I wanted to send my neighbor first. Turned the phone back on and now I’m getting a SIM failure message. Instead of showing wi-fi at the top it shows SOS. So I did a search of possible causes and fixes. Restart didn’t work. Other possible causes is damaged SIM card or dirty SIM card tray which seem unlikely since it was working less than a minute previous. Software is updated. Check for carrier setting updates. So I went to setting and to cellular and there are no settings. Instead the screen says ‘set up cellular’. WTF? I can migrate the settings from Marc’s phone but that would also migrate his phone number. I don’t want his phone number. Right now I trying to get my long dead old phone to charge enough to see if I can migrate the settings from it to my new one. If that can’t work I guess I have to call Verizon and see if they dropped my phone number off our service. So right now my phone is a very expensive paperweight (didn't work, OS on old phone too old). Any advice on what happened and what to do will be appreciated.

------------

I was looking over the text edit page I compose on. I’m in the habit of jotting down thoughts or paragraphs for posts and most don’t ever go any further. So here’s five random musings:

Aging is weird and weird things happen to your body...the wrinkles and creases on your face, the crepey skin, every scar you ever had that faded shows up again, weird scaly patches and dark spots from sun exposure, wrinkles on other parts of your body that look like those sandstone canyons in Utah, whiskers on women, weird pains that just zap you and then go away, and rogue eyebrow hairs that just keep growing.

The weather is beautiful; days sunny and warm with cool, clear, star-filled Milky Way nights. Up at dawn, quiet contemplation before breakfast and breaking camp. Finally we are loaded and I push off with a sigh as I feel the first tug of the current pulling us into the river, carrying us on through the quiet beauty of the canyons. We are in no hurry as we quietly dip our paddles in the river. We come upon a blue heron at the river's edge and it spreads its wings and flies downriver as we approach. Again and again we chase the heron downstream until it reaches the end of its territory and turns back flying over us upriver.

I was listening to a segment on NPR this evening about language and art, neanderthal vs modern human which still painted neanderthals as somehow less than equivalent to us, the modern human. Everything we think we know about the abilities and capabilities and cultural expressions of neanderthals is viewed through the lens of homo sapiens superiority. Here's another interpretation…modern humans, a more violent and warlike species emerges and commits genocide against a successful peaceful thriving culturally rich population even as they interbreed with them. We can't even coexist with the different variations of our own race much less affording another human race equality.

I've always been a science fiction fan and I've read many books about possible futures on earth and the ones that horrified me the most were the ones where we made the surface uninhabitable and humanity went underground in order to survive, never breathing fresh air, never seeing the stars or a planet teeming with life of all kinds, living like tunnel rats. Doesn't seem so impossible anymore. How sad is that?

I don’t consider myself an atheist, neither do I consider myself a theist, not in the traditional understanding of those words. What I think is that we are incapable of understanding or knowing the totality, however smart we think we are, anymore than a cell in our body can know the totality of where it exists. We are a cell in a body and that body is the universe. Treat every part of creation as if it were you because it is. 

------------

And last, here’s something I read this morning on SM while having breakfast:

OP: Attention dog owners! Serious question! After letting your dog(s) out, do you wipe them every single time when they come in? I’ve got a serious ick about it and there has to be a sane solution.

Commenter: Their BUTT? are you being serious rn? I have never ever in 50 years wiped my dogs ass and I promise on sweet fat baby Jesus I won’t be in any future.

OP: I’m talking about paws..

I laughed so fucking hard I almost fell out of my chair. (And I have to admit that wiping the dog’s butt was what popped into my mind too.)

new acquisition, new growth, same ole pettiness

As a working artist all of my working life; well, I did have a series of jobs before I started my etched glass studio and you can read about those here if you are so inclined; I like to support artists and so I have a small art collection that I have been in the habit of adding to once a year more or less. Generally I buy a piece of art for my birthday or holiday gift but it’s been a couple of years I think since I bought the last piece which is a print of a drawing of a bumble bee. But this year I bought a new small sculpture. It’s the second piece I have bought from artist Jennifer Tetlow, a stone sculptor who lives in the UK. I follow her blog on which she posts pictures of her work. Awhile back she posted a picture of two small birds which she calls hedge birds which I loved. I waited a month or so before I contacted her if they were still available and if so how much. Of course, they had already sold but she offered to make more and in January I got an email with pictures of four little hedge birds. I selected two and they arrived Friday. Here are my little hedge birds, so called because they were inspired by the little birds that inhabit the hedges that line the countryside in the UK.

I consider my art collection to be one of my objects and I could easily fill a big chunk of ‘my life in 100 objects’ if each piece counted as one object so my dilemma has been is my entire collection one object, in which case I would post a selection of pictures or is each individual piece a separate object or maybe I’ll divide it into categories, each category being one object. Anyway, I’m due for another ‘object’ post.

Saturday was warm enough and dry enough to work out in the yard so I pruned back the four roses in front of Pam’s house, worked on the wild mass of stuff on the east end of the shop, and in my yard cut back the rock rose, the clump of fall aster by the driveway, and the bigger area of wild Mexican petunia. That leaves one small patch of the wild petunia, which I may do today (or not as it’s cold and windy out), and the banana trees and my yard will be done. Audra and the great grands were across the street visiting Robin while Mikey worked in the shop so I got some baby time.

Monday and Tuesday nights are going to be well below freezing…again, and so I will have to cover the ponytail palm and a few others and bring in those pots that I have moved outside. Covering the ponytail is a two person job and a pain in the butt. I had a welcome surprise earlier though. I used to have a nice bunch of toad lilies in the ground outside my back door that would bloom every fall but the last four years or so that we have been getting these arctic blasts fewer and fewer have returned in the spring after dying down for the winter so last fall I dug up the five or so struggling roots I had left and put them in a pot and brought them inside. All but one stem died down but I watered them regularly and the other day I saw that those roots have sprouted new growth.

I’m having to fill the bird feeder twice a day, granted it’s small, probably only holds half what my old one did. Cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, titmice, house finches, sparrows, white wing doves but the most abundant right now are the goldfinches tanking up for their flight north.

------------

Three items today out of the many, from the Department of Petty Vindictiveness:

Trump and Musk illegally retrieved $80M in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funds from New York state’s bank account because they don’t like what it was being used for.

The Missouri attorney general is suing Starbucks because he thinks too many women and people of color work there accusing them of racist and discriminatory hiring practices ie not enough white males. “Such practices force Missouri consumers to “pay higher prices and wait longer for goods and services,” he argued, because making hiring decisions “on non-merit considerations will skew the hiring pool towards people who are less qualified to perform their work.”” As Jeff Tiedrich puts it “here we go again with this inane fever-swamp insistence that women and people of color can’t possibly be qualified to do the jobs for which they’re being hired. it’s fucking Starbucks, you imbeciles. they’re pouring coffee into a cup and putting a lid on it.”

Trump’s border czar Tom Homan thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be arrested for informing undocumented immigrants of their legal rights.

In other news, the Finding Out part of FAFO is in full swing. Trump voters are surprised to learn that that leopard is an equal opportunity face eater. They are also losing jobs, benefits, relatives, and federal grants. "I didn't vote for this!" Yes, yes you did vote for this. We warned you but you wouldn't listen. You just thought it would only happen to the people you don't like.

miscellania and the way

I still have not started on the rest of the painting though now I have some direction on how to start. Maybe today. I’m feeling sort of in limbo, unmotivated, spending too much time watching streaming or playing games on my phone, not even reading the book I have more than about 30 minutes at a time when I’m not working outside. It’s all mindless. I go to the grocery store, I go to SHARE, I walk the dog, I feed the cats. Wednesday was another overcast wet day with a cold front blowing in so no working outside again. Thursday and today overcast and cold. Winter is back.

We finished watching all five seasons of Eureka on Prime. It’s really very good. The average IQ sheriff in a town of high IQ individuals pushing the limits of science and invention where things inevitably go haywire is the one it falls to to fix things and save the town. Jack always comes up with the idea or solution that the scientists then figure out how to implement. Running for five seasons you get invested in the characters and their relationships and the way they wrapped it up when it was canceled during season 5 was very satisfying.

Now we’re watching the new series Paradise on Hulu. Five of the 8 episodes are out with the remaining three of season 1 being released on Tuesdays. It’s a political murder thriller based in a time after a catastrophic event the 25,000 (previously chosen) survivors of which live in an underground city. The secret service agent in charge of protecting the president finds him murdered and conducts his own investigation when the true power lies about it. We’ve seen all five released episodes so far and it’s very good. It’s planned for three seasons but it remains to be seen if it gets renewed. Most recently we’ve watched 3 episodes of season 1 of Psych on Prime which has 8 seasons about a man trained by his cop father to be extremely observant who passes himself off as a psychic to help the police solve crimes and decides to open his own detective agency with his friend. It’s kind of dumb but entertaining. Cat sprawled across my leg Wednesday night while we watched tv.

My daughter who is the floor manager of Copy.com, a print shop in Houston has one of their people working on converting my selected colored pencil drawings into notecards and prints for framing. The drawings have been scanned, the files cleaned up, the card stock selected, and now we are working on getting the colors and values as close as possible to the originals. So slow progress but progress.

New neighbor update - after meeting them on January 5th, two guys were there working on the house every day for the next two weeks but I haven’t seen anyone over there since the Sunday before the snow, 3 1/2 weeks ago. The contents of the bathroom…vanity, sink, toilet, and bathtub are in the yard outside the back door which faces my house.

------------

My email inbox is overflowing with newsletters from the various independent media I follow, days worth, all mostly unread. Wednesday morning I just deleted it all, only skimming through a few of them. Politicians, well democrats and independents, and pundits are finally understanding that we are in a constitutional crises and no one seems to know what to do about it. Court orders are being ignored and there is no attempt at enforcement so far. Turns out democracy only works if all parties want it to work and abide by the rules and apparently republicans are content to let the Constitution be shredded despite their oaths to protect and defend. The unelected destructor and his minions thumbing their noses at us, lying to us. Musk slashing/freezing funding, not to end fraud, of which there is very little as these agencies go through regular audits, but to redirect the money into his pocket, hence his new nearly $39M contract to SpaceX granted this week and has either appointed himself in charge of the agency that oversees and places safety regulations on his companies or shut them down. Republicans released a draft budget cutting $2Trillion in social programs slashing healthcare, food assistance, education funding, and tax credits benefiting low income communities even though these programs are very popular, including with republicans, in order to extend the tax cuts for corporations and high income households which will still add trillions to the national debt.

Our only recourse is to just resist, to flood congress with phone calls even when it falls on deaf ears, to protest, to demonstrate, to refuse to obey. If the president and his administration think the law doesn’t apply to them then why should it apply to us? Civil disobedience. Support those groups doing defense in the courts and on the ground. Do not give up, do not give in regardless of how hopeless it seems right now. Groundswells take time to build but eventually they become tsunamis.

As one poster wrote on SM “I’m going to continue living my best life, to laugh, serve, learn, rest, travel, create art, pursue joy. I’m going to joyfully resist. I’ll practice hope. I won’t give the bastards power over my mental health...I’m not going to shut up. I’m going to encourage you to join me, to stand up and speak out…I’m going to agitate the hell out of anyone who tries to normalize this. It’s not normal. It’s not justifiable. It’s not ok.”

This is the way.