that was a little premature

shrimp plant in full bloom

Of course the forecast that said no freezing nights for the foreseeable future has changed now that I uncovered the ponytail palm and the night blooming cereus and moved all but the plumerias back outside Monday. Checked the forecast the next day and my hope (dream) of having a winter that didn’t plunge down to 20˚ or colder shattered. Every day since temps are colder and colder, now Saturday night 25˚, Sunday night 18˚, Monday night 25˚. High chance of rain Friday and Saturday, ice on Sunday. Well poop. The cereus must be brought into the garage, covering it won’t do. So yesterday, Wednesday, all the plants were brought back in the house in more permanent positions 

or in the garage and the ponytail is covered once again. Robin is doing child care for Harrison so it was up to me and 4 year old Paisleigh and we got it done. Mikey moved the cereus and the stag horn in for me so I’m ready. The fruit trees will like it I guess since they need a certain amount of cold hours to produce fruit.

My little project is a sewing project. I’ve had this machine for decades, maybe four as I think I bought it in my 30s. I’ve had a sewing machine of my own since my teens though I don’t remember what kind my previous one was or why I bought a new one. The brain has jettisoned that information to make room for more recent stuff. the one I have now is a Riccar, a good solid machine that I’ve only had to have a major repair done on it once but have taken it in several times for cleaning and tension adjustments. Anyway, it was working fine when I when I made Paisleigh’s name blanket and worked fine on Sunday until it didn’t. The stitching on the top was fine, the stitching on the bottom was full of loops. Something became out of whack. So I cleaned and oiled it, something I hadn’t done in a while and hoped it would self correct the next day. It didn’t. It was even worse. There is no one in Wharton and while there used to be a guy in El Campo that did sewing machine repair he closed up shop years ago. So I did a search for sewing machine repair in Rosenberg, found a guy and took my machine in Monday. He called yesterday morning, machine is fixed so I’ll go get it today after SHARE.

Cat helping me iron seams

As long as I was in Rosenberg I made it over to Shopping Mecca and to the Penney’s because I need a new pair of jeans since I only have one that doesn’t have the knees torn out. Yes, I know, people pay big bucks for brand new jeans with the knees already torn out. I prefer to get mine the old fashioned way. I thought I had two pairs but when I went looking for them in the drawer I couldn’t find the second pair. And so miracle of miracles, they had a 6S. S for short. It’s not that I’m short I just don’t wear spike heels with my jeans. I don’t wear heels, spike or otherwise, at all. Of course I found my second pair in the drawer when I got home with the new ones.

----------

I keep thinking of the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times”. I have to say living in a time when the stable world order is being purposely trashed by a narcissistic megalomaniac and it has only taken a year for our allies and trading partners to start making new alliances and trade agreements excluding the United States was not on my bingo card. At the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland Secretary of Commerce Lutnick is lecturing European countries for investing in solar and wind in an effort to be zero net in 2030 saying they are choosing to be subservient to China because…batteries. Secretary of the Treasury Bessent in a press conference telling other nations re Greenland to basically "sit back, take a deep breath, let things play out" ie, let us do whatever the hell we want, because "the worst thing countries can do is escalate against the United States" ie we will fuck you up. The other world leaders at Davos are not having it. Trump, 3 hours late, gave one of his usual demeaning insulting speeches/tirades towards everyone who opposes him including his list of grievances and slights, full of lies and his ignorance. Apparently he got schooled behind closed doors by the other member nations of NATO who intend to protect Greenland militarily against any US attempt to take it by force because Trump has backed off, for now, saying they have a framework of a plan that gives him what he wants, meaning NATO nations are going to string him along with further talks until he either dies, Congress gets a spine, or he’s removed from office, because they have no intention of handing Greenland over to Trump. For now additional threatened tariffs are off the table.

----------

One more warm day and then the temperature starts to plummet. Starting Saturday you’ll find me hunkered down on the couch under a blanket.

unexpected bounty, freeze prep

I took this picture Friday when I went across the street to feed the kitties that live outside at Pam’s old house waiting patiently while I got the bag of food out of the shed; Handsome Boy (brown tabby), Lovey (gray), Twin (black and white), and you can barely see Ghost (black) waiting by the dishes where I put their food. They are very sweet boys, well, except for Ghost who still refuses to let Robin or me touch him. 

My resolve, not to be confused with a new year’s resolution, to again begin doing my yoga practice at home every day has fallen by the wayside…again. I blame the holidays. I’m just sleeping (or lazing in bed) too late to work it in. I know, I know, between meds and coffee but it just ain’t happening. Even with ‘it doesn’t have to be a lot but it has to be some’. Maybe next week.

Did I mention I emptied the truck of the accumulated tree debris on Monday and Mikey helped me load up all the metal debris, galvanized sheet metal and pipe, that was leaning against the side of the shop from all the various remodels of said building over the years before we bought it. 

This was the crap that the wild grape, Virginia creeper, briar, and other various unwanted wild growth covered that it took me I forget how long, days, weeks to clear out last January and February. Then I added the stuff I hauled out of the barn a couple of weeks ago and took it to the big metal recyclers at the end of the road my street ends at on Friday. This is not the small outfit I’ve taken scrap metal to in the past on the other side of town. They take larger scrap metal but only pay for aluminum and steel cans. This time I went to the big outfit and I mean huge, acres of scrap. When you pull into the yard you drive up onto the scale and then they direct you around this big loop of scrap metal of every description big and small where the guy unloaded the truck and then I drove back onto the scale and they gave me $38. Surprised me because I didn’t expect to get paid.

So far this winter we have not had any freezing nights, maybe a light frost judging by some leaf damage when those nights got close to freezing. Regardless I covered the Queen Of The Night both times and brought the pink trumpet flower and one of the bridal bouquet plumerias into the garage. Tonight is our first below freezing forecast, 27˚, so I’ve spent the last two and a half hours covering the QOTN and pruning back and covering the porter weed and bringing all the plumerias and other assorted tropical and semi tropical plants into the house or garage. 

Just some of the plants in the house.

All this for one freaking night below freezing. After that, one night in the low 30s; 40s and 50s for the foreseeable future. I’ll leave the plumerias in until spring since they’ve already gone dormant. The big plumeria in the ground and the big bridal bouquet whose pot is sunk in the ground are just going to have to sink or swim. If I lose them, sobeit. Still have to cover the ponytail or at least try. Debating still. The bulb won’t die but the branches might and it will have to start over, which it has done many times since I put it in the ground over in the shop yard ten years ago. Fuck, I may just let it sink or swim. It takes two people and it’s even bigger than it was last year and I’m not sure I have adequate sheets and tarps this year. (Did decide to cover it with Robin’s help, forwent the sheets and just used the tarps.) 

Here’s another resolve…I’m donating some of the big plumerias to the garden club plant sale in the spring. In fact, a lot of the smaller stuff is going to the plant sale too. Like I don’t need three pots of the nun’s orchid. I brought in, maybe unnecessarily, the japanese azalea which has buds on it and the camellia because both plants were struggling to survive in the ground when I dug them up last fall and they are doing pretty well now. Don’t want to set them back.

Here’s how covering the QOTN went. 

How it started,

how it ended (four sheets, two tarps).

Haven’t been out yet to see how the plumeria in the ground fared but this is what greeted me when I got up this morning. Two of the buds on the japanese azalea opened.

why did it have to be cold and nasty the day I have to go out

It was warm enough last week for the fringe flower trees (2 of the 4) to think it’s spring.

It’s cold out this morning which means my blood is thick and slow moving. It will warm up later but right now my brain doesn’t want to think. I don't function well when it's cold though some people find it invigorating. Just makes me want to huddle under blankets. I slept as late this morning as I’m able to sleep, rising back to consciousness a few minutes before 8:30. Not because I naturally don’t sleep later than that, or would, on occasion but because my morning pill alarm goes off at 8:30. Usually though I’m up well before that and after I feed the cat and dog, taking my morning meds is the next thing I do so the morning pill alarm is unnecessary and only functions to wake me up if I’m sleeping late. And also usually, when Marc gets up before I do and uses the coffee bean grinder, that wakes me up. Not today though. Slept right through that loud screeching noise. 

The above was yesterday morning. It turned out to be a pretty miserable day; cold, overcast and drizzly. Of course, because it was my day to grocery shop which yesterday required three different stores…Walmart, Hesed House market, and HEB. Walmart for their dishwasher detergent and while I was there I went ahead and got the cat and dog food I needed, Hesed House market for their lettuce and local honey, and HEB for general groceries. I used to buy the bag of organic mixed baby lettuce at the grocery store but it starts to deteriorate after about 3 or 4 days. One of the Mennonite families here started growing three different lettuces hydroponically and sell it through the HH market. They offer individual heads or three smaller ones in a clamshell. The difference in quality is dramatic.

Today is sunny though and rainbow prisms are being cast all over the ceiling and walls and the dog in my lap. 

Despite the sun and rainbows there was a different calamity. The coffee maker died so we’ve had to heat up water and pour it through the grounds but without the heating plate under the pot by the time it drips through for a single cup, the result is barely warm and requires reheating in the microwave.

I’m taking a break from the art journal/watercolor notecards/paintings since I’ve been focused on that stuff for several months except for the week I made Paisleigh’s blanket. I haven’t done a colored pencil drawing since the woodland violet in August and I have one I want to do for a friend for his birthday which is the day after mine. Ah, but, I do have another watercolor project for which I’ll probably use the crayons and pencils. I ordered blank watercolor bookmarks. With tassels! Plus I have another little project I’m about to start.

I’ve found a new expression of disbelief courtesy of Jeff Tiedrich…What in the hallowed name of Magical-Thinking Jesus! Now I’m just waiting for a chance to use it.

A strong wind started blowing out of the north west around lunch time, sustained 14 mph with gusts up to 40 mph. Not looking forward to the drive to El Campo for yoga class in a few minutes. I’d beg off but Mauri is bringing me two dozen yard eggs which we need. I imagine I’ll have more pecans to pick up this weekend.

 

art journaling, new shop, a visit

The government of the United States has become a wrecking ball. Not only here but worldwide. Not content to bring this country to its knees, it is intent on destroying the law based world order that has been in place since WWII preferring instead one based on conquest. 

We were given a list of 150 words in yesterday’s art journal workshop, a hundred and fifty words of love, compassion, hope, positivity. The first exercise was to pick one word, not as a new year’s resolution but rather as guidance for the coming year. Too many words, how do you pick just one. At first I chose mindful but I already have a page in mind devoted to the word mindfulness so I perused the list again and I saw it. Create. This was my word. But first we cut a page out of an old dictionary and glued it to the page in our journal and then chose a color of acrylic paint and painted over it. When the paint was dry we took a marker and wrote our word on the page and then wrote down what that meant to us. So I wrote 

create

because there is so 

much destruction in

the world today

bring more art, love,

joy, compassion

into being

And then she told us to select miscellaneous papers, stickers, tapes, what have you and cover up the words. That made me laugh a little so she explained why. In therapy, art or otherwise, writing things down is a way to expunge them from your psyche, to get them out and reduce their power, and they may be things you don’t want other people to be able to read, your pain, your fear, private thoughts so you write it all down and then cover it up or destroy it. So while my words were not so private, that was the exercise. I used tissue paper, stickers, decorative tape, stamps. I stamped the word again across the top.

For the second page we first did a watercolor wash for a background. Then we were to select a scripture or something from a favorite hymn (folks here are religious) and write that on the page with marker. I’m not religious so I chose the simple ‘be here now’ one of my guiding life instructions. Next we selected three colors of acrylic paint and painted on a small rectangle of 1/8” hard acrylic plastic, flipped it over and transferred the paint to paper. When that paint dried, we were to embellish it however we wanted.

Third page was a collage, something I’ve never really been that interested in. So we used foil on which we colored with water soluble markers, wet the page, and transferred the color from foil to page. Again, after the page dried, add whatever we wanted from the materials she had brought….stickers, colored paper, markers, tissue paper, strings and other fuzzy things, etc. I kept mine simple.

So that was my day Saturday. After, I went by the new little bookstore and picked up the used copy of American Gods by Neil Gaiman she ordered for me and then I went to check out another new little enterprise in the next block. Tru Bath and Body Boutique - home, body, & spiritual wellness. Organic luxury bath and body essentials like lotions, soaps, perfumes, balms, bath and shower bombs, that kind of stuff. But the really interesting stuff was the spiritual and mental wellness section; herbs, resins, camphors, candles, incense, smudges, charcoal burners, all kinds of stuff and guidance for their use. I imagine the majority of religious Wharton would be horrified at this juju if they knew. That’s three new interesting little shops (including the dispensary) in the block off the Square. I hope they survive. Five years ago they wouldn’t have but there’s been a lot of new home building in the last couple of years bringing people from Houston and Katy and Sugar Land and maybe even Richmond who commute so maybe Wharton is getting a little more enlightened. 

On the way home I stopped and got another bucket of pecans cracked, the last I intend to shell, and inquired how long they would be open as I have four almost full boxes of pecans I’ve picked up since I sold what I previously had and they are still falling. The last two days were windy so I expect more are on the ground. I guess I’ll take them in towards the end of this month.

And then this happened Saturday evening.

more playing in the journal and spoken English through time

Tuesday was a full day; coffee, breakfast, my biannual appointment to get my teeth cleaned (you make my job easy, she says, keep doing whatever you’re doing), grocery shop, lunch, walk the dog which included visiting with my friend at the other end of the street, feed the cats, fix dinner, clean up after dinner. My dinners usually revolve around what’s been in the fridge or freezer the longest. So Tuesday night was sautéed cabbage with onions and garlic, coarsely mashed dill new potatoes, and fried catfish. I did make time between feeding the cats and fixing dinner to work on the new page in the art journal I started on Monday, maybe even a bit in the morning, I really don’t remember. 

I worked on the jellyfish just a little on Monday but mostly on the new page. Wednesday though I finished the jellyfish unless I decide to paint a background. I’m leaving it as is for now, afraid I’ll mess it up if I do. Worked on the new page off and on all week and finished it today. 

We’re getting small showers off and on today which we sorely need, bringing in a new front that’s supposed to drop us in the 40s for lows, highs in the 60s for the next two weeks. Unless that changes which it surely will. Not even a half inch of rain today.

Can’t, won’t write about the cold blooded murder and the attack on the high school in Minneapolis yesterday or the shooting of two people by ICE in Portland. Of course Noem et al are lying about what happened, see nothing wrong with their agents appointing themselves judge, jury, and executioner, protecting the murderer. Appalling how many people think she deserved it for moving her car like they told her to. There’s a searing report on the lack of training, vetting, waiting for drug test results, literacy (apparently some of these goons can barely read or write); the only requirement needed is a tendency to brutality and a willingness to murder. We’re not quite at the point of lining people up in front of a trench and shooting them in the head but they have the personnel willing to do it.

Well, I guess I did write about it a little. 

Ok, so here’s a fun little thing I got off 1440 (I think). It’s about 10 minutes long and includes a reconstruction of spoken English from about 450 AD to modern English, spoken English changing about every three sentences. That part runs about 3 minutes. He plays it first without subtitles and again after talking about his research, with subtitles. I began to understand it starting around 1450.

From Old English to Modern American English in One Monologue

little bird, old metal, new page

Saturday night when I was closing the garage door I startled a little wren. This is not an unusual occurrence. They like my garage with all the stuff and often build nests in there. After I raised the door again and ushered the little bird out, though they come and go through the gap at the top of the overhead garage door, I investigated where I had seen it fly away from in my peripheral vision. Sure enough, this unseasonable weather has the birds thinking it’s spring and I found the beginnings of a nest tucked into one of the struts of the door we never open.

Our lazy days are coming to an end. We’ve been sleeping/lazing in bed til eight or after every morning (I’d sleep later but my pill alarm goes off at 8:30) and I have not been doing my morning yoga routine I blame the holidays, the cold, my cold, any excuse sufficed and come Monday I’m going to have to get it back together. I could put it off another day, yoga class Monday evening that counts, right?. But the real kicker is coming next Thursday when we have to gasp get up at seven because SHARE starts up again. I’m already groaning.

Saturday called for physical activity to keep my mind off the stupidity that passes for a government here and so I raked the mountain of leaves out of the barn. First I designated several things to go to the metal recycler soon! and pulled that shit out,

-my old bicycle that will never get refurbished, the dead garden cart, an old metal milk jug at least I think that’s what it is that I pulled out of the shed when we first bought this place what I thought I was going to do with it I have no idea, two of four flimsy metal frames that were part of the structure of an outdoor gazebo that I bought and Marc and Mikey I think put up in the backyard while I was gone and didn’t anchor it down and walked off and left it and when a big wind came up it blew and bent the shit out of most the metal keeping the other two because they just look like they could be useful for something even though I’ve kept all four for over a decade and still haven’t used them-

then I raked the leaves and dispersed them out the south end since the breeze was coming from the north, though some did get removed through the north end and generously shared with the lot on the west side of us front and back. They’ll get mulched the next time whoever comes and mows. And who knows, the wind may have further dispersed them by then. I moved the antique wood wheelchair out and put it in the crumbling shed that is slowly being devoured by the wild space.

The door fell off a year or so ago. There’s stuff in there but nothing we care about and it’s seriously icky inside. Let the future archeologists find it and wonder at it all. Personally I’d throw the wheelchair on the burn pile but it’s one of Marc’s things so… It’s probably not totally useless but I wouldn’t want to have to depend on it. Hard wood and all, not to mention it’s falling apart but it is kind of cool with that little third wheel in the back.

Picked up more pecans since Marc mowed and mulched all the leaves and I can find them now, one last push to pick them up to sell before the buyers close up shop for the season, Sunday I picked them up across the street and still so many at the top of the trees. I’m wondering if those aren’t good, too light to fall. 

I did start a new page in the art journal, a loose watercolor of a jellyfish from an image I’ve had on my computer for 13 years, 

waiting for whenever I was saving it for, the medium with which I could or would try it. The picture was taken by a woman named Nancy Goodenough and she posted it on social media and I saved it. I love this picture. So I’m gonna try it. 

Still only using the Prang 12 colors. Sunday I sketched it out lightly and did my first layer.

 

that was an exercise in magical thinking

Well, fuck, so much for hope that this year will somehow be better. Trump ordered an unprovoked attack on Venezuela in the wee hours this morning bombing Caracas, Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira targeting military installations, capturing and kidnapping President Maduro and his wife who have been “extracted” from their country and indicted in New York for narco-terrorism, conspiracy, and possession of machine guns among other charges. Possession of machine guns? In his own country? Make no mistake, this is not and never has been about drugs. It has always been about Venezuela’s oil reserves and Trump’s desire to start a war of his own despite his boasting of how many wars he has ended and his desire for a Nobel Peace Prize. This man, who ran on being the ‘peace’ president, has bombed seven countries and he hasn’t even been in office for a full year yet, needing to show his buddies Putin and Netanyahu that he is a strongman too. It’s not as if we need Venezuela’s oil, we’re not running out, power grids around the nation are not failing for lack of oil. This is simply greed and his bottomless need to be the biggest baddest bully, it’s about control and bringing other countries to heel, like China who gets a lot of oil from Venezuela. The Cult is already championing Trump’s removal of a repressive dictator, that the Venezuelan people are dancing in the street, as if Trump is liberating the country. The claim falls flat considering Trump supports and admires every other repressive dictator in the world for their complete control and power. Wait until the Venezuelans figure out that they will have no say in who will govern their country, that their lives will not improve, that Trump will appoint someone who will rape their country of its resources and funnel the money back to the US. Venezuela did not get their country back or their freedom, they have become a colony of the US.

And so much for the hope that the military will not carry out illegal orders and make no mistake, this was an illegal act. There is no proof that drugs are being smuggled in from Venezuela, in fact drug deaths are declining in this country, Venezuela has not attacked us, our nation is not under pressure from lack of oil, and Congress did not meet and hold a vote to endorse this military aggression against another country, doubtless they were even informed in advance. Will the Republican Congress finally act now to rein in Trump’s egregious illegal power grabs? Absolutely not. 

Unfortunately, this is not the first time this country has engaged in regime change in Latin America and other parts of the world and the results have always been dismal. It never leads to improvement for the people, not when we set up a puppet government or when we actively govern because freedom is never the motivation. It’s always greed for a country’s resources.

----------

And because all that isn’t bad enough my kitchen sink is almost completely stopped up. This is a chronic and recurrent problem. Whoever built this house did a crappy job of plumbing from the kitchen sink to the septic system. When we first bought this place and it stopped up almost immediately, the plumber replaced the 45˚ turn under the house with the curved sweep it should have been which has helped but there is some other issue somewhere between the sink and the septic tank. We have to have it completely reamed out every few years, using a powerful unclogging agent in between times but eventually that stops working and we have to call the plumber again. The only real solution is to have the piping completely replaced. Anyway, the plumber is supposed to come today.

I finished the grid page in my art journal. Now trying to decide what to do next, another page or may start a new painting.

But before that I’m going to pick up pecans one more time here and across the street to sell and there are still so many up in the trees. It’s so warm out there, currently 70˚ and in the 80s the next few days, another week of spring/summer when we should be having highs in the 50s and 60s.