dreary days, streaming, the season

The days this week have been wet, overcast, cold, and dreary. We did get about 2 1/4” of rain last Monday so that was good. Days like this I plug the star lights in.

I’ve always been a Beatles fan. They were an extraordinary group whose music in the decade the band existed evolved dramatically. their output was astonishing, every album unique and better and better. Though at 15 in 1965 when I had a choice between seeing the Beach Boys or the Beatles live, I chose the Beach Boys because I was put off, and didn’t get, the whole delirious screaming of the girl fans that made it impossible to hear the music. Besides, I thought, I could go the next time they toured through Houston, only they quit touring soon after that so I never saw the Beatles live. And while Marc and I watched the Peter Jackson production of The Beatles: Get Back when it came out on Disney in 2021 which to me really highlighted the end stage of the Beatles and the dissolution of the band we had never seen the Beatles Anthology released in 1995…until this past week. The newly remastered and remixed Beatles Anthology 2025, the story of their meteoric rise from their Liverpool beginning and eventual dissolution of the band as told from the point of view of the individual surviving members of the band, including clips from recordings of interviews with John Lennon before his murder, with a new final episode 9 added on. It was wonderful to see George, Paul, and Ringo getting together and interacting after 25 years of water had flowed under the bridge, their genuine affection for each other. George Harrison’s remark at one point that he was only 23 when  Sergeant Pepper’s came out in 1967 really brought home how young they were trying to just make music and deal with the worldwide fame and pressure. Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed The Beatles Anthology 2025, streaming on Disney+, remembering that part of our youth and viewing the Beatles through their own eyes and recollections, four best friends who took the world by storm.

The Beatles Anthology interrupted what we had been watching and have returned to, American Gods on Amazon Prime based on the novel by Neil Gaiman of the same name. We’re were halfway through the first of three seasons and when we went back to it, episode 5 was not available, nor was episode 7 (of 8). We watched six and eight and supposedly there are two more seasons supposed to be available of amazon Prime, but they didn’t show up. Apparently, for #s 5 and 7, the license to show them ran out and I suppose for the other two seasons. I don’t know if we’ll be able to watch seasons 2 and 3 but the series was canceled before the end so no big loss I guess. I’m going to see if the new little book store has the book.

We are fully into my least favorite time of year, the Christmas ‘season’ which actually starts before Halloween with small displays of Christmas stuff. Now after Thanksgiving which barely gets a nod from retailers these days, it is full blown. Christmas music everywhere you go, one radio station plays nothing but, everything on tv is Christmas themed, the stress and the impossible expectations, the feeling that giving gifts is an obligation of the holiday, the ridiculous ‘war on Christmas’ that surfaces every year from those that refuse to accept or acknowledge all the other holidays that happen in December. I used to actively hate it and it would put me in a foul mood all month because, people get a fucking grip, it’s one day of the year, does it really have to start before Halloween? Now, not so much. As a non-Christian and anti all religion in general I just ignore it as much as possible which is easier to do out here instead of when I lived in the city. The closer it gets though the more often I’ll be asked if I’m ready for Christmas. My standard non-reply is, as ready as I ever am. Of course my kids and grandkids are grown, have aged out of the mandatory gift giving. Instead, if I see something I think someone would like I’ll gift it to them regardless of the time of year. That said, I will occasionally buy a holiday gift for someone but the point is not because I feel obligated to give a Christmas present and it so happens I have two gifts I intend to give this year. When I have a good pecan harvest, people get a pound of shelled pecans but that just coincides with this time of year. They’d get them if it was spring or summer.

If I did celebrate this time of year it would be the pagan roots of the winter solstice that has morphed into the Christian/secular Christmas; the return of the light; the yule log, decorating with evergreens, candles, the giving of small baskets of fruits and nuts or small tokens of nature. The early Christian Church rededicated this festival to the birth of their Savior in an attempt to bury paganism and impose the new religion same as they did the spring celebration and festival of Eostre (Ostara), the goddess of spring and fertility because they knew the common people would not give up their earth and nature based celebrations and festivals. I did set up a small altar last year with a cedar branch and a candle for the solstice. Perhaps I’ll do the same this year, add a few pecans and an orange.

 

one giant step into winter

I’m a little cranky today. Woke up to cold and rain and we had yet to turn on the heater. Minnie was convinced right away that she didn’t want to go outside but Cat kept going from door to door, meowing at me constantly. Sorry Cat, can’t do anything about the weather. She finally ventured out the back door far enough for a drop of rain to hit her and came back in convinced. And when I say it’s cold, it’s 46 and only supposed to get two degrees warmer and drop down to 39˚ tonight. Guess who couldn’t cajole herself into rolling out her mat and who is definitely not going to yoga class tonight? Abby’s probably going to cancel tonight anyway.

The heater is now on, I’ve had my coffee, and Cat has finally shut up but my feet are still cold. So, not so cranky but I’m definitely not going out today until I must to go feed the cats across the street. I imagine they are huddled under the house. 

I think we’re finally getting some measurable rain, at least I hope so. All we’ve been getting the last several days is a few quick showers, less than five minutes and not enough water to get the ground wet under the trees. The water level in the old turtle pond looks higher (I can see the water level through the gray plastic sides) and it’s supposed to rain off and on all day and even this week. 

You might remember that last fall I dug up my little Japanese azalea and my camellia neither of which were growing, hadn’t bloomed in years, and were obviously struggling and put them in pots and brought them in for the winter. Well, the azalea has buds forming for spring and the camellia has six buds, two of which are opening! 

This little podunk red town has two new small businesses. Sarah, Robin, and I went and checked them out on Saturday. There is La Despensa Dry Goods and Refillery that sells bulk (bring your own container) organic and small business sourced things like olive and avocado oil, vinegars, some herbs and spices, tea mixes, various trail mixes and nuts, rice, laundry soap and softener, dish soap.

The second shop right across the street is a new small book and gift store with gently used and new books and some great little quirky gifts. I don’t have a picture of the interior but right away I saw a used book that was on my to read list that the library doesn’t have. It’s at my house now. After I finish it I’ll donate it back to the store because I want them to succeed. I want both little businesses to succeed. Coupled with the Hesed House Market that sells art and crafts and various fresh, frozen, dried, and canned food items from local producers and artists and craftspeople we’re beginning to have some great alternatives to the Evil Empire or driving into Rosenberg. It’s a tough go for small businesses in Wharton though. Wharton historically has not supported Wharton small businesses. Many have tried and many have failed but with the greater metropolis of Houston edging our way Wharton is becoming a bedroom community. Two new housing subdivisions are building and bringing in a younger population (and hopefully more liberal as well) so hopefully these two new shops will make it.

And speaking of a younger population, I drove by the house that had the Trump sign on the fence and it is definitely a new family with small children so regardless of how it happened, we have at least one less Trump supporter in town.

Thanksgiving

I intended to post this yesterday but Autumn came over and spent the afternoon and then about 10 minutes after she left to go back to Austin, Jade showed up and spent the early evening and then I had pecans to shell.

When I was growing up we didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. My mother always said she didn’t want to go through the effort and then have to repeat it all a month later for Christmas Eve dinner, not the she did any of the cooking for that. We always had a maid/cook when I was growing up. I think her only contribution to that was making the angel food cake. 

Our family was very small…parents and three children and my maternal grandmother who lived in her own little apartment attached to our house by a porte cochere and they did not get along. After a few years Ma stopped coming over to our house and I don’t think Mother ever went over to visit her either. My mother was a menopause baby born long after my grandmother considered her days of raising children were over but her father doted on her and spoiled her rotten and then when my mother was 16, he died. Her two older sisters, older by a decade plus, were both childless and lived in different cities and Mother was not close to them either. My father’s family lived in Lubbock on the other side of this very large state and my mother did not like his family and they didn’t much care for her either so we rarely saw them. My father’s one sibling, his sister, had one child so I had one first cousin who I have only seen maybe about 10 times in my whole life.

When I was 12 or 13 my father rented a little beach house in the brand new development of Sea Isle on the far west end of Galveston Island, five miles of nothing past the previous last beach house community. Now of course the island is developed all the way to San Luis Pass and the bridge that connects the west end of the island with the mainland, a bridge that didn’t exist back then. My father bought a lot on the bay side on one of the three canals and had a house built. After that every Thanksgiving weekend, really every weekend, holiday, and summer, was spent there and Mother, unwilling to do Thanksgiving in the city, was doubly unwilling at the beach house. I don’t remember a single Thanksgiving dinner with my core family growing up. If my family did Thanksgiving before the beach house I don’t remember it but definitely never after.

After Marc and I got together we would go to his mom’s for Thanksgiving, easily the first decade or so when the kids were little. When Diane got old enough that she didn’t want to mess with it we would host Thanksgiving at our house. When I started the river guide era in 1993 when the kids were teens but not fully grown I spent most Thanksgivings on the river, one of the four annual trips. But then things started to fall apart for the outfitter and I quit guiding in 2002. By then Sarah and Mike had four kids and Thanksgiving was happening at their house. And so in the years since we have all gathered at Sarah’s house when we all lived in the city. Once we moved out here and Sarah and Mike followed a few years later we still gathered at her house until a few years ago we hosted it here. This year we once again gathered at Sarah’s house. With Mikey and Audra having two little ones it was easier for Marc and I to go there than everyone come here.

And so I got my cooking done, packed up everything and we spent a very fun afternoon and evening, four generations of us. And oh by all the powers that be we had so much food! The dressing, butternut squash casserole, and cranberry sauce I made; the smoked turkey and stuffed jalapeños Mikey made; the roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli rice casserole, deviled eggs, green beans, honeyed carrots, and apple cranberry pie that Sarah made, and the dinner rolls that Autumn made but no picture of all the food. Board games and card games followed, food was divvied up and Marc and I got home about 9:30.

Paisleigh set the table.

No words needed.

Mikey keeping an eye on Harrison.

Paisleigh telling me to wait before I took the pic.

Robin, Sarah, and Autumn.

Paisleigh having a moment.

Game time.

prep day

We marveled at how big this egg was, the biggest chicken egg we had ever seen. Cracked it open…a double yolk. Do double yolk eggs produce twin chicks? Must be awful crowded in that egg.

I am reminded on mornings I feel resistant, like this morning, that the hardest part of yoga is rolling out your mat, or getting your butt to class. 

This week has been prepping for Thanksgiving. My standard contribution is the dressing, a butternut squash casserole, and cranberry sauce. Monday I roasted the butternuts, scooped out the cooked flesh from the skin and put it in a container and set out the bread to get stale. Yesterday I cut the crusts off the bread and cut it into cubes. Today I fry the bacon, make the cornbread and set it out to get stale (which I should have done yesterday but just now remembered), cut up all the vegetable stuff for the dressing, and make the cranberry sauce. Tomorrow it all gets put together and baked before taking it over to my daughter’s house for our late afternoon meal with family.

I was surprised to find I have 13 books on my list that I have not posted so while I’m doing all that here are the first five to consider.

The Last One At The Wedding by Jason Rekulak - Frank has been estranged from his daughter for three years when he gets a phone call from her. She’s getting married and wants him to attend. First of all, this guy Frank is a real jerk, never happy about anything and still trying to control his daughter. He doesn’t turn into any kind of decent until close to the end. His daughter Margaret is marrying into a wealthy and influential family and Frank is suspicious from the beginning since she and her fiancé Aiden have only known each other for 6 months. The weekend of the wedding arrives at their private camp in New Hampshire and the day before Frank leaves he receives an anonymous photo of Aiden with another girl asking what Aiden knows about the girl who went missing. When one of the guests at the camp is found drowned Frank, suspicious that something nefarious is going on, spends the few days trying to convince Maggie to call off the wedding and leave with him but Maggie is unconcerned but Frank is determined to unravel the truth and save his daughter.

Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeny - Grady Green is an author with four books under his belt and the day he learns his most recent is a New York Times best seller his wife Abby goes missing. She was on the phone with him when she saw a body laying in the road and stopped to see if she could render aid and that was the last time Grady had any contact with her. The next year proves to be disastrous for Grady. He can’t write, he can’t sleep, he can’t think about anything but his missing wife, how much he loved her, how she was his whole world, how everything has fallen apart since she disappeared. He runs out of money, he loses his house, he’s losing his sanity, and fears he is about to lose his agent, Kitty, when she calls him into her office. Kitty proposes Grady go live on a small Scottish island with a total of 25 residents for three months in a little cabin she has inherited from one of her other authors hoping that the change of scene and the solitude will enable Grady to get his act together and write another book. She even fronts him money to live on so Grady and his dog Columbo travel to Amberly Island because he really doesn’t have any other choices and because solitude is what he needs and desires to write. Let me just say that Grady is a thoroughly unlikable man and the first three fourths of the book is him whining over and over about all that he has lost (and it was getting tedious). But weird things happen on the island, all the residents that he encounters seem to already know who he is, and he is convinced that he is seeing glimpses of his wife or else he’s hallucinating from lack of sleep. When he finds an unpublished manuscript written by a previous inhabitant of the cabin he concocts a plan that he hopes will give him back his life but then things really start to unravel for him. The last fourth, though, when as they say, the plot thickens, had me staying up late at night to finish.

Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yaroslav Barsukov - Shea is a minister to the Queen sent to supervise the building of a tower ostensibly for defensive purposes against the neighboring country and it’s Crown Prince. It is being built with the aid of unstable high tech brought by the Drakiri refugees. He meets a Drakiri woman who tells him of an ancient legend about a Mimic Tower, the destruction it caused, the mounting danger the tower being built represents. When he discovers a portal to a dead world, Shea must decide what should be done to save the world he knows, what is real, what is a reflection of what was real, even the nature of reality. The author has a very flowery writing style that took some getting used to. I don’t know if I recommend this book or not. There’s one section about one of the characters that really didn’t have anything to do with the continuation of the story, I thought.

Death Of A Snob by M. C. Beaton -  a Hamish Macbeth novel. Hamish declines to go to his family’s home for Christmas because his aunt who lives in America and who he doesn’t get along with will be there. Instead he is talked into spending the holiday at a health resort on a small Scottish island by the owner Jane who thinks someone may be trying to kill her. Someone does die but it’s one of the other guests and Hamish must convince the detective from Inverness that it is indeed a murder and not an accidental death and solves the murder in the process.

By The Light Of Dead Stars by Andrew Van Wey - Thirteen year old Zelda’s parents are killed in a car crash, one that she survives. Her uncle Mark who lives in Spain sees an apparition of his sister and returns to the US. Zelda’s parents specified in their will that it was their desire for Zelda to be cared for by her uncle instead of her paternal grandparents. Now the two of them find they are both facing very different lives while learning to trust and depend on each other and decide to move to the small community of Graywood Bay in northern California for a fresh start but something evil lurks in Graywood Bay, something that thrives on pain and suffering and is trying once again to become manifest in the real world. In summer school making up a failing math grade Zelda makes immediate friends with Ali and Maura and it falls to the three friends and an old eccentric man in his creepy falling down house and creepy sculptures in his junkyard to save their community.

 

vocal hawk, wet Cat, night market, cracked pecans, missing sign

One of our local red shouldered hawks was perched high in the leafless catalpa tree in my neighbor’s yard calling over and over this morning. It was much too far away for me to take a picture so here's one from the internet. 

image via: https://www.republicaneagle.com

Well, it finally happened. Cat fell into the old turtle pond. She goes out in the morning and jumps up on the rim of the pond and then would leap over to the small platform in the middle that Big Mama would sun herself on. With no turtle I moved two of the water plants that were in separate containers into the pond and coupled with the one that was in there, they have grown to cover the entire surface of the water and even cascading over the rim in one spot and completely covering the platform. Didn’t stop Cat from jumping up onto the rim frog hunting. The pond is only half full right now, so much having evaporated from the drought and I keep telling myself I need to add water. So Thursday morning I opened the door to the little backyard and let Cat out and went to take my shower. Passing back through the room I noticed a big wet spot on the table and wet spots on the floor and on my desk. What the fuck? And then I saw Cat, her legs and belly soaked. I surmise she either slipped or miscalculated her leap to the rim and landed in the pond on top of the water plants which kept her from going completely under. Obviously she managed to get herself out.

The Moonlight Market at Hesed House was last night from 5 pm to 9 pm. I took my new work over there Friday; two more framed watercolors, the watercolor notes cards, three of which I cut the painting from and placed in free standing magnetic acrylic frames which added to the previous printed notecards, framed larger prints, and the two framed watercolors they already have. 

Besides their regular venders in the Market, they had 22 booth spaces for other local artists/craftspeople on the grounds lining the walkways, lots of extra lights, coffee vendor set up in the Art House, and a beer vendor on the grounds, barbecue and taco food trucks, live music on the deck behind the Welcome Center and indoor market. Sarah came and picked me up and we got there about 5:30 and there were already so many people there. We looked at all the stuff…jewelry ranging from silver wire to beads to clever little designs made from plastic clay to old silver flatware; scrollwork of clever little boxes with drawers and trays, snowflake ornaments, wood puzzles, and the ever present crosses; some very clever candles made to look like cookies or candy or succulents or fruit loops floating in milk with a spoon and I can’t remember what all; bread and other baked goods; organic body products; paintings and other art; succulent pots made from a mix of cement, paper, ground up wood, and I don’t remember what all he said was in the mix; pottery; hydroponic lettuces and micro greens; bedding plants; cut flowers; some leather work; I don’t remember what else but it was a very well curated assortment. We stayed until about 7:30. It was a fun evening with my daughter, someone who I don’t get to spend much one on one time with. Did I take any pictures? No, of course not.

We finally got a little rain and by little I mean that literally. One small brief shower Friday afternoon and one small brief shower yesterday morning amounting to about a quarter inch total, maybe but it was enough to clear the air and damp down the dust for now. I took Minnie to the vet last Thursday about the chewing and scratching and licking and she needed her nails trimmed anyway. So, yeah, fleas. She got a shot for the itching and a chewy for the fleas which also prevent heartworms and intestinal parasites which I gave her when we got home and thought she had eaten it but when I got up Friday morning, there it was on the floor where she had spit it out. Dog! It took me three tries putting it in her mouth before she finally chewed it up and swallowed it. I guess it wasn’t very tasty. Anyway, all that nonsense has stopped and she no longer has to wear her shirt.

Also Friday I got the first 8 pounds of pecans cracked so shelling in the evenings is what I’ll be doing for the foreseeable future until I get enough shelled to share with friends and for our own consumption for the year+ (in case next year has a paltry harvest). 

Whatever is left I’ll sell including all the ones I pick up over in the shop yard from the neighbor’s trees that overhang the fence between us.

One more thing. There are three north/south roads that go all the way through Wharton. The one on the west and the one on the east extend past Wharton in both directions, the one in the middle extends from my neighborhood on the north side to the river on the south side. This middle road, I use often and on it has been a house with a big Trump sign on the fence since before the election. Driving by Friday I noticed that the sign is no longer there. I have no idea why, if a different person now resides in that house, but perhaps it’s the same person who has become disillusioned. Personally I hope that this is one more indication that Trump is losing his support even in small agricultural communities in Texas.

 

a day or two of livin' the life

Dew laden spider web lit by the morning sun.

Sunday afternoon when I was walking Minnie down one of the two streets that bookend my little neighborhood I saw an iPhone laying on the street. So yeah, of course I picked it up. It wasn’t damaged and I carried it with me while we finished our walk. Once home I took a picture of the back of it with the intent of posting it on the various Wharton city/county chat groups on FB but before I could do that, it rang. I picked it up, slide to answer, do you have my phone? I’m thinking why else would I be talking on it but said yes. Are you at XXX Yes, XXX on XXXXX street. I’ll come get it. By the time I walked out of the house and around to the front a little white car was parked in front. A young man got out, thank goodness for ‘find my phone’ function, they had been tracking it as it was moving around, apparently noticed it was missing about the time I found it. Yes, I was walking my dog. Asked him if he could tell me what the picture was, his little girl, and I handed it over. What do I owe you he asked. Nothing. He seemed surprised that I didn’t want a reward. Anyway, I’m glad he got his phone back.

It must have gotten cold enough one of our nights in the low 40s last week to trigger the trees. I noticed yesterday that the tallows had quite a few red leaves instead of the ones that fall one at a time, the gingko leaves are fading to yellow, and the pecan tree leaves are very yellow and drifting down even though (checks notes) it’s already 80˚ at 10 am. Such is fall on the Gulf Coast plains of Texas.

I ordered my favorite rice last week, organic short grain brown rice. I don’t really care for long grain brown rice, would rather just have white jasmine if that’s the only other option so I have to order it on line. I can’t buy it at any of the stores around here. Used to be, the local grocery store in my neighborhood and some of the little organic foods stores carried it. Then that stopped. Whole Foods carried it in loose bulk but I’m not so sure they still do. Regardless I’d have to drive into Houston and I’m not doing that. Costco had it a time or two but not for several years so I order it from Lundberg Farms, 12 pounds worth which comes out to 8 quarts, about a year’s worth for us. So one quart jar full in the pantry and 7 vacuumed sealed quart jar’s worth. 

Blogger Mitchell of Moving With Mitchell posted John Lennon’s song Power to the People, recorded and released in 1971, an anthem and call to action for social and political change, that the power of governance belonged with the people, not a small ruling class of elites. It was relevant then during the years of social turmoil and the VietNam war and is even more relevant now, 50 years later, while the Republican turned fascist authoritarian Party, the MAGA movement, dismantles our democratic government, suppresses the vote, throws due process out the window, eliminates the social safety net and access to healthcare, moves even more money from the common people to the already obscenely wealthy while propping up an obviously ill disgusting bully of an old man with dementia as the figurehead. This isn’t really about all that but about the music of the 60s and 70s when we were young and protesting and fighting for social and political change. Where is that energy now? Where are the young musicians and song writers expressing rage against the destruction of our democracy, the loss of our civil rights, the disappearing of people into facilities never to be heard from again, the warmongers bombing boats and killing people with no proof whatsoever that there are drugs aboard? 

Other than that, I’ve been good about doing some yoga every morning except Thursday when I don’t have time but have class that night and Saturday, I gave myself a day off and I can already tell a difference. That and I’m working on another little painting. 

it'd be funny if it wasn't so pathetic and an anniversary

Toad lilies.

You might remember last fall about this time I dug up my last few struggling toad lily roots, put them in a pot and brought them inside for the winter and was so happy when they put out new growth this past spring. I used to have a fair sized group of them until we started have temps in the 20s or teens every winter even if only for a few days. They would freeze down to the ground and come back but fewer and fewer until last fall. Well, they grew all summer and are now blooming. I’ll bring them in again for the winter and hopefully they’ll go in a bigger pot next spring.

One of the funniest things I read earlier this week after the Epstein emails were released was Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesperson, claiming that the Donald Trump mention therein was not the president but a different Donald Trump. It’s a very common name she said. Even Holy Mike has repeated that nonsense.* Never mind all those photos of Trump and Epstein buddying it up or the women who named him as their rapist when they were 14. Apparently that was just some other guy who looks exactly like the guy who tarted up the Oval Office. 

*Turns out that wasn’t true but from a satire site.

Now of course, Trump thinks that by directing the DoJ to investigate all the democrats in regard to Epstein that that will take the pressure off him, or else he thinks democrats will all of a sudden not want the Epstein files released. Wrongo dude. Democrats raped little girls? We want them punished too. And speaking of the Oval Office, one of the first things Trump did when he returned to office was remove the Resolute Desk because he said it needed to be refurbished. Has it been returned? No, it’s currently on display at Mar A Lago. 

As if that’s not enough, now the Trump administration is going to require every SNAP recipient to reapply, you know to root out all that fraud (which should make all the self appointed food police out there happy because poor people are spending a few dollars of SNAP money on chips and sodas) even though SNAP recipients already have to reapply every 6 months. In other news, according to JD et al undocumented residents, you know the ones who do the lowest paying jobs that Americans won’t do, are responsible for the housing shortage because they are buying up all the homes. I don’t think I need to go into why this is one of the more ridiculous charges MAGAts have made against these people.

Moving on…

Thursday, November 13th was two years since my sister died. Sometimes it feels like it’s been much longer than that and sometimes it’s like 2 years already? Bottom line is that while I miss her and I think about her a lot, I’m not grieving anymore. I can think about her without feeling sadness.

So my little dog has been chewing on her back end to the point of making the skin raw. She’ll get one or two fleas which I comb off her every day with a nit comb but I don’t think that’s it. She’s had worse fleas without this gnawing on herself. I was giving her a brewer’s yeast/apple cider vinegar chewy that is touted to make her less pleasing to fleas every day for two months so I thought maybe that was it and stopped that about 5 days ago, gave her a bath, but so far it hasn’t stopped the chewing. Yesterday I put her little fleece jacket thing on her to prevent her from being able to get to her skin but it’s far too hot for that right now so today I used it as a pattern and made one out of that lightweight sheet I used to patch my sheets a while back. Unless she’s sitting in my lap or next to me on the couch or outside I’m making her wear it hoping to get her skin to heal up and break the habit.

I’m finally starting to see some butterflies migrating through. Today while I was out picking up pecans I saw a sulfur, two queens, a fritillary, and a monarch on the orange cosmos. The queens are a bit smaller than monarchs but these two were very small, smaller than normal. I wonder what that means.

Earlier while I was cleaning up after breakfast Sarah came over with Paisleigh and Harrison while their dad worked on a car across the street and then they were going to run errands. Harrison isn’t walking yet but almost. He’s able to free stand for a few moments before he loses his balance. Did I take any pictures? No, I did not.