small things

I finished Robin’s blanket Sunday (the letters look black but they are really deep purple and dark blue).

I bought a handful of old chandelier crystals last December for a little project I had in mind and yesterday I started on making little mobiles for hanging in a window or wherever. I’ve finished two, my goal is five but I need more crystals, easily attained at one of the junk/antique shops here. A little craft work instead of painting or sewing.

I saw the first 10 petal anemone on Sunday while I was pruning back the rock rose in the east flower bed.

I finished cutting back the dead rangoon creeper; in my yard I cut back the lantana, fall aster, yellow bells, rock rose, mist flower, and started on the wild mexican petunias and have piles of debris scattered all over the yard for later gathering.

I’ve been very good about my morning tai chi and yoga routines.  

I bought the first three tomato plants Monday but I have yet to turn the garden soil and get out the weeds.

Today is grocery day, tomorrow we do Costco, and Friday I get bloodwork done in advance of my PC appointment next week.

We’ve watched a couple of movies; Sinners, a weird little vampire movie in the Jim Crow days of the south during the opening night of a black juke joint and One Battle After Another about an ex-anti-establishment revolutionary pursued 15 years later by a corrupt military officer. It's better than it sounds, is up for an Oscar I think, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the ex-revolutionary and Sean Penn as the military officer.  

Little signs of spring besides the anemone and the warmer days…spring grasses and weeds are exploding, the mock orange/dogwood has a few green leaves sprouting, the maple tree is blooming, the dwarf redbud tree in a pot is putting out a few blooms (dwarf because it’s in a pot), the first azalea.

I’ve gone back and forth about writing about this but here goes. Not to sound like a whiny baby but are people getting my posts? It’s just that lately some of the people who have regularly commented in the past are missing, and of course no one is obligated to comment, but I see that they leave comments on other blogs that we both follow. So I’m just wondering, are my posts not being seen or am I just boring?

the day didn't go quite as planned

I’ve taken all the plants inside back outside with the exception of the plumerias and the cereus in the garage. I’ll wait a little longer for those but it is definitely spring. The birds are certainly convinced, the mockingbirds and cardinals singing their little hearts out and there’s a little wren poking around in the pot plants just outside the open door. It’s time for me to get out there and turn the dirt and get ready to plant for a spring garden. Not today though. I want to finish Robin’s blanket and it’s supposed to rain later and supposedly definitely tomorrow which is good if it does because we really need rain.

Well, my day didn’t go as planned but that’s ok. I had told Paisleigh yesterday I would spend time with her today and I’m thinking between 3:30 and 5 but Mikey brought her over about 11 this morning so instead of sewing Paisleigh and I played with a toy putting colored squares in the indicated spot in a grid to complete a picture, drew with the sidewalk chalk on the driveway...her apple tree, cats, and hopscotch (I added the numbers in the order that the 'squares' appeared)...

played hide and seek, blew some of the whistles in my whistle collection, she ate blueberries while I swept my bedroom and studio room/office, walked the dog while she rode her bike down to the other end of the street and back, and then I took her back over to her dad about 2 1/2 hours later. I did get a bit of sewing done on Robin’s blanket (still have to add the blanket binding and the ribbon trim).

The first tai chi class was Tuesday evening at Hesed House, outside under the pergola behind the welcome center. It was a pretty large group, 15 - 20 people showed up. The first thing she did was have us stand perfectly still, relaxed with good posture for five minutes with our eyes closed, just being, not thinking, a simple exercise on maintaining balance, basically the mountain pose in yoga. She recommends us doing this every day for five or ten minutes. During the hour she led us through maybe seven or eight movements, I didn’t really count same as I didn’t count the number of people. It’s a slow mindful practice, elegant even. I’ll definitely continue going to the class and make an attempt to incorporate it in my mornings, tai chi on my yoga class days, yoga on the other days. Wednesday morning I spent my five minutes standing still with my eyes closed and was surprised when the alarm went off, thought it would feel much longer with my mind wondering if it’s been five minutes yet. Instead I focused on what I was doing, felt a little like learning to drive, a continuous series of small, in this case tiny, corrections, slight swaying trying to find that sweet spot of being perfectly balanced. Then I did ten repetitions of the few basic movements I could remember, sort of like when I first started doing yoga consistently. I would go to class and then the next day at home trying to remember what we did and how we did it. Today I did both, five movement of tai chi, though I’m not sure I have one of them exactly right, and most of my daily yoga routine.

Thursday being SHARE day I did neither tai chi nor yoga. It’s all I can manage to shower, have a cup of coffee, have breakfast with my second cup of coffee (black, that you very much), and get there by nine. I actually got there a little early so I could make sure my station was stocked and the ladies up front had already let the folks in that were waiting outside. So it was a busy day with mostly large food orders. It was supposed to be a food delivery day from the regional food bank but the town finally started repaving the alley (one big pot hole after another) that the truck comes down to deliver and the people picking up their food orders, half nicely newly paved, the other have completely torn up so it was closed. Jan put off delivery until next week. And apparently, we are no longer getting our Elder volunteers from the Mormon church here. Elder being an oxymoron since the boys are 18/19. They haven’t shown up for two weeks now.

My night to fix dinner and I have no idea what so I’d best get in there and figure it out.

a little arting, a little sewing, a little yard work

Friday night’s sunset.

Was it just a week ago I was moaning about how cold it was? It was 76˚ when I was working in the sun Sunday cutting back the rangoon creeper. This was my second go at the creeper, did a little Saturday evening, one more and I ought to have it all cut back and hauled to the burn pile. That leaves five more not counting the banana trees and that’s just over in the shop yard and around Pam’s house, though two of the five are relatively minor. And then there’s my yard.

I finally got out my watercolor pencils/crayons late Sunday to do a Valentine’s Day themed note card and bookmark for the drawing for door prizes for an event Hesed House is having on Friday. I got the bookmark done Sunday and the card yesterday

otherwise I’m working on Robin’s blanket which at this point she won’t need til next winter. Supposed to hit 80˚ today.

The other thing I did Sunday was edit the blogroll on my sidebar. I didn’t so much as edit it as remove it and add it back with changes since blogger would not let me make some of the changes through the edit function. It would let me add but it wouldn’t let me delete. And now it stubbornly refuses to display the links in order of most recently updated and blog post title. No matter how many times I tell it and save my preference it insists on listing blogs alphabetically. I also took out the link to my website which is a mess. I was in the process of updating and making major changes when my old computer was replaced and the new one didn’t support the program I used to upload changes. The fix would be to update the program but I can’t remember when I bought it or if I have proof of such or where that proof would be and would have to buy it again which I do not want to do. Since I no longer do any of the work for which the website was created I’m thinking about deleting it altogether.

Turns out I didn’t get much more done yesterday than the card. Today is groceries and this evening is the first Tai Chi class so I’m going to have to figure dinner out early since it’s also one of my nights to cook.

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The Donny Horror Picture Show continues unabated. Since attacking Bad Bunny and the NFL, our Olympic athletes, immigrants in a country settled and populated by immigrants, citizens, and Democrats in general isn’t enough, he’s now attacking Canada (again) and demanding Canada turn over half ownership of a bridge connecting Michigan and Ontario built and paid for by Canada, a project approved by Obama, or he will refuse to let the American side open until the US is fully compensated! Fully compensated for something the US had no part in. And something something if Canadian trade deal with China something something China will terminate all ice hockey, permanently eliminate the Stanley Cup!

When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus. - Turkish proverb.

And here we are. Unfortunately, it’s not an entertaining circus, more like the sinister traveling show in Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.

cutting back winter and terrified screams

I got out there Wednesday and started cutting down the dead orange cosmos, got about half done (on the right in the picture, did the rest yesterday afternoon). You can see the trunks of the bridal bouquet plumeria in the middle. I cut off the soft finger thick branches but the trunks seem solid enough so maybe I didn’t lose this one. Time will tell, we’ll see if it comes out.

I’m taking it slow because the burn pile is as big as I want it to get right now and needs to be torched. My grandson usually takes care of it for me and I’m sure he will. Plus, I don’t want to start throwing stuff in the truck because I’m planning on taking the rest of the pecans I’ve gathered in to sell today. My neighbor next to the shop told me last week if I wanted to pick up pecans in his yard I could. Wish he had told me earlier because I’m over that labor. I’m not even picking up the rest in my yard, most of which that are finally falling are empty inside but I did scour the shop yard yesterday one last time where the two trees overhang the fence. I don’t want to wait much longer to sell what I’ve gathered since the last load I took in for fear that they will close for the season and then I’m stuck with five boxes of pecans.

The other thing I did yesterday was uncover the ponytail palm which looks good and take all the small plants in pots on the end of my desk back outside and discovered I had had a little houseguest.

While I was outside Wednesday someone on the next street over was screaming bloody murder, terrified, like you’d expect if they were getting attacked by a pack of dogs. I could hear a man’s voice as well not yelling, more like trying to calm the person screaming. It was so loud I thought it was coming from the shop yard and I ran to the street to see, but no, the next street over, wondering if I should call the sheriff. The screaming stopped, started up again briefly, stopped again. Surely a neighbor would call the sheriff and in fact someone did. I saw an ambulance go by and walked over to the back of the shop yard where I could get a glimpse through all the overgrowth along the fence line. I could make out at least four cars from the sheriff’s department but not the ambulance. So DRAMA! I’ll probably never find out what was happening. And then my friend at the other end of my street called me last night to see if I saw what she saw Wednesday night about 10 pm. I didn’t, already in bed because I have to get up early Thursday mornings for SHARE, but she said there was a cop car driving down slowly down our street and the next one over with one of those bright search spot lights shining it into everyone’s yards and houses. We surmise they were looking for someone. Again, have no idea what that was about and probably never will. 

Nights and mornings are still chilly but the sun is shining and days are warm. Rainbows decorate my walls and ceiling. This one from Wednesday looked like a comet streaking across the wall. 

Still nothing worth taking a picture of outside.

 

mending and making

I did get out of the house on Sunday. It was sunny, no wind, and the dog wanted a walk. First though I cut back the frozen shrimp plant and the confederate rose, had already cut back all the ginger, even though the stems were still green and you aren’t supposed to cut dead stuff back until all danger of frost is gone but I couldn’t stand looking at it. Besides, both those plants are hardy and the shrimp plant would be monstrous, or more so, if I didn’t cut it back. Hauled it all over to the burn pile. Plenty of other dead stuff, the orange cosmos and the white philippine violet, to cut back. And the banana trees which is a real chore.

I still haven’t put my sewing machine away and over the weekend finished putting new elastic in my polartec pants, patched two pot holders (because I’m cheap and really they still had their padding, just the outside fabric was worn away or burnt) and then I worked on this:

I bought these two panels of Hmong reverse appliqué so long ago that I can’t remember where I bought them or when, didn’t know what I wanted to do with them, just knew I wanted them. Since I don’t carry a purse and some of my pants don’t have adequate pockets or pockets at all I finally decided to make this little bag with them some time ago and sat down and did it Sunday. I lined it with some of the blue Egyptian cotton sheet I’ve been patching my other sheets with 

and finished it off yesterday with the grosgrain ribbon. I’m pretty pleased with it.  Now I’m ready to start on Robin’s blanket so I won’t be putting the sewing machine away any time soon, just push it over to the edge of the table to make room for the blank watercolor bookmarks which I woke up thinking about yesterday morning.

All this sewing has had me looking through my tub of fabric scraps left over from all the sewing projects I’ve done with the grand girls, teaching them to sew and whatnot. My FB feed has had a lot of textile art in it lately. There was a time when I thought that would be my artistic medium. I’ve been sewing since I was nine and took a textile design class my last year in art school but then four years of life happened and I stumbled on etched glass and that was it. Now that I’m retired from the glass arts, I’m thinking about that tub of scraps and what I might do with it all. I’m also interested in bookbinding, making little art books. I’ll have to see if the new bookstore can order a beginning bookbinding book.

Believe it or not, I was complaining about the cold Sunday and today I have the door open. That’s how crazy our weather is, how quickly it can change.

A note on the chandelier: I did an image search which turned up one that’s almost the same but with only 4 lights instead of the 6 mine has from an antique dealer priced at 3,800 euros (about $5,000). Not Dresden after all but Meissen, circa 1900. The reason I thought it was Dresden is because my mother had an envelope with a couple of the leaves in it that had broken off and she had printed Dresden chandelier on the envelope. I had searched for Dresden chandeliers before but never found one similar. Now I know why.

still cold, still lethargic, and object #10

Saturday - My Earthlink mail app is screwy. Comments show up in the inbox long after they show up on the blog and not even in the right order, most of my replies to the comments on my last post haven’t shown up at all. Today is still cold, mid 40s and down to mid 20s tonight but tomorrow and the next day and the next day and so on will be better. My feet are cold. Even though I’m getting good nights’ sleep I feel sleepy all day. Another day I don’t want to go out even though the sun is shining, the sky is blue but breezy. There is nothing to be done out there, not yet. I just refilled the bird feeder after a cardinal came to the empty platform and am watching a little wren scatter seed left and right looking for I don’t know what. And now a goldfinch in its winter colors.

I finally finished the library book that is long overdue. I don’t remember what recommendation from who that I put it on my to read list and when I saw it at the library I checked it out. It took so long to read because it would get tiresome, not really advancing the story, poetic, wordy, reminiscences. The first and last quarter moved the story, the middle half about did me in. I skimmed over a lot. 

With nothing of interest to write about, here is another object, #10…

the Dresden porcelain chandelier that hung in my parents’ bedroom while I was growing up. I have always loved this chandelier from the time I first laid eyes on it and made clear to my siblings that it was going to be mine. My parents lived in three other houses after they sold my family home after us three kids had moved out. Houston was growing, the area was being commercialized. I didn’t acquire it until after my father had died and my mother moved to the PNW to live with my brother. I hung it over the dining room table in my old Houston house with 10’ ceilings. When we finally sold that property in 2014 and moved to the Wharton house permanently I wanted to give it a thorough cleaning before hanging it here so I hung it under a ladder and cleaned every petal and leaf with a cotton swab. I won’t tell you how long that took, how many years it hung there even after I cleaned it because this house has 8’ ceilings and I didn’t know where to put it. Besides I had already bought and had installed a light fixture made by an artist over the dining room table here. Eventually, I had Rocky hang it in the corner of my in home studio room to help light a dark corner. It’s lost a few leaves and flowers over the years from being moved so many times (6) but still a beauty.

Sunday - Warming trend starts today! Yay!

did I mention it's cold?

Tuesday night’s sunset. It was prettier in person, a little pinker and not so gray (also the only picture I've taken in days).

It’s very foggy this morning. Looking out my window to the east across the empty half acre between me and the street all I see is white. I cannot see the street, I cannot see Jimmy’s house on the other side of the street or the empty field that surrounds it. I can barely make out the ghostly image of the black walnut tree on the corner of Jimmy’s property. This reminds me of a night when I was a teenager being brought home from where I don’t remember. All I remember is that it was so foggy the driver couldn’t see where to turn to get onto my street and I had to get out and walk in front of the car until we came to the turn. It’s supposed to be mostly sunny when the fog lifts.

I don’t remember what day of the week I wrote the above. Two hours later the sky was clear blue and the day wonderfully temperate after the harsh polar vortex. I did not venture outside once last Saturday or Sunday, went out briefly with the dog two times on Monday. Tomorrow, Saturday, another dip down to 25˚ but then after that more normal winter temperatures for a while, maybe the rest of the winter which would be nice. I realize moaning about temps in the 20s when the rest of the country is suffering from this arctic front with snow and ice (both permutations of the word) makes me seem like a weenie especially when the folks in that northern city are out in it in force to express their displeasure with, to record and obstruct, the violence and brutality of federal masked men armed to the teeth with military gear kidnapping people off the streets, targeting children at their schools, breaking down doors and dragging people out of their homes without verifying their citizenship or legal status all under the guise of getting criminals and rapists while protecting a certain criminal and rapist even though it draws that brutality and violence to themselves.

I’m trying to avoid certain words and names again as I think my last post was suppressed in some way judging by the number of page views or rather the lack thereof.

Well, I may be a weenie when it comes to being cold (especially low humidity cold; my lips are chapped and the inside of my nostrils are raw and sore), I admit it, but the blood is thin down here and I challenge anyone who calls me thus to come live through one of our humid summers. Which (again) reminds me, back in the early ‘80s we rented an empty building that had been a grocery store at one time and had an apartment upstairs that was just a few blocks from home. This was before the economy crashed in Houston later in the ‘80s and we had to give it up and move back to our small garage studio. At the time there were two stained glass wholesalers in town and one of them sponsored workshops and I forget the circumstances but we agreed to host one of them in this building. The instructor was from up north somewhere and he was teaching a beginning stained glass class. Anyway, it must have been in the summer because the guy was complaining about bleeding when he nicked himself. I never bleed at home, he said. 

Back to winter here, today is cold and the sky is overcast though fairly bright. Neither the cat nor the dog nor me for that matter has any interest in going outside. My sewing machine is still out and I have a pair of polartec pants from my river guide days that I’m part way through replacing the stretched out elastic. Maybe I’ll finish that or maybe I’ll get out the blank bookmarks with tassels! and play with those.

Oh, here’s something new. Starting February 10th every other week Hesed House will have a Tai Chi class! According to Stephanie, the woman who volunteered to teach it had to be convinced that there were enough people in Wharton interested. She's still skeptical. 

I’ll leave you with this quote I came across a few days ago:

What each of us must realize is that our intent always comes through. - Thurgood Marshall