flowers, rain, tomatoes

One last daylily and I think I’ve now shown you all the different varieties in my yard (although this last one is behind Pam’s old house so not in my yard…yet. I plan to move it).

And one last pink angel trumpet flower on the cutting I rooted but now the rangoon creeper is starting to bloom.

As usual, this post is written over several days.

Tuesday - It’s been raining for the last four days and it is raining today and will rain tomorrow. From last Saturday to Tuesday evening we got 4 1/4”. This on top of the weeks of rain we’ve already had. It was just sprinkling this morning when we got up so Minnie went out to do her business and came right back in. Cat has been pacing the room meowing at me. This is her way of telling me she wants out so I opened the back door, told her it was raining, she looked out, looked at me, backed up, and meowed. I know, but I can’t do anything about it I told her. Now I hear her in the litter box.

Last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we had intermittent showers. Monday heavy showers all day letting up now and then. The west side of the house, across the front, and the low spot in back all had standing water and the ditch was flowing about half full. 

I think this is the first day after all the weeks of rain that the ditches had water, that’s how dry it was but now the ground is truly saturated. The standing water around the house eventually soaked in and the ditch was empty this morning but sometime during the night another large dead branch fell from the water oak onto our internet cable line and dragged it to the ground. Fortunately it didn’t pull it loose so we’re still connected. Marc managed to lift it high enough by draping it over small shepherd's hook next to the water oak so we can get the car in and out.

Wednesday - You’re not going to believe this but it was raining when I got up this morning! Who’da thought? More like sprinkling but enough that neither the cat nor dog wanted to go outside. Now a few hours later, barely sprinkling but looking across the corn field it looks to be raining in earnest. 

Friday - A mysterious thing happened Wednesday afternoon, it cleared up and the sun started shining. Yay! Thursday afternoon, the sun is shining and it is brutally hot, boo. Already pining for the overcast that helped keep the temperatures down. I just can’t be pleased I guess. One thing this incessant rain has brought is the fire ants up to the surface, into the pots, into the house, and into my pants! Pulled on my capri leggings Wednesday morning that I’ve been wearing this week which were hanging on the elephant head hook in the corner above the chair that not clean but not dirty clothes get thrown on and felt a sting and then another sting and by the third sting I was shucking those leggings as fast as I could and there were ants in them. I literally had ants in my pants. They came up from an infinitesimal crack in the corner under the baseboard, up and across to the hook and into my pants. Why the fuck would they do that? I ended up with 7 bites. Also have had ants in the kitchen the past two days from a crack I had previously sealed.

A recent harvest of green beans and tomatoes. 

The green beans are still blooming. I’m getting a handful just about every day. I have 16 green tomatoes still on 3 plants and 18 either on the windowsill or in the fridge and we’re eating one or two every day. I’ll be making stewed tomatoes soon because we can’t eat them fast enough. I’ve lost 5 or 6 to splitting from all the rain

and one to some critter that took a couple of big bites out of one almost ripe hanging low. Leaf footed stink bug nymphs have finally showed up on a couple of the green tomatoes. I’ve been amazed they haven’t shown up before but they are strongly attracted to corn and since the farmer planted corn at this end of the field I guess they’ve been over there. Stink bugs inject a fluid into tomatoes and suck up the juices. It doesn't make them inedible but it does create white hard spots in the tomato that are sour. A few of the plants are still blooming but now it’s hot enough they aren’t setting any more fruit so when these last 16 ripen that will be the end and now I have to keep a close eye on them. The nymphs and stink bugs are hard to kill because if you try and smush them or spray them with insecticidal soap they just drop to the ground so I try and slide a small shallow pan with rubbing alcohol in it under the tomato they are hanging out on without disturbing them and then poke at them so they fall into the alcohol. Then I follow that up with insecticidal soap on any stragglers. 

This is long enough so I’ll stop here.

cooking and listening to Bruce to save my sanity

Friday I made the second batch of tomato sauce, then made Ms Moon’s life sustaining cookies, and then made dinner…green beans I grew, corn I put up, and stuffed mushrooms the stuffing of which is finely chopped mushroom stems, finely chopped pecans, bread crumbs, grated parmesan, parsley, minced garlic, and enough melted butter to hold it all together and stuffed and mounded up in the mushroom caps and baked for 25 minutes at 400˚. It was a fine dinner. Cookie for dessert. The tomato sauce got bagged up and frozen on Saturday, 5 cups, 5 packages. I also made some savory roasted pecans. Sunday mornings Marc usually makes our brunch but this morning I made pancakes. I’m just on a roll in the kitchen.

I stopped into the new little indy bookstore here on Thursday to sign the petition against the building of the data center in Boling (tiny town less than 400 residents) 12 miles down FM 1301. Residents were against it but the powers that be allowed it anyway, land is bought. I know the petition and the anti-data center signs won’t stop it but it is essential that we voice our objections anyway. The peace and quiet and dark skies of tiny Boling are going to be destroyed. Their wells may run dry. Why does the US need so many data centers? We don’t but the rich can get richer so who the fuck cares. We don’t need AI, we need water and peace and dark skies at night. AI is the engine of our demise. As if we weren’t getting stupider enough with all the defunding of education and demonization of critical thinking. Why do your own research, write your own papers when AI will do it for you. How does that benefit humanity, what do you learn when you just prompt AI to do the work for you? The proprietor of the book store told me she just learned Barnes and Noble will stock AI written books provided they don’t plagiarize existing work. Seriously? Where do they think AI is going to get the ideas and info to ‘write’ a book if not from every book that’s been written by actual humans. I remember an old Star Trek episode where the people invented AI to run things which resulted in them devolving from capable intelligent people to being little more than adult children incapable of creative thought or actions. And now it’s happening. The other possible future is the more grim version from Terminator or I Robot. When all the jobs are gone because they are being done by AI, when all the decisions are made by an algorithm devoid of empathy and critical thinking, what then? 

So many in this country are already astoundingly stupid. The bookseller (she was on a tear) was also telling me about a young woman she knows who believes the earth is flat, the planets aren’t real, and that space doesn’t exist, that somehow all the images of such are created underwater. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that she doesn’t think space is real. What does she think the stars are? And this woman homeschools her kids. Humanity is fucking doomed. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Give the planet time to regenerate, ecosystems recover, let the other life forms flourish.

And that’s just one of the horrible things happening in this country. Now we have cage fights on the White House lawn so reminiscent of the gladiator days in Rome’s declining years. Keep the people entertained so they forget they’re starving. Not satisfied with defacing the South Lawn, the UFC fighters held a press conference at the Lincoln Memorial and (quoting Heather Cox Richardson) “The fighters walked from Lincoln’s statue down the steps of the memorial through the Armed Forces Full Honor Cordon, a pathway formed between two groups made up of sixteen service members in dress uniforms. This is the U.S. military’s highest ceremonial formation, usually reserved for heads of state, foreign dignitaries, senior officials, and funerals for military heroes.” and then “This morning the weigh-in for the UFC fights at the White House also took place at the Lincoln Memorial. Heavyweight fighter Josh Hokit seemed to pretend to throw up, dribbling colored liquid from his mouth. “So what? Maybe I was drinking last night,” Hokit told the media there.“

Where is the fucking dignity? Is there not one single place or ceremony 47 hasn’t or won’t defile?

So this morning I’m distracting myself with Bruce Springsteen. One of the newsletters I get every day is 1440 at the bottom of which is a list of links to lots of interesting things. Today’s list included a link to some guy’s opinion of Bruce Springsteen’s 100 best songs. Give a listen to the ones with links.

Here’s another little piece of trivia. Did you know there’s a proper order of adjectives? Native English speakers say the adjectives in a specific order but I think people do it without giving it any thought, relying on what sounds ‘right’. I certainly don’t remember being taught that in all the years of English class. Anyway, here’s the pattern called DOSA-SCOMP; determiner, opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, and purpose. Example: My favorite big old square white French cotton gardening hat.

Well, that’s enough.

it's summertime and the livin' is...

hot, humid, and sweaty. It’s brutally hot out there, heat index over 100 so beyond going out and checking for green beans and tomatoes or pulling up the obvious crabgrass in the daylily bed or taking some pictures, I’m staying indoors. So instead i got sweaty vacuuming the entire house Wednesday because apparently I’m in no hurry to work on the shadow box project because I haven’t done anything since I transferred the drawings to watercolor paper. I keep thinking I need to walk around to the other street and take close up pictures of the leaves on the cottonwood tree there but Minnie has not turned that way lately when we go for our walks. She gets to decide if we turn left or right at the end of the driveway since these walks are primarily for her. 

I did finish the book I was reading. Yoga class Wednesday night, SHARE and yoga class yesterday. SHARE was another busy day coupled with it being a food delivery day from the regional food bank along with the stuff that arrives from Walmart, HEB, and the Dollar Store. More tomatoes so I got enough at the end of the day to make another batch of tomato sauce. It did finally slow down a bit after the first couple of hours. I even got to sit down for a while. We had three Es though (7 and up) which has never happened in all the years I’ve volunteered there, rarely two but usually just one and most weeks not even one.

The rest of this post is just going to be miscellaneous pictures because I have nothing else of interest to report.

Here’s how the tomato sauce went: after roasting, after blending, after containing, about 4 1/2 cups in all.

Minnie laying next to me in bed the other night.

The red crinum lilies are blooming. These were in the yard of the city house when I bought it 50 years ago. When we sold the house I dug up every one and brought them out here.

More green beans. They bloomed and produced and my neighbor pulled up all his when he had picked all they produced. I meant to pull mine up but never got around to it and they started blooming and producing again. I'm getting a good handful about every other day.

Another day lily.

The bees were swarming this magnolia bloom. It looked like they were pulling the stamens off one at a time.

I have more but this is long enough.

the rain in Spain

may stay mainly on the plain but the rain on the Gulf Coast Plains doesn’t know when enough is enough. Small showers off and on all day Friday and yesterday as well. This on top of the weeks of rain we’ve already had (and more predicted for today and tomorrow). You know, I hate to moan about the rain because the alternative, apparently, is drought, but the ground is pretty saturated and puddles are everywhere. I have to admit all the green stuff loves it, everything is looking lush even though it’s a little steamy out there. I was going to add that at least there’s no thunder and lightning, the little dog can tolerate quiet rain. She doesn’t like it but she doesn’t go into full panic mode.

I finally called for an appointment to get my hair cut. I loved my long hair when I was young but it had more body then and didn’t look so limp and lank so after letting my hair grow again, not from intent so much as laziness, and putting it up in a bun or ponytail every day as soon as it was long enough to do so and since it had gotten slightly longer than shoulder length I went and got a haircut yesterday. She cut off at least 6 inches, maybe more, so now it's off my neck and out of my face. I hate having hair in my face.

The first Thursday of the month at SHARE has usually been slow, people have gotten their benefits but now that those benefits have been slashed and in some cases denied, we were just as busy as the previous end of the month Thursday. When I got there Walmart had sent a big box of just past prime tomatoes, globe and roma, still firm or slightly soft, maybe not best for eating for perfectly fine for cooking. I’d been waiting for this to make my tomato sauce so I bagged up 6 pounds and set them aside (don't worry, there were still more than enough for our clients). 

Saturday I had prepped the tomatoes, peeled and cut up the garlic, getting ready to slather it all with olive oil and put it in the oven to slow roast when my daughter texted me. Did I want to go with her to get a pedicure and then to the Peach Creek Market. Let’s see, stay home and make tomato sauce or spend the afternoon with my daughter. Yes, I said so she picked me up and we went and got our toes and fingernails done, just cut and cuticles, no polish on the nails but my toes are sparkly silver. (The baby toe is from when I was six and dropped a heavy glass coke bottle on my toes requiring stitches and apparently broke a bone which resulted in a loss of growth from about halfway up.)

The attendant did a great job especially on my two big toe ingrown toenails, no pain, no blood, and cut back far deeper than I manage. Whenever I work on them I end up bleeding and very sore. 

The plumerias are starting to bloom, at top and below.

Well, I’d best get in the kitchen and get those tomatoes in the oven.

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Two more book reviews.

How Bad Things Can Get by Darcy Coates - As a child of 7, Ruth was the only survivor of the suicide cult Petition where the members literally tore themselves to pieces, a fact she has kept secret for the past 20 years. Years of therapy has helped her put it all behind her even though she still has nightmares. Now her boyfriend Zach and his best friend Carson and Hayleigh have won tickets to a week of games with large monetary prizes put on and paid for by the influencer Eton on his privately owned and remote tropical island Prosperity, an island with its own history of a cult. The first game begins shortly after everyone arrives via cruise ship and the participants are selected at random except Ruth has a niggling feeling that she was selected specifically but shrugs it off. Things start unraveling pretty soon with injuries and reports of missing and dead guests and it’s not a coincidence that this is the 20th anniversary of Petition’s demise or that Ruth’s group won tickets. Then Ruth learns that her identity is not a secret, she’s been betrayed, and her presence has been orchestrated so that Petition can finish what Ruth escaped as a child. Good story, well told, kept me engaged.

One Of Us by Dan Chaon - I really enjoyed this book. Twins Evelyn and Bolt, born in 1910 and so close they could read each other's minds, became orphans at 13 and soon after a man they had never met who claimed to be their uncle (he wasn’t but had known their father) came into town and took them under his wing however he was a murderous scoundrel at best. The twins managed to escape and went to live in an orphanage where the orphans were put on a train and headed out west to be adopted by whatever family deemed them suitable for whatever reason. Because they were unlovely children they were not adopted until the last stop when Mr. Jengling rescued them to be part of his traveling carnival full of all sorts of misfits. Bolt settles right in but Evelyn is perpetually suspicious and resists all attempts to be drawn in. When their ‘uncle’ tracks them down and kidnaps them, Jengling sends three of his crew, guided by the mental directions of Rosalie who lives mostly in the astral plane. I don’t want to say too much more, but it’s a good story.

abundant blooms, progress on the art project

Monday…Working on the fence Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday until I got sweaty or ran out of shade (max two hours per day), I’ve cleared 7 sections of the fence. Still have two more but I don’t feel like getting hot and sweaty for 5 days in a row, besides they are still predicting thunderstorms for today and tomorrow and then again Thursday and Friday. I also mowed the little backyard yesterday and that was enough outside work in the hot mosquitoey humidity. 

I finished the drawing for my shadowbox project during the afternoons. It’s a piece I did originally in glass, Robin with Cottonwood Leaves, 6.5" x 6.5".

Leaving the robin as is I played with the leaves some thinking to make them less stylized with branch and leaves seen from different angles instead of straight on but just wasn’t feeling it. Finally, I thought, you know I already did this design and did it best so why am I trying to change it. Granted, it was simplified for the medium but still. The leaves will have more detail in this version. Am I cheating by using a design I already did in another medium? Maybe, don’t care.

Next I transferred the leaf drawings and the robin drawing to watercolor paper ready to start painting.

Tuesday… strolled around the big backyard earlier, quicker than I usually would because…mosquitoes. Surveyed the flower beds and tomato plants on the west and south side, the flowerbeds on the east and north sides and turned to head back into the house which takes me past and under the magnolia tree and saw this.

I don't know if you can tell but there's as many or more developing buds as open and gone by flowers in this picture. In the 18 years we’ve had this place we have never had more than a few blooms on this side of the tree especially low enough for me to reach. The reason being it is, was, shaded by a big pecan tree on the east side. It’s also shaded by a maple on the southwest side so it doesn’t get as much sun as it needs to bloom as much as it would if it was in full sun. It does a valiant job but mostly higher up where it gets more sun. So why this sudden mass of blooms? You might remember summer of 2024 Hurricane Beryl came through and a tornado skipped through my backyard causing major damage to two of my pecan trees and the one that sustained the most damage, losing 5 major limbs, was the one shading the magnolia tree (image: what was left after the tree guys cut off all the damage). Pre-hurricane the right side of the picture looked like the left side. You can see the magnolia tree lower left. 

Two years later it has sprouted a lot of new growth. Again, magnolia tree lower left with blooms.

The magnolia tree gets so much more sun now on that side.

Seen around the yard…One mom squirrel successfully raised her two babes. The twins are still young, half grown but independent. It’s so much fun watching these little guys, they still hang out together. Right now they are stretched on on one of the limbs of the tallow tree in the little backyard.

hunger in America, what the rain brought

Thursday at SHARE was so busy, basically non-stop food orders, end of the month coupled with cuts in food assistance because this administration says no money for food but plenty of money for vanity projects (fucking cage fight on the south lawn of the White House, a ridiculous triumphal arch, his butthole mouth face on a new $250 bill, and war). A handful of A and B (one or two people), mostly C and D (3 - 6 person household), and one E (7 and up) the very last of the day. I heard one of the guys ask for a count and Giruard said 40 and I know there were a few more after that. So four hours of constant filling the baskets that had been emptied by the guys filling the food orders and the larger orders, those baskets are heavy. They bring me the empty baskets (one for As and Bs, two for Cs, Ds, and Es) which I refill with canned goods (soup, vegetables, beans, tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, fruit, meat, fish), instant mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, pasta, ramen, snack bars, instant oatmeal, crackers, juice. Then I carry the filled baskets over to another table where one of the guys puts them back on the shelf ready for the next food order. That’s not all they get. The guys have their own items they put in the cart; dried pinto beans, rice, bread, desserts, snacks, cereal, various drinks (including soda), milk, eggs, dried fruit, produce (whatever got donated that day from HEB and Walmart), various miscellaneous items that get donated. We don’t have everything all the time but that’s what they generally get. I’ll try to remember to take some pictures next week.

Anyhow, I did not sit down one time for four hours and when they finally locked the door I was tired! Basically useless until about 4:30 when I went over to feed the kitties and then looked at the fence between the shop property and the neighbor. And dammit! Turn my back on that fence for 5 minutes and the wild grape, briar, and virginia creeper is taking over so I got out the long handled nippers and got to work. Yesterday, after I picked up all the fallen dead branches in this yard from the storm earlier this week, I went back with the small nippers and get the rest of it and got four sections of the fence cleared before I ran out of shade. I’ll work on it some more today taking advantage of the dry days because it’s feast or famine these days, drought or deluge. Last Monday night a thunderstorm which started with distant rumbling until it was right on top of us with one very bright and simultaneous strike and then again Tuesday night a thunderstorm that sat right on top of us for four hours with constant flashing and rumbling accompanied with high winds. More thunderstorms predicted for next Monday and Tuesday. And we all know what the rain brings…unrestrained green growth and mosquitoes.

Steve Reed of Shadows and Light asked what mosquito dunks are so for those of you who live in bug free paradises, they are little donut shaped biological mosquito control discs that float on water and kill the larva; safe for fish, birds, animals, and people.

I break them up depending on the size of the container of water. The minnows will eat the larva and I never see any in the rainwater tub but I tossed a little in there anyway, better safe than sorry. The old turtle pond is so filled in with water plants now that I’m not sure the minnows can even get to the larva so it got treated as well.

Here’s some interesting trivia about mosquitoes…Those that make it to adulthood outside live an average of 2 to 3 weeks, one trapped indoors can live up to a month but depending on the species they can live up to 30, 40, 60 days outside. If you are waiting for winter for them to die off you may be disappointed. Some species can go into hibernation and survive 6 to 8 months. Only female mosquitoes suck blood and then only to lay eggs after which she can lay up to 300 eggs at a time which take 8 to 10 days to hatch. Every day nourishment for adults requires sugar which they get from nectar, fruit juice, and plant sap. While unaffected themselves, mosquitoes can transmit diseases from one human to another which include malaria, dengue, west nile, chikungunya, yellow fever, zika, and heartworms in dogs. Fortunately most of those diseases aren’t evident here. In case you were wondering how mosquitoes mate here’s a picture courtesy of earth.com.

I’ve started on the drawing for my little art project but not finished yet. This is the design part of the process, what I want the finished piece to look like. Once that’s done the next step is to divide it up into layers…foreground, middle ground, background. It will have at least four layers I think but that’s all I’m ready to share right now.