nature of things

There’s a cypress tree in the space between my property line on the east and the fence around the backyard of Montreal’s old house. If you know anything about cypress trees their roots send up ‘knees’ and if the area around that tree is mown, whatever growth gets shaved off by the mower and they end up looking like this. This is a big one. Most are considerably smaller in diameter. This one is 14” at its widest.

August is always hot but the last couple of weeks have been brutal, and still no rain. but here we are at the end of the month, days are getting noticeably shorter and the next ten or so the highs have dropped about 5 degrees, so mid-90s. Not much but I’ll take it. And rain is predicted for the next several days. One can only hope. It’s about all I can do to keep the plants in pots and stuff in the ground watered, keep the water freshened in the three birdbaths. I have plants that need to be repotted in bigger pots but I just can’t seem to make myself mix up the dirt and do it knowing that I’ll come in wet with sweat dripping off me, then sit under the fan on high for the next 30 minutes while I cool off.

The clump of pampas grass at the other end of the street is putting out new plumes (I took a picture but the sun was just blasting it and I'm not walking down there again before I post this). That surprised me, it’s one of the signs that the season is heading toward change. It seems early. Snow-on-the-prairie is also a portent of cooler temps but I haven’t seen any of that yet. The tallows are dropping leaves though but I think that has more to do with the drought than changing seasons. Speaking of tallows, there are two small ones on the west property line one of which lost a big limb last year. That limb had been dead for a couple of years before it finally fell. I was walking by that tree yesterday when I noticed a hole had opened up at the base and obviously dead bark above it so I reached down and pulled the bark away and more and more and wood pulp, some of it so dry it basically turned to dust in my hand and pulp that was wet and spongy. That whole tree is rotting from the inside. 

First picture above shows all the material I pulled out down on the ground, next picture a close up. Looks like a torso with the hips narrowing at the waist and widening with two arms reaching up. Both those limbs are rotten all the way up all while they are furiously putting out new foliage from the solid outer bark. The last picture is a chunk of the soft spongy stuff that came out of the center.

I filled the bird feeder yesterday morning. The white wing doves had it more than half empty in about an hour. This morning they are already coming to check it out but it will stay empty today even though the little birds keep looking in my window like aren’t you forgetting something? I’ve been seeing a little hummingbird mornings and evenings and more butterflies; fritillaries, swallowtails, long wings, a few sulfurs; migrating through, also signs of season change. The orange cosmos has some open blooms but haven’t started their big display yet. They are a favorite of the migrating butterflies though this one is on the Mexican bird of paradise.

I’ve been working on the new shadow box, started painting the cattails. Because the elements are long and narrow I decided to glue two pieces of watercolor paper together to stiffen them up, give them more body. Experimented with one of the leftover first attempt at leaves on the previous box to see how much more difficult it would be to cut through two layers (and glue) of paper. More effort but doable especially since the cuts are all going to be mostly smooth straight lines (as opposed to serrated edges on leaves). 

The neighbors next door that were renting Montreal’s old house moved out. Last weekend I saw a flatbed trailer backed up to the open front door and a few days later I noticed all the curtains were gone and no lights or activity, no car coming and going. Today they came back to finish cleaning up, picked up some trash around the yard and then emptied the house of trash and piled it all up on the side of the street and drove off. 

No idea if they are going to come back for the trampoline frame and jumping surface which never got attached (I think not at this point). But that pile of trash? The rural trash pick up that we residents in the county have to subscribe to (and I have no idea if they did since I never saw them put a trash can out, they were burning it for a while and I saw them put a bag in someone else’s can once) will not pick that shit up, not like that. Neither will the county. So it remains to be seen if the owner of the house will take care of it when they come inspect the house and property. Which surely they will do.

the rich, 80, and misc pics

Beauty berries beginning to turn their glorious deep purple.

In case you ever thought rich people didn’t live in a completely different universe while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet, a rich guy in Houston who lives on River Oaks Blvd., the place for the obscenely wealthy, just bought this 15,000 sq ft mansion next door for 15.5 million dollars and plans to tear it down because…he never liked that house (though I hesitate to call it just a house). 

He plans to combine his property, an acre, with the newly acquired acre and put in an English garden and build a pool house. An English garden in Texas, on the Gulf Coast Plains. We do not have the climate for an English garden though I suppose if he went with native perennials he could get something comparable. Whatever, the guy can buy a $15.5 million mansion just to tear it down he definitely has enough money to hire a slew of gardeners to maintain it. The only saving grace is that he plans to donate $4 million in usable materials to Habitat For Humanity, that and one less mansion and more flowers and trees.

Baby steps on the new shadow box which I still haven’t received. I ordered it last week and thought it was supposed to come on Monday, but apparently not until the weekend. Meantime I transferred the individual drawings to watercolor paper.

White wing doves continue to mob the bird feeder on the days I fill it. Anywhere from 5 - 8 crowded on it with just as many on the ground and twice as many in the trees above it and when they’re not mobbing the bird feeder they’re mobbing the birdbath. 

I have to go out there every now and then and shoo them away so that the little birds have a chance. I’ve had two unusual visitors to the bird feeder today, a blue jay earlier and just now a flicker.

This is my favorite little water sprinkler. It gets moved all around the yard and when I remove it from whichever hose and am through watering for the day I try to put it back in the empty pot in the barn that I keep small misc yard stuff in so that I know where it is the next time I want to use it. I don't always remember to do that and so I spent Saturday looking all over for it. I looked in all the places in the yard it could possible be and could not find it. So Sunday I got online and ordered a new one after searching for it again even though I figured it would turn up eventually. I walked out Monday morning, turned the corner around the garage and there it was in plain sight on this overturned bucket right next to a pot with a plant in it I water nearly every day. I must have walked right past it a dozen times. Well, now I have two.

I was laying in bed last night thinking about Dolly Parton dying at 80 yesterday, the 25th (I already did one eulogy this week and so many have already written about what a shining soul Dolly was). She was only 4 years older than I am. It was a very sobering realization. And now this morning we learn that Tim Curry also died yesterday, also 80. Do I only have four more years left? Or seven, Joanne was 83. Eighty seems to be a threshold I am rapidly approaching. I looked in the mirror the other day, something I don’t really do that often besides just a glance, and I thought I looked older than I did just a few days previous. It seems that’s how it goes, maintaining a look and then overnight new wrinkles appear, bags under the eyes not there one day are there the next. While my hair still has more color than gray, the gray continues to creep in. Even so, I’m aiming for late 90s and have two women on my father’s side that bode well for that.

And last a little green tree frog hanging out on the moon. The moon being that part of the carved glass set of windows in my bedroom.

Joanne

I learned Saturday that Joanne Noragon from Cup On The Bus finally succumbed to something she could not recover from through sheer determination and stubbornness. The previous Wednesday, her daughter Beth had posted an update on Joanne’s blog that her mom had finally met her match. It took her quickly. The last year or so, Joanne has only posted twice, recovering from a broken bone and then another spending months in rehab.  If you were a visitor to her blog you know what an amazing woman she was; strong, tough, determined, politically active, constantly engaged with life; and how much physical trauma she suffered, from chronic pain to a series of broken bones to a severe head injury, and recovered from over her lifetime. She was not one to let things like that control her destiny and true to that she made the choice, at 83, not to fight a battle that could not be won.

I don’t remember how I found Joanne’s blog but I’ve been visiting her at least since December 2011. At the time she was working for the township in which she lived in Ohio. Earlier in her life she was a self employed artist/artisan with her sister Jan weaving cloth and making garments from it. The two of them traveled all over doing shows until it was time to find other ways of living. There came a point when Joanne felt it necessary to gain custody of three of her grandchildren and that was the focus of her life, getting them through school and prepared for life as an adult. In the spring of 2018 when the last grandchild was still under her care she and Laura did a road trip, eventually making their way down here to the Texas Gulf Coast Plains and me. You can read about that visit here if you are interested.  Meeting Joanne was like getting together with an old friend whom you haven’t seen in years.

Joanne was weaving again in 2015 making garments for a small gallery (forgive me if I don’t have the chronology quite right, I’ve been scouring her archives jumping around so I may not have it exactly right) but the gallery closed (I think) and at some point she gave away her entire weaving studio. Three years later in 2018 she desired to weave again and got back one of her looms and began weaving dish towels just for the enjoyment of it and gifted myself and others with her efforts. When people realized she was giving them away demand grew and she stocked up on an array of colors and opened her online shop. I purchased several more for my self (I have 7) and for my grandgirls and you had to be fast because they sold out quickly. 

One day, after she posted a picture of a garment she had made back when that never sold and I commented how much I liked it, I received a package in the mail and inside was the blouse.

Joanne was a force of nature who overcame more adversity than most of us experience, someone I admired and considered a role model. She will be remembered and missed.

Fly high Joanne. Return to the stardust from whence you came.

drawing, hot, docs, shoes

I did spend time this past weekend on drawings and I have a composition for one of the shadow box ideas. This one will be bigger, 5” x 7”, horizontal presentation. 

I like the composition but it’s going to be harder to construct because the elements are much narrower so I’m not really sure exactly how I’m going to put it all together. I may set it aside and work on the other two sketches before I commit. I didn’t do much else over the weekend except draw and read and play The Vault, a puzzle game, on my phone. I've made my way through 49 so far. You have to find hidden objects that activate the puzzles which you have to solve to be able to open the vault.

Monday morning when I went out about 8 am it felt a little cool. Whoa. Checked the weather app, 74˚. So I got the shovel and turned the ground where the four tomato plants were, added some compost and turned that in trying to get a jump on preparing for the winter garden. Then at 12:30 it was 88˚ felt like 109˚ and continued to get hotter. Still no rain, the ground is cracking, the grass in the sun is turning brown, high temps 99˚, feels like stepping out into a blast furnace with the wind from the south. The next chance of rain is Saturday. Tuesday morning I dug up four small coral porterweed volunteers put them in pots (two days later they seem to be fine). 

The dirt was so dry it just fell away from the roots so I don’t know if they will make it even though I saturated the little pots with water but little things don’t like to be bare rooted. There are two more fairly big volunteers but the ground was so hard I watered them first. I’ll see about digging them up later. Yesterday I watered the porterweed and it burst into bloom this morning. The individual little flowers are only about 3/8" across.

Next Monday I go in for fasting bloodwork and the next Monday after that I go in for a six month check up with my PC doc. My dexa scan last February showed the osteoporosis getting worse. It’s been three years since the last one and only one number out of six changed more than a tenth of a point up or down but she wants to talk about going on the medication which I do not want to do for several reasons. I have been inundated on SM with ads for calcium and other supplements. The ads are all the same, very long testimonials that after taking calcium and still having continued bone loss I took this supplement because it has this special ingredient that helps the body absorb and direct the calcium to your bones and in just six months my bone density improved markedly. And of course, the only place you can buy these miracle bone building supplements is from their online shop exclusively sometimes with an automatic reorder. So I’ve written down some of the claims about the added nutrients and supplements to talk to my doc about and see what she thinks. 

Next month I have three appointments, first is with the ophthalmologist for my annual eye exam and to see if the other eye is ready for cataract surgery and then my sixth month check up with the EP (electrophysiologist, heart rhythm specialist), and last is the dermatologist which I thought was Wednesday and got up at 7 am, left the house at 7:25 to get to my 8 am appointment in Rosenberg and then drove right back home. I wondered why they hadn’t sent me a text to confirm. By the end of September I should be good to go for another 6 months.

There used to be two things I would never buy online, clothes and shoes but now I've started buying shoes online. The thing about shoes is I wear 7.5 or 8 depending on the shoe. I did buy some sandals online two years ago and judging by their sizing guide I ordered an 8, the size was fine but the quality was not and 6 months later I needed new sandals. New company that offered 3 month trial and easy free return. Their sizing guide indicated an 8 which was too big. Returned them and got a 7 1/2 which fit great. So the CostCo online sales catalog came, $7 off hands free step in washable sneaker type Sketchers. 

No problem, I have a pair of Sketchers 7 1/2, ordered a pair. Did they fit? No, too small. I ordered another pair size 8, fit great so now I have something like 6 months to return the first pair to CostCo. I’ll drive by there on my way back from the EP next month and do it then.

trivia and 50 years

The little tree frog is still in the birdhouse or was last Sunday when I took this picture. Apparently it didn’t care for having its picture taken because now when it sees me it scuttles back into the birdhouse instead on hanging out on the doorstep. 

So apparently, Christmas in July is a thing occurring on or around July 25th originating at a US girl’s camp in 1933 and, unsurprisingly, embraced by retailers as a summer sales event to clear out summer stock. News to me, how did I not know about this? 

Here’s an interesting little piece of trivia, the bullwhip was the first human-made object to break the sound barrier, producing a small sonic boom heard as a crack when flicked quickly. If you are interested in the science behind it you can watch this short entertaining video. 

Now that I finished Artemis, I’ve taken the first steps towards another shadowbox, very preliminary steps as I don’t have a completed drawing or even settled on a subject matter but I did some resizing of some drawings with which to do a couple of compositions. I’ve drawn in the main focus for three compositions I’m considering. Now to work on the surrounding elements. Maybe I’ll get around to that sometime this weekend.

Another item from the 1440 newsletter…Scientists Release Biggest 2D Map of the Universe.  Two links, one of the map that you can zoom in and out of, 

the other an article  about the map and a guided tour of the universe.

Today is our 50th wedding anniversary, got married at home at three in the afternoon, invited everyone we knew and had a big party that lasted until midnight. 

We had a small amount of finger food that people brought, two kegs of beer, the Bride’s keg and the Groom’s keg, floated the Bride’s keg. The next day we went to a movie though neither one of us can remember what we saw and an internet search for movies that week of that year did not ring any bells. When we got back to the house, my parents were there planning to clean house as a surprise which we did not appreciate since we had some illegal drugs sitting around which, thankfully, they had not come across yet. We told them thanks, but no thanks, packed a bag and spent the next week at the family beach house on the far west end of Galveston Island. When we got back a week later and opened the garage with the leftover contents of the Groom’s keg, omg! That leftover beer cooked for a week in a closed garage in the middle of August and the smell was awful.

So yeah, 50 years of not just being married but working together. Feels more like 150. I came close to calling it quits a couple of times and he actually packed a bag and left once but was back several hours later but underneath it all we remained devoted to each other, that or we're just two stubborn people. We’re going out later for lunch and ice cream.

it's hot and that's about all I have to say

Not quite true, have a lot to say actually.

Coming home from yoga class I pass a new shop that opened this year, sort of a combination of general store, close out new clothing, rental space for other vendors, and outside in the parking lot, a small plant nursery. Coming home one Wednesday evening near the end of last month they were setting up a fake christmas tree under the canopy where the plants are. The next evening, it had ornaments on it and christmas swag above the windows on the building and around the canopy. Two days later, christmas lights adorned the building. In July. Granted, the last few days of July but…JULY! Seriously? Can we not start the christmas crap in the middle of summer? I drove by there yesterday morning on the way to SHARE and the swags were gone as were the ornaments on the tree. The tree and lights on the building were still there though. I wonder if they just had some kind of event over the weekend.

Meanwhile the white wing doves have made an appearance at the bird feeder, not allowing smaller birds access. They emptied it Tuesday and it will stay empty until they leave. I was only providing seed every other day as it was so that the birds wouldn’t become completely dependent on it in the summer. Get out there and forage!

Mississippi kites summer over here, and I see them occasionally soaring overhead. The past week or two when I go out in the mornings there’s a juvenile, I assume, in one of the pine trees across the street calling constantly, again I assume, for it’s parents and food. I have not been able to put eyes on it until last Monday morning when I finally located it high up in the tree and only because there was a pair of mockingbirds mobbing it, swooping down and pecking it on the head. By the time I got back out with my phone camera the mockingbirds had moved on but I did get a picture of the kite at high magnification. 

Here’s a link to its call and a much better picture. 

It’s hot out. Been hot out but now it’s August so officially the Dog Days, the hottest, most humid, and sluggish days of summer although September can be almost as rough. If I want any work done outside I have to go out soon after I get up which these days is nearly 8 am. This morning I went out about ten after and it felt almost pleasant. Amazing how just a few degrees less than hell can feel almost cool. I set up the sprinkler and then pulled grass out of a neglected narrow section of a flower bed, cut dewberry vines and pecan and hackberry tree sprouts down to the ground in various areas. Forty minutes later sweat was dripping off me and I came in. That was Wednesday I guess.

Just a few of the things happening in the upside down world:  

The Thxmp administration was crowing about the expected job gains of 85,000 in July's jobs report, gaslighting us of course. The actual July jobs report that just came out showed not even a single job gained but a loss of 23,000, and another 100,000 loss via downward revisions. The only people stunned by this are the incompetent idiots in charge of the government. 

Apparently the New York Times got tired of people complaining about all their news stories being behind a paywall so they instituted a new item in their Morning Newsletter, three free articles every day. Sound great, right, until you get to that part and so far every free article is just fluff BS.

Scientists have used AI to create new viruses (that infect bacteria, not humans…so far) that don’t exist in nature, touted as a possible therapy alternative to antibiotics and drug resistant infections. What could possibly go wrong? How long until the military gets involved? Chemical and germ warfare is universally illegal but when has illegality ever stopped this administration?

There’s way more but that’s enough. 

I've been seeing more butterflies lately, mostly fritillaries and black swallowtails and skippers but either I don't have my camera/phone on me or they don't cooperate.

I finally finished Artemis. I was wrong about the sequence of Andy Weir’s books. Artemis came in-between The Martian and Project Hail Mary. Plus he’s written a bunch of other stuff.

And speaking of books, here’s two more book reports:

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley - This is the third book of hers I’ve read and the one I’ve liked the best. Her writing style is to tell the story from the viewpoint of various characters moving back and forth from the past to the current timeline. Four couples…Giles and Samira, Miranda and Julian, Emma and Mark, Nick and Bo and one single Katie…friends for nearly two decades dating back to their Oxford days are spending their once a year getaway over the New Year’s Eve holiday, this time at an extremely remote and isolated Lodge in the northern Highlands of Scotland. This year’s getaway was chosen and planned by Emma, the newest member of the group when she hooked up with Mark three years previous. Aware of her lack of history with the group of friends she hoped the trip would cement her position. This year though, relationships seem strained and the joviality seems a little forced as the aging beauty Miranda tries too hard to maintain her position as the fun girl of their youth. Cracks appear, old resentments bubble up, secrets get revealed as everything disintegrates and then Miranda goes missing, her body discovered by the gamekeeper. The story is told in turns by Emma, Miranda, Katie, and the manager of the Lodge Heather and the gamekeeper Doug. 

Spasm by Robin Cook - the blurb on the inside cover sounded interesting and the book is ok but the author has written a buttload of books, 41 others to be exact and I gather the main character is a recurring character. Nothing wrong with that but I found the writing to be simplistic, all the characters are men with the few women being mentioned as wives and having nothing to do with the actual story. So with that, Jack, a forensic pathologist in NYC, gets a call from an old medical school buddy practicing in a small town in upper state New York and also acting as the county coroner and asks for his help doing an autopsy on a man who died suddenly with poisoning symptoms. When Jack and his wife arrive he also learns that there is a forming epidemic of rapid onslaught dementia and death in people too young and test negative for Alzheimer’s which the symptoms mimic. When Jack starts a full scale investigation he stumbles on a plot and a race against time that endangers his life.