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. 

 

high grass, toddler in the house, water issues, a frog and a flower

You might remember that my neighbor on the east side sold his house in January 2025. Montreal had an acre, the house on one half and a fenced backyard. When he owned it he kept it tidy and mowed and the low tree branches trimmed and kept the wild space on the south border in check and I had a clear view across the property to the crop field on the other side of the county road. It is a corner property bordered by my street and the county road it ends at. I thought the new owner, who lives in a different small town, was going to live there after they did some renovation and fixing up of the house but no, they rented it out. The people that live in the house only mow around the house and the fenced backyard. The rest of the property should be maintained by the owner and yet they don’t. It has only been mowed twice in the last 19 months. One of the native pecan trees now has branches grazing the ground, all kinds of small and large branches hidden by the various grasses which are waist to chest high on me, the wild space continues to creep across the property line unchecked, and my view from where I sit in the mornings of the corn or cotton field is blocked. I’ve taken pictures but they just don’t really convey how high the grasses are. It does have some goldenrod growing in it so at least something will be blooming this fall unless it gets mowed between now and then. I don’t really mind it being overgrown though since it’s providing habitat.

Friday night was my night to fix dinner and I had been planning on making butternut/sweet potato/cashew soup. I know, summer and hot outside, but I had a butternut squash from the garden and I had bought two sweet potatoes previously with this in mind since the one butternut I had wasn’t enough for the recipe. So, of course I started a little late and cut the butternut in half lengthwise, scooped out the seeds, and put it in the oven to roast while I peeled and cut up the sweet potatoes and put them on to boil when I was looking over the recipe and realized I didn’t have any coconut milk. Poot. I usually review any recipe I’m considering for my two nights before I go to the grocery store on Tuesdays to add whatever ingredients to the list. Apparently I failed to see the coconut milk. So turn off the stove, jump in the car and get the coconut milk. Back home I’m ready to add the spices and realize I don’t have any coriander. Well, double poot. Called my neighbor at the other end of the street who I thought would have some because I know she’s a good cook, turn the stove off again and rush down to her house. Anyway, I got the soup made and dinner was only an hour later than we usually eat. I had originally planned to make a small salad to go with it but by that time I was all, yeah, no; soup and naan will have to do. It was really good.

Sarah came Saturday with Paisleigh and 18 month old Harrison. Paisleigh, who will be 5 in October, starts preschool on the 11th, has already met her teacher and classmates. The teacher would not allow the parents in the room for the two hours or so they were there. Six year old Carlie from the other end of the street came down to play and then soon they ran down to her house because…toys, which Great Grandma doesn’t have much of. Harrison had the house to himself to explore. Pics...Harrison with his Granny, in the kitchen, sleepy boy.

The rain we hoped would come this weekend did not so I’ve been moving the sprinkler around once again. Sunday late morning it was 88˚, real feel 108˚, predicted high 100˚ and who knows what the real feel was. Read a headline the other day, farmers are already sounding the alarm, crops are failing or doing poorly. The planet is poised to tip over into the uninhabitable region for humans heatwise. Rivers are drying up, too hot, too damn hot and they are building water guzzling data centers in regions that already barely have enough water. People’s wells will dry up but hey, the surveillance state needs a place to store all our movements and social media posts. Speaking of water, Txxxx and Hxxxxxx bombed water infrastructure sites in Iran and all signs point to Iran being behind the cyber attacks on US water supplies in Michigan, Minnesota, and five other states (why would they not retaliate in kind?) Guess who Txxxx blames, Iran? No, of course not, he blames democrat Governor Walz for the attacks in Minnesota. 

When I was watering in the front yesterday I spotted this tree frog hanging out in this birdhouse. Once the birds are through nesting tree frogs often take up residence.

This bearded iris surprised me yesterday. They are supposed to bloom in the spring and they do but now this and another one I saw earlier in the summer long after they would usually bloom.

Still not motivated to start a new drawing or shadow box, reading instead, halfway through Artemis by Andy Weir.

 

dealing with issues, in-between, object #11, and a surprise

I spent Tuesday morning dealing with two issues. One was reordering one of my meds through their website and they’ve changed the secure log-in to a different system and the website refused to recognize me so I finally called and got that taken care of and then I created the new account (we found you!) with the new system so hopefully I can just go online next time. The other issue was trying to find out why I had not received any royalty payments since last November. I inherited some mineral and oil/gas rights that had been played out long before they came to me but new technology had an oil company looking again and they brought in three wells so that was a nice surprise. These wells have changed hands several times and so in early May I emailed the current owner asking why I had not received any royalty payments for the past 5 months. They responded that my inquiry was assigned to a case manager who would get in touch with me. Three months later, nothing so I called and pleasantly, I didn’t have to wait more than about 15 or 20 minutes to talk to a human. While I was waiting I went on the owner portal only to discover we had received a payment that morning. The woman who answered my call told me that the case manager was still investigating my inquiry but she looked at whatever she looked at and while it wasn’t a complete answer she did say that it looked like the wells hadn’t been producing much. I know that when the price of oil gets too low per barrel, oil companies will shut down some wells until the price goes up and maybe that’s what happened. 

Other than that I’m back in the in-between state, finished one project but haven’t started another. There’s a drawing I’ve been wanting to do for a friend but I’m also jazzed by the shadow box. I’ve done a few little thumbnail sketches of some possibles. While I thought about that yesterday I spent a good deal of the day reading Artemis by Andy Weir, his third novel after The Martian and Project Hail Mary.

Until I decide this might be a good time to do a 100 objects post. I just did a brief count, 32, of the paintings/prints or sculptures I have either bought or traded for in our collection excluding the four paintings I inherited from my parents, the bowl forms which I think I will present as one object, and my own work. I’ve pondered if the entire collection should be considered one object or each piece a separate object. I guess we’ll see how desperate I get for an entry. So, object #11 is this lithograph bought in 1979 at an outdoor festival, Elephant March by Nancy Louice (or Louwie, hard to read the signature). 

Not the first piece I bought but a very early one. It is desperately in need of reframing, currently in the frame Marc made for it out of rough cedar. It’s a little the worse for wear having never been professionally framed.

One more thing. I was out walking around the yard yesterday and this caught my eye.

That green leaf sticking up from the stubs of the bridal bouquet plumeria that froze to the ground last winter because it was just too heavy and big to dig up the sunken pot and haul it to the garage when it would have to be cut back to even fit in the garage is new growth. You might remember I did eventually dig the pot out of the ground because I wanted to use it for something else and when I did I just plonked the root ball back in the hole because orange cosmos were growing in it and I had to fill the hole with something. There’s actually another little leaf growing just below and to the right that is hard to see. So, I’m amazed. We’ll see how big it gets before winter comes back around. 

the big reveal

Ta-da! 

All the pieces glued on the background/spacer.

Here’s what it looks like from underneath.

The shadow box.

The finished shadow box.

I think it came out pretty good for a first try. It looks great straight on but if viewed from the side you can see the thick foam core backing on the robin. 

I hadn’t anticipated that. Maybe it should have been a much smaller pedestal. Something to consider on the next one. I had a hard time getting a good well lit picture with no reflection. I finally had to hang it on the wall in my bedroom. I’ll have to use a white oil pen on the black back to sign it.

I got another plant repotted Saturday, sweat dripping off me by the time I finished. I moved the two angel trumpets back to their previous spots after sitting in complete shade for a week while they settled into their new pots. Later I went out to check on them looking a little droopy and spotted this cluster under one of the pink angel trumpet leaves…baby spiders! They’re about the size of the head of a pin.

And then I saw this little green tree frog perched on the stem of the same leaf. It’s about an inch long.

A few more, the swamp lily is blooming.

Saturday’s sunset.

dusty skies, arting, and more miscellania of my life

We’ve been getting Saharan dust like we do every summer but Tuesday morning when I opened the garage not just the sky looked hazy but the very air looked dusty. This was the sunset Wednesday night. My eye saw a uniform light orange/pink sky but the camera saw this.

I finished the painting of the robin. I procrastinated doing it until there was nothing else I could do until I did it because I thought it was going to be difficult and I would have to start over at least once but it turned out to be not that hard. Once I had the head done the rest was fairly indistinct, just added a few pencil lines in the wings to give them a little definition. Now I’m ready to cut it out and add the foam core backing and make my final determination about the spacing and then glue it all together. I’m almost done y’all!

And now days later I’ve got all that done. 

So today I’m working on gluing the leaves and the robin to the background/backing and hopefully it will all line up with the edge of the background (which is blue sky) and I can slide (more like gently push it in since it's a fairly snug fit) the whole mess into the shadow box. This is the nerve wracking part, getting everything lined up with the edges but not over. Still a little concerned about a shadow being cast across the top. I'm already considering the next one, a yellow angel trumpet and a shallower shadowbox.

A while back either I read or someone told me that if you cut off the butt end of celery and put it in water it will continue to grow. So I tried it, figured if it developed roots I’d plant it. Well, it did start growing and has started sending out roots! Can you see the little roots in the second picture? I may never have to buy celery again!

But then I talked to my neighbor who tried it and when his had a good healthy set of roots he planted it in dirt and it promptly died. So maybe I’ll try a hydroponic approach.

I’ve been seeing more butterflies; hairstreaks earlier in the summer (though I surprised one yesterday tucked down in a flower) and fritillaries now, a few sulfurs, and a satyr comma. Unfortunately I didn’t have my phone on me so no pictures.

SHARE was moderately busy yesterday, steady food orders but not overwhelming. It also rained for about an hour yesterday evening, starting just as I was leaving for yoga but Thursday’s class is here in Wharton so I drove through it. Had it been in El Campo, I would have stayed home. And of course it rained. I had just earlier watered all the pots and refreshed the two birdbaths and two small animal water stations in the yard.

A few more miscellaneous pics. I never showed the room Robin (mostly) and I painted (nothing is back on the walls yet). The cone ginger has sent up its cones and its little cream flowers. Seems a bit early. And the phlox is blooming.

flowers and critters and pots and art

A big surprise came in the mail on Saturday, a check from the gallery. After all these years she sold the four small botanicas she had, I assume to the same person. These pieces are 4.5" x 4.5" x 1.25"/1.5" deep.

These views give you an idea of how three dimensional they are (couldn't find side views of the other two).

I’ve been seeing a butterfly migrate through for days now, one I have never seen before; small, black with white tips on its wings. I finally did an image search and it isn’t a butterfly at all but a day flying moth, White-tipped Black (Melanchroia chephise). I haven’t seen them light on anything so here’s a picture from the internet. Image via: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/321697-Melanchroia-chephise

Walked out the backdoor the other morning to see a spider web glistening in the sun and at the center the spider was busy securing a small dragonfly it had caught.

The rangoon creeper has really liked this rain. It has been blooming profusely. The flowers are white when they open, pink midday, and red in the evening.

More work on the shadow box during the week. I think I’ve solved all the problems but I still need to do the painting of the robin. I meant to start that on Friday but Mikey called from across the street because Paisleigh wanted to come over so after lunch I walked across the street and fetched her. She stayed for about four hours. She helped me mix up some potting soil and manure and compost and repot one of the plants after I had to drill holes in the bottoms of all six of the pots I got a week and a half ago. Did you know plastic pots don’t come with predrilled holes in the bottom? Neither did I. They had one 1/2” hole with a plug you had to punch out with a hammer and screwdriver. I drilled two more 5/8” holes in the smaller pots and three more in the bigger pots. 

Saturday I mowed the little backyard and then mixed up more potting soil and repotted the big pink angel trumpet and the big yellow angel trumpet and that was it for working outside. I worked on the shadow box building up the thickness of the background to shorten the overall depth of the box. I think this is going to work. If I get it right, all the leaves and the robin will be attached to the back and the whole thing will just slide in.

Finally started on the robin today.

Finally, from the Department of How Stupid Can They Be? (the answer is stupider than you think), Trumplethinskin is going to call up Canada to bitch and threaten sanctions while several senators have dispatched a letter forthwith to the Canadian Government chastising them for poor forest management because the smoke from their wildfires is invading our air and what are you going to do about it! As if Canada controls the wind because yeah, they obviously sent that smoke down here on purpose. Maybe next time the PNW and California is on fire Canada won’t send their firefighters to help which they have routinely done in the past.