windy day, crappy night, little frogs

It’s very windy outside today. Not only are all the wind chimes going off madly but the wind is adding a roar of its own. I had thought I would work on the garden some today but not if this wind keeps up, sustained 22 mph with gusts up to 45 mph. I had a crappy night last night and don’t feel like being battered by the wind. I need to go get potting soil and compost from the feed store and I have something coming up in the compost bin, cucumbers maybe? Could be acorn squash, definitely some tomatoes. The plan is to remove the biggest best looking ones and get them planted in the ground and see what they become. Then I want to add last year’s compost to the garden space. I’m only planning on planting tomatoes and green beans, maybe some squash which never do well. I get one or two and then the plants succumb to vine borers.

So my crappy night. The dog would not settle down. Wanted out multiple times. The cat kept wanting to lay on me and she’s heavy and between the two of them they kept pinning me down so I could barely move to shift positions. During one of the times I got up to let the dog out I collected the nail file, nail scissors, and clippers to work on my ingrown toenail that had started to be painful (I mean, why not, I was awake). All I managed to do was make it hurt more. Then, we have a rat in the house/walls. goddammit. The first time it woke me chewing inside the wall of my bedroom I got up and kicked the wall enough times it left. Several nights later, last night, it was back. Again, kicking the wall with my other foot and then banging on the wall higher up as it scampered up to the attic but it didn’t come back. And finally, just before dawn the dog wanted out again and this time I let her out, left the door open enough for her to get back in whenever and went back to bed. So I am not in the mood for any foolishness today. The only thing I can say is I’m glad it’s not Thursday.

I have seven mobiles (you've already seen two of these) and enough crystals to make one more and some colored glass strips from a previous glass doo dad thing I had made years ago and that hung outside and finally fell apart that I could make another mobile with (I’ve already used some on two). I guess I’ll work on those today. They'll be the last though because my fingertips are getting sore from bending all that wire.

This is a talavera pedestal to a bird bath. I woke up one morning to find the dish that sat on top on the ground in pieces so I’ve been using a plastic pot tray with a rock to hold it down as a basin until I can find a ceramic glazed pot tray to use. I had picked it up to rinse it out and when I did I saw this…

four little tree frogs.

Here’s a fun little test/game about how well we remember color. I’m not going to tell you how poorly well I did but in my defense, I did it this morning and there was a lot of glare and reflection on my monitor.

a nest in an unlikely place and other doings

Believe it or not I do proofread my posts before I publish and still they escape me. Last post, it should have been ‘garden’ soil not ‘green’ and spring grasses and ‘weeds’ not ‘winds’. Besides the spring grasses and weeds these warmer days have also brought the fire ants back up to the surface. Oh joy.

The other day I walked into my studio room/office and startled a wren in the house and out it flew through the open door to the little backyard. This is not an unusual occurrence in the spring when I have the door open and no screen as they are curious little birds and they like to build nests in places like the garage and barn. The last day or two I’ve noticed some dried plant material on my desk and the floor, not a whole lot and I thought maybe it had come in on Cat. Yesterday morning I happened to look up at the light fixture above me to see this…

I climbed up on the desktop to get a better look. 

Wouldn’t it be cool if she did lay eggs and hatch some babies except, you know, it’s indoors and access to the outside is limited and then there’s a resident cat who would be happy to pounce on the little fledglings. 

I finally got out there Friday and started working on two of the garden plots. Didn’t get the all the weeds out of the bigger one but got three fourths done. I saw that one of my clumps of narcissus finally decided to bloom. 

I was going to spend the rest of the day doing what I really want to do which is work on the current mobile but that didn’t happen, only spent about a half hour and then it was more outside work; fertilize and water all the pots, use an organic poison on the fire ant mounds and water that in, walk the dog, feed the outside cats, and fix dinner which was a sort of cheaters cabbage roll casserole. I already had ground beef, onion, celery, garlic in the freezer left over from stuffed bell peppers so I chopped some cabbage and sautéed it, added in the meat mixture and some of my tomato sauce from last year, put it all in a baking dish, covered it with leftover mozzarella and baked it for about 20 minutes.

Yesterday morning after breakfast I went across the street and worked on cutting back stuff for about an hour and so another big pile to be moved to the burn pile. Spent the rest of the day finishing the armature for the bigger mobile and trying to arrange the crystals to get a balance in weight and shape. Harder than it seems as I spent hours moving them around from spot to spot and finally had to make two adjustments to the armature, replacing one of the arms completely and adding an extension to one end. 

Still not completely happy with it so I imagine I’ll be futzing around with it again today and since it turned cold again last night, currently in the 40s, I won’t be distracted by the outdoors. Maybe. It’s a pretty day, cloudless blue sky and it will warm up. At the very least I should gather up some of the piles and if not get them to the burn pile at least get them in the back of the truck.

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.