quiet weekend, shadow box progress, misc pics

It was a quiet weekend around here. No one on my street was hosting any kind of get together or celebration, at least not that I saw and I base that on the fact that at no point was the street lined with cars indicating a get together and while there were some fireworks none sounded close enough to be in the immediate area and even that was fairly sparse. Nevertheless after the first muffled boom Minnie headed straight for the closet in Marc’s bedroom, her safe place reserved specifically for fireworks. There was a celebration planned on the Square starting at 6 PM with fireworks. I have no idea how well it was attended, the only photo I saw, and I have no idea what time it was taken, didn’t show a crowd.

I got outside this weekend, moving the sprinkler around in the front in the morning and then cut back all the dead and gone by purple cone flowers in the big front flower bed. It took about 3 forays. I’d work until I started sweating. I got the rest in the back flower beds Monday morning. I also pulled up all the green beans. They were still flowering and were full of inch long tiny beans but they weren’t really growing and besides, we’re a little tired of green beans. Also pulled up three of the six tomato plants that had no fruit left and were not flowering because it’s too hot for that. I picked the last tomato off a fourth this morning so it will come out soon. Of the last two, both are still blooming and one has put on three or four more little tomatoes so I’ll just keep an eye on them.

Yesterday early afternoon at 12:30 it’s 89˚ with a heat index, feels like, at 109˚. I set up the sprinkler in the back to be moved every 20 or 30 minutes but I didn't do much else out there.

I started over with the leaves for the shadow box and got four of the five painted this weekend and yesterday. I’m much happier with the result though they are kind of busy so I may try to smooth them out some. All were done a little differently and yet similarly. It remains to be seen if I think I need to do one of them again, and that would be the first one of the second try, as the whole thing sort of arranges itself in my mind. It may be too dark and if I can’t lighten it up some…but we’ll see when it gets to the point of actual construction. P.S. The actual painted leaves are not as dark as they look in the picture.

Some miscellaneous pictures:

Minnie after a hard day of washing and ironing.

Last summer one of my plumerias developed two seed pods. The other day I noticed they had dried out and popped.

Marc was looking through our first photo album and I pulled this picture of the two of us. Not sure exactly when it was taken, before we were married but living together which would put it somewhere in the first half of 1976. I would have been 25 or barely 26, Marc would have been 24. We got married in August ’76 and will have our 50th anniversary this year. It hasn’t always been easy and damn difficult at times. The color picture has gone completely sepia (and this is a picture of the picture) so I dicked around with the brightness and color and saturation.

Here’s the full shrub of the Mexican bird of paradise, above (also pride of barbados). 

 

the heat is sapping any motivation I might have had

I didn’t sleep well Monday night. That’s not entirely true, I slept well Monday night when I finally managed to fall asleep somewhere around 3 AM, I think. Some of that was my fault fighting off sleep while I played games on my phone and then read for an hour. Always a mistake to fight off sleep because when I finally turn out the light sleep goes fuck you buddy, you pushed me away when I was here and ready so now I have better things to do. I was woken up Tuesday morning at 8 AM by Joe, who mows and trims the shop yard, calling to see if I wanted him to mow this week. After telling him yes I stumbled into the kitchen and told Marc I want a day off. From what he asked. From everything I told him. I didn’t get it.

Still had to do the grocery shopping for the week, still had to fix dinner that night, and around 3:15 there was a knock on the door. Carli from down the street came over to ask if I would walk Paisleigh down to her house so they could play. Carli is six to Paisleigh’s four. Unfortunately, we weren’t there long as an emergency came up and they had to leave so Paisleigh spent the rest of the afternoon with me at my house until Mikey was ready to close up the shop and go home.

The plan Wednesday was to do a Spec’s (liquor warehouse) and CostCo run. I also wanted to stop by Lowe’s on the way and either Michael’s at either shopping center. Neither of us particularly was eager to do that today so we put it off for next week justifying our lack of enthusiasm for the shopping spree by claiming it’s a Wednesday before a holiday weekend and therefore everywhere will be crowded, as if CostCo isn’t always crowded. 

My reason for stopping at Lowe’s is I need several larger plastic planter pots which I can’t get locally so I went online to see about ordering them. I chose three of one size and two of a larger size totaling about $80. Selected for delivery, the three were eligible for free delivery while only one of the larger pots were. The shopping cart showed a delivery charge of $79 for that second ($20) pot for a total order that was only a dollar more. OK, not doing that. They can wait until next week.

I don’t know what motivated me to buy some Fritos corn chips and a can of chili Tuesday during the grocery shop, tired of all the usuals for lunch I guess and so Wednesday we had frito pie for lunch (corn chips, chili, chopped onion, shredded cheese; surely everyone knows what frito pie is) and I ate way more than I should have. And then Thursday afternoon Wednesday’s lunch came back to haunt me, at least I’m blaming it on the frito pie. Still suffering a little intestinal distress but at least I don’t have to be close to the bathroom today. I should have known better. We never hardly ever eat highly processed food. 

Well, my first attempt at painting the leaves for the shadow box project fell flat earlier. I worked on three of the five, didn’t finish any and decided I need to start over, just wasn’t happy with the way they were turning out so maybe I won’t start with the pale yellow undercoat. Anyway, there’s more to tell like the state of Montreal’s former property and a 100 objects post but I’ve been highly unmotivated this week and most of last. I haven't even been taking very many pictures but I have gotten a lot of reading done. I did get Pam's sundial repaired, the gnomen had broken off and I got it glued back on. It sits in my yard now though the sky today is mostly puffy clouds and a bit hazy from the Saharan dust that blows our way every summer so the shadow is indistinct, hard to tell the time. It's an hour off anyway because of daylight savings time.

Remember all that rain we got, weeks and weeks of rain after being in a drought condition? Less than two weeks with no rain and already the ground is cracking and I'm moving the sprinkler around.

Two book reviews:

Pendergast the Beginning by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child - This is the story of Special Agent Pendergast’s first case as an FBI agent. After the highly secretive government black ops group of which Pendergast was a member was disbanded, he was placed in the FBI and sent to the New Orleans Field Office where he was partnered with senior agent Chambers for mentoring. The first thing Pendergast does is expose the criminal wrongdoing of the second in command in the FO without consent getting himself and Chambers put on leave for a week. During that time they decide to investigate a 2 year old cold case and uncover a string of bizarre murders. Pendergast is not satisfied with just solving the case, he wants to understand the motive which leads him to suspect two of New Orlean’s leading citizens who have taken pains to destroy evidence of a period in their past.

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley - After Jess’ and her older half brother Ben’s mother died they went into foster care. Ben was adopted by a well to do family, Jess bounced around the foster care system. Now adults and mostly estranged, Jess is living hand to mouth and found herself in a situation from which she needed to leave London immediately and had just enough money to get to Paris where her brother Ben was living. Ben had told her to ring the bell when she arrived and he would give her the code to the gate, he would be waiting for her but by the time Jess arrived at the very fancy apartment building around a courtyard Ben was gone and was not answering his phone or responding to texts. When she manages to slip in by memorizing the code when another resident punches it in and makes her way up to Ben’s third floor apartment she wonders how her brother could possibly afford the place. When she goes to the other residents' apartments asking if they know where Ben is they are all unfriendly and evasive and in some cases downright hostile. Eventually, with the help of an editor Ben sometimes works for Jess slowly unravels the secrets of the building and the residents. Told in segments from the viewpoints of Jess and the others…Nick, Mimi, Sophie, Antoine, and the concierge. 

 

the pretty and the ugly

The big surprise from yesterday…my pink crinum lilies are blooming. They didn’t bloom last year so I moved them to the end of the flower bed after I dug up the root ball of the dead confederate rose. I didn’t think they were going to bloom this year either since when they have bloomed it was in May, hence the surprise.

I heard a tapping on my window and when I looked up a titmouse was clinging to the window frame looking in. I glanced over at the bird feeder which was empty to see another titmouse waiting there patiently. Ok, ok. I got up and filled the bird feeder.

The plumerias are blooming, some of them. My two biggest ones froze because they were just too big to bring in (one planted in the ground and the other the pot sunk in the ground). I have four more big ones that really need bigger pots which I don’t have. They’ll be getting cut back severely this fall. Of those four two are (supposed to be) light pink with a yellow throat that I acquired the original from a guy we knew who had died decades ago, a victim of the AIDS epidemic, but the flowers are so pale on one of them this year as to be almost white;

one darker pink with a yellow throat which has come from cutting after cutting after cutting of one my father had;

and the other white bridal bouquet plumeria with the spade shaped leaves which is not blooming yet. I have three small ones that are not big enough to bloom: a cutting from a yellow one my niece has, another of the darker pink from my father’s parent plant, and one Pam grew from seed that came off one of my light pink ones that had been fertilized (we think) by the small white flowers of the bridal bouquet, a bigger one of those is blooming, white with a yellow throat, the flowers are small, 2” across.

I finally sat down yesterday and started painting the leaves for the shadow box starting with a pale yellow base color. I started with the green on one and already I’m going to have to do this one over. I’ll work out the colors and process on this one. The two samples I did previously were with the cheap Prang watercolors which act differently than the professional ones.

Lots of work to be done outside now that it’s stopped raining but it’s just so damn hot out. I did get the dewberry brambles cut out of all but the flower bed in front and all the sprouted pecan and hackberry trees and that was enough for yesterday.

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Alright, here comes the ugly part, the continued assault on our country and freedoms that you may have missed with all eyes on the reflection pond debacle and you can skip it if you want. All names have been changed (or left out if I couldn’t come up with a suitable nickname) to protect me.

Kegsbreath’s white christian nationalist vision for the military, all male because women should not be giving men orders, can aptly be described thusly: “Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before.” So he’s remaking the military into a Crusade military. And because he thinks vaccinations are for wimps, not strong military men, he deep sixed the flu vaccine requirement and over two hundred new recruits promptly got the flu and disrupted their training. A week later he grudgingly reinstated the flu vaccine requirement.

Nazi Nosferatu Miller is saying out loud and in public that disabled Americans need to be locked away in an institution. This is not about economics since it costs about 3 times more to institutionalize someone than it does to provide the aid that allows them to live in their own homes. This is only about getting ‘defective’ people out of sight, out of society. I imagine it won’t be long before he advocates for just putting them down like you would a rabid animal. He has also declared our national borders closed since the Supreme Court has ruled that this administration can deny asylum seekers entry while waiting for their appeal to be heard. All those desperate mothers with their children are all liars, he says, only wanting free stuff. Never mind that they wouldn’t be eligible for any of that ‘free’ stuff. Then he claimed that the nation that was built on and exists because of immigration has no future if we don’t end birthright citizenship, and by that he means not white.  

Lest you think some Republicans are finally remembering they have a spine and passed the War Powers Resolution to limit Petulant Grievance Baby’s ability to wage unsanctioned war, after meeting with PGB after the vote, the Republican Senate reversed the vote and defeated it. Of course they did.

Even when this republican congress actually does something right like passing the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act which addresses housing affordability, Trump refuses to sign it because “nobody gives a (expletive) about housing”, or rather he refuses until congress passes his voter suppression SAVE America act. Regardless, it will become law anyway in ten days as long as Congress is still in session. We can expect Supreme Butt Kisser Johnson to send everyone home any day now.

So of course the far right Freedom Caucus in the House said if PGB isn’t going to sign passed legislation there was no reason to debate anymore and voted against procedural measures that allows the House to conduct business and so SBK sent everyone home Thursday. Did I call that or what?

And now Texas has required all public school teachers to use christian bible readings in their lessons and all the christian nationalists are going fuck yeah, now our students will get some morality and all the behavior problems will disappear. Rest assured it won’t be the ones where Jesus tells you to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, heal the sick, welcome the stranger because that’s just communist. The Texas Lt. Gov. stood up and said with a straight face, in order to justify the legality of imposing christian scripture in public schools, that “Separation of church and state is not in the Constitution”.

The Supreme Court just ruled that protected immigrant legal status for Haitians and Syrians is illegal and these people can be deported. Guess who voted in favor of getting rid of their protected status? Justice ACB who adopted two Haitian children.

That’s about all I can stomach for today.

rain (big surprise, not), a surprise visit, and local weirdness

Did I say the sun came out and it stopped raining Wednesday afternoon? Silly me. Well, it didn’t rain but by Friday 5ish it had completely clouded over and was thundering in the distance.

Saturday dawned, you guessed it, overcast. The little backyard needed mowing and the rest of the yard needed trimming, something I had not done so far this spring/summer so I decided to take advantage of the overcast and therefore cooler temps and get both tasks done. So, bandana tied around my forehead (because menopause totally flipped my internal temperature and now sweat rolls off me whereas before I only ‘glistened’ with perspiration), work in the yard clothes on, and doused with mosquito repellant (legs, arms, clothes, hat) I got both tasks done. The sky had been steadily darkening and by the time I cooled off enough to take a shower it had started raining. Again. And then it rained again sometime during the night. Ask me how I know. A little neurotic dog told me. But no rain Sunday, no rain Monday and so far no rain today. Forecast says we should have an unprecedented (lately) six days in a row with no rain. Regardless, the big black mosquitoes are back having given way to teeny tiny ones for about a week. It’s not enough that they attack you the instant you step outside, they follow you in hitchhiking on your clothes and continue to attack you in the house. I just came in from picking green beans with blood streaks down both arms and legs.

Enough about the rain.

Before I got the yard work done Saturday, Mikey came over with Paisleigh and Harrison. The kids have been in Arkansas for the last four weeks with their mom and Mikey went to get them getting back Friday evening. He brought them over for a quick visit before taking them to see Robin and then home. Sunday I went across the street to fetch Paisleigh to walk the dog in the early evening, this has become something we do several times a week, and then back to my house until Mikey was ready to head home. She wanted to paint a picture for her daddy and we got the paints out but he arrived to fetch her back before she really got started good. 

I pass this enclosure on my way to the grocery store. Looks ominous, right?

First they graded the land, then they erected a knee high steel bar barrier around the perimeter, then the light poles went up, then a chain link fence topped with barbed wire was built outside the steel bar barrier, and then they covered the fence with this black material, not sure when they put what looks like a container in there. Every time I passed it I wondered what the hell is that place? They finally put up a sign, Allied Recovery Services. I looked it up, it’s a repo outfit, vehicles and other property, so I guess this is where they stash the stuff before getting it to its proper owners.

And from the Department of Weird Food, I came across this Sunday when I had to go to the Evil Empire for something I can only get there unless I want to order from the other Evil Empire or drive to Shopping Mecca.

There was a huge display, many flavors of this Korean drink, also 'modern' noodles all on sale for $1 each. 

Apparently it did not appeal to the American consumer.

Saturday’s sunset (don’t let it fool you, it rained Saturday night).

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.