Saturday, April 20, 2019

sleepless, rain, and an unexpected visit


I've been sleeping very late this past week, too late for my yoga routine in the morning after the first pill of the day and then coffee while I read or write blogs unless I want to have breakfast even later! That's my excuse anyway. In reality, my morning yoga routine only takes 10 – 15 minutes. Wednesday night, though, after I fell asleep reading and then put my book aside and turned off the light the brain sez to me, 'Me, you didn't really think you would just go right back to sleep did you?' I was awake for hours trying to convince myself to sleep. Tried solitaire, tried more reading and bubkis. Did finally start to drift off just as the sleeping dog under the covers somehow sensed the brief flash of lightning from the predicted storm beginning to move through and jumped up throwing off the covers wide eyed ears erect and trembling. When the thunder rolled through and it began to rain the panic panting started and she decided laying under my chin and panting in my face was the safest place to be, that or on my pillow above my head pulling my hair every time she moved restlessly which was constantly. Needless to say, no sleep was got that night. No biggie for the dog who just curled up and slept all morning and early afternoon after the storm passed that brought us almost 2 1/2” of much needed rain and cooler temps.

Still spending my days outside but I'm not getting near as much accomplished. Tuesday I finally got the grass dug out of the back long side of the old garden and edged in bricks, all except for the far end which needed fire ant remediation first. Which I did yesterday there and other places where they insist on being in and next to my flower beds.


I've picked dewberries three times. I only pick every other day. Maybe one more day of a good haul but we'll see. There's a lot on the ditch side of the fence that I can't get to because while I can put on long pants and boots and climb down in there, there is so much poison ivy that I won't attempt it. Probably.


The love-in-a-mist is approaching full bloom and the Cinco de Mayo rose has opened its first blooms.


Another large dead limb covered with lichen fell out of one of the oaks. It reminds me of a coral reef.


We had a visit yesterday from a guy who grew up in this house and his wife. They're here for an annual family reunion and they stay with my neighbor Gary who is his childhood friend as Gary lives in the house he grew up in. I had met Keith last year while walking the dog, he was laying in wait for me in Gary's front yard and we chatted for about half an hour and I invited him to come down and look around if he wanted. He never did but the doorbell rang a little after four yesterday afternoon, a rarity since only strangers come to the front door, and it was him and his wife, Virginia. They're about our age, a few years younger perhaps. And really nice people, it was never weird as we had them in and let them look around and talk about how it was when he lived there as a kid and how it's changed and the memories that came out. The different landscape, the different neighbors, the same neighbors. Now the yard has trees that weren't there and the ones he remembers are gone. And more recently the changes we ourselves made after the flooding from Harvey. Anyway I sent her off with one of the potted up confederate rose volunteers and a bag of seeds from the woodland petal pink and maybe they will survive in Arkansas.





13 comments:

  1. How cool that your visitor got to see his childhood home -- especially since it's being taken care of by someone who appreciates it! I'm sure you sent him away happy. He must have been impressed with all your post-Harvey work. Beautiful flower (and lichen) photos, as usual!

    Olga usually doesn't get scared by thunder, but then, it happens so rarely here. We do have fireworks now and then but she doesn't seem to mind those too much either, weirdly.

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    1. I've heard that dogs either are terrified or totally unaffected, something they are born with, not learned.

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  2. Dogs and storms- another reason I just don't need a dog.
    Your yard is beautiful. That's all there is to it. I'm supposedly cooking and tidying up today in preparation for tomorrow's gathering but first I went out to pick up some of the hundreds of branches that yesterday's storm brought down and then ended up on my knees under the hydrangea, pulling invasives and now I've had lunch and I haven't done anything to get ready for tomorrow and there are still so many branches.
    Ugh.
    I better get busy.
    Such a cool story about the guy coming to see his childhood house. I love that you gave him a plant and seeds. How kind of you, Ellen!

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    1. it's alway exceptional this time of year.

      there are advantages to not doing anything for holidays!

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  3. OMG! Lucy nearly tried to kill me when the storm hit at around 1:30 in Seguin. She messed up the monitor and I had to reset it. We had a few branches fall from the pecan trees in the front yard nothing major. That Cinco de Mayo rose is just full of buds. My knock out roses seem to be in nonstop blooming mode too. That is so sweet of you letting the old owner's kids come visit the house. I bet they had a wonderful time with their memories.

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  4. How neat they made the time to come over this year. We were acquainted with not only the previous owners of the grey house, but the owners before them, who actually built the house in 1940. All the house stories were worth hearing, because every family builds up their own collection, and polishes them up for recitation. Your set will have a good story to take home, now. As well as trophies of the garden.

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  5. I hope you and little dog had a decent night's sleep since. Waiting for sleep is such a bother.

    My gardener husband tells me that lichen is a sign of clean air as they are very sensitive to pollution and shut down when it gets too much. Where I grew up people collected lichen and used it as a cough/bronchi medicine as a tea with honey. Now we can buy (very popular) lichen lozenges and lichen honey which works really well with coughing toddlers who cannot sleep.
    as a result (childhood and gardener's advice) I always feel chuffed when I see more lichen in the garden.

    We met one of the then grown sons of the previous owners of our house a week before we moved in and he told us a morose tale of a childhood with alcoholism and severe beatings and cancer death and running away. When we got the keys, I scrubbed every room and even burned incense and sage leaves. I like to think it worked.

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    1. interesting to know about the lichen. and what a horrible tale to hear just as you are about the move in! I believe I'd done the same. We're the fourth owners of this house, our visitor was the son (1 of 4) of the second owner. this house had been vacant for a year before we bought it. she had a bar of stinky Irish Spring soap in just about every cabinet (and there are a lot of cabinets in this house) along with roach poison tablets. she used the soap for air freshener I guess but it attracted roaches who ate it. no matter how much we aired the house out we never fully got rid of the smell until we had the the ductwork in the attic replaced.

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  6. That was generous of you to let them walk through your home, but your realize how important those memories can be as we age. I just visited a blog that have photos with an inch of snow and now your with flowers blooming!!

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  7. Time and changes, that is what this plant , this life is about, I guess- easy to get caught up in it. We have so much lichen here, from what Sabine said, the air must be excellent. Rain helps I assume. That rose is incredible

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  8. I left you a comment but my phone ate it. I said something to the effect of how special it must have been for that man to be invited into the house where he once lived. To know it is in the hands of generous people who understand its history must mean something.

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  9. I love that lichen! I don't know that I have ever seen such a magnificent variety. I also don't think that I'd be so willing to let the original owner back into my house. She's a whistler.....

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  10. It looks to me like your lichen is fruiting. See those little round thingies that are smooth green inside? I've seen a variety that does that same thing, only the inside is orange. The books call that "fruiting" -- I suppose that's how they produce their spores or whatever. I'm pretty ignorant about mosses and lichen (fungi, too) but I think they're interesting.

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