moving day

Well, moving furniture day. Pam won't take up residence til next weekend after the internet connection is installed. Still a few things on the punch list so the fixit guy is coming back Tuesday. The last water leak got fixed Friday morning and that was the end of my tasks towards getting the house.

Of course, Saturday was our hottest day so far and humid to boot. It was at 84% around 8 AM down to 51% a few minutes before noon but Pam's daughter, son-in-law, and grandson rented a Uhaul truck, her granddaughter and significant other came in from San Antonio to help and my daughter and son-in-law also showed up and between them they loaded that truck up twice and got just about all the furniture she's keeping moved into the new house. 

It's sort of arranged or rather everything is in it's proper room. Plenty of packed boxes still to move, all the kitchen stuff, the pictures and other decorative stuff. I have two things to get...my bookcase she has been borrowing and a small art nouveau/art deco buffet she isn't keeping. In fact most everything she isn't moving to the new house is just getting shuffled around to various family members. I'm getting the buffet and the bookcase, all the guest bedroom furniture, another small buffet, and a couch and chair has been divvied up between my daughter and the twins. We don't get rid of furniture in this family, we just shuffle it around although some miscellaneous stuff will go in a garage sale.

Did I mention it was hot outside? The white ginger is suffering. It's usually the first of the gingers to bloom and is mostly done by the time it gets this hot but it was late to start blooming this year and sparsely at that. I had already got the shade cloth out and tied it to two stakes at the back with the intention of going out everyday unless it was overcast and drape it over the ginger for the midday hours when it's in the sun and then undrape it but I never remembered until it was already in full sun and shriveled so today I pounded two more stakes in the ground and created a canopy which I will just leave in place until fall.

And I'm back to watering parts of the yard, setting up the sprinkler every day. That 6 1/2” of rain we got a couple of weeks ago is a bare memory. It is just suffocatingly hot out there and no breeze at all. The dog likes it though, for a few minutes anyway.

Four of my banana trees are blooming but only two of them are producing fruit. All four trees will die now, I lost three last year because they also bloomed, but new ones are coming up all the time.

There was a giant swallowtail sipping nectar from the mexican bird of paradise this morning but this was the best picture I could get because it was in constant motion. Even when it was feeding it's two top wings shivered.

I had intended to clean the back bedroom today but I'm sweating just sitting here typing so probably not. Maybe tomorrow. Plus I got stung by a wasp first thing this morning when I went to open the garage door and announce to the world that we were up. I guess it was on the door somewhere and objected to my lifting it up. It really nailed me and now I have a red swollen spot about 3” x 1 1/2” on the inside of my arm just above the elbow and it's still zapping me a little bit now and then. That's the third time I've been stung this year. I usually just leave them alone because they are pollinators and they mind their own business but this is just too much. I tolerate getting stung once a season but they have pissed me off now.

No covid-19 report today. I only have one or two things that I've noted so it can wait another week but suffice to say, infections are still increasing, deaths are over 170,000 and counting, testing is declining, there is still no go-to treatment and still no vaccine though there are several promising things in trials. Trump is still having his so called pandemic press conferences, now with a new doctor, a radiologist, on the pandemic response team with no experience in public health or infectious diseases or epidemiology but he does echo Trump's talking points, which are really just an excuse for him to complain and whine and to lie about and denigrate his opponents, his substitute for his rallies he can't have anymore. Yawn. He doesn't seem to realize that this old worn out routine isn't working.