several days of brief forays in the yard and evil and despicable men

It is just too hot to be outside.

We got an unexpected 3/4" of rain Monday. I left shortly after it stopped to go to the post office and the streets were steaming. Literally. What else did I do Monday, I did the grocery shopping, I went to yoga. The grocery store has taken down it's 'masks required' banner and the employees were all mask free as were about half the customers. I still wore mine though and probably will for awhile with the more contagious and more virulent Delta variant of covid showing up in the US.

Speaking of covid, research is confirming that it was here long before it 'officially' arrived. We're pretty sure that's what my sister had in December 2019 amid reports of people being diagnosed with an unknown coronavirus with all the symptoms of covid as far back as October/November 2019. One of the blogs I read is Interim Arrangements written by Sabine who is connected to the scientific community in Germany and she translated an article by a German virologist who has been involved in covid research from the beginning. In this article he address its possible/probable origin (and no not in a lab) and also the concept of 'herd immunity' which he says does not apply to the human population. Bottom line is the only way you will get immunity to covid is through vaccination or surviving the virus and that if you don't get vaccinated you will eventually get covid. The problem with surviving the virus is that survival comes with serious other health issues later so get vaccinated. Anyway, here's a link to her post with the article.

I've only been keeping a cursory eye on the political machinations of the Republicans Party of Insurrection, you know, keeping my blood pressure down, but they are still being completely who they are. Locally, in Texas, ERCOT, who is in charge of our unregulated power grid, is asking people to conserve electricity during this heatwave...set your thermostat to 78, don't use your oven, turn off lights...because not only did it fail with extreme cold weather, it will likely fail with extreme hot weather. So is our governor concerned about that and doing something, anything, to fix the problems with our independent power grid? No, his big concern is the non-existent crisis at the border. If Biden won't continue building Trump's wall, then he will build it in Texas and he is asking Texans to pony up with the cash to do it. Nationally, McConnell has proclaimed bipartisanship dead and is still saying out loud and in public that his only focus is obstruction of any and all Biden's policies and if republicans get control of the Senate in 2022 and a seat on the Supreme court comes up in 2024 he will not allow Biden to appoint a judge even though he pushed through Barrett during the 2020 election and he probably wouldn't allow Biden to appoint a judge if a seat became available in 2023. And the #3 Senate republican Barrasso has vowed to make Biden a half term president. I take that to mean if they get control of the House and the Senate in 2022, they will impeach and convict Biden regardless of the fact there have been no impeachable offenses committed by Biden. So as usual, republicans have no intention of governing and no intention of letting the democrats govern no matter what Americans want.

Back to the fun stuff. Tuesday I took the recycling to the containers, took some of the orange cosmos over to friend, went to Walmart  the Evil Empire (which also has removed it's 'masks required' notice) because HEB didn't have two things I needed, took my youngest grandgirl to get her first vaccination shot, and we got another unexpected rain, almost 2” Tuesday night.

Did I mention I'm not getting any day lily blooms? Few and far between so that's disappointing. But other things are being beautiful out there. After those two weeks of rain every step scares up a baby toad or two, from 1/2" to 3/4".

This is the third attempt of these wasps to build a nest in that particular spot on the succulent. I spray them away with the hose and then remove the nest.

My datura (jimsonweed) in the pot bloomed. It is also called moonflower because they bloom at dusk and close up in the morning.

This plumeria has started blooming. It has 10 bloom stalks. I put it in a bigger pot this spring and fertilized it but it's a dependable bloomer anyway. I had one I finally put in the ground when I still lived in the city because it had gotten too big for me to bring in. We were going through a spell of no real winter (but it didn't get as hot as now) and it grew into a small tree that bloomed profusely all summer, survived at least 5 years in the ground, and then we had the snow and winter in the 20s for two weeks that killed it. I knew it would not survive so I made many cuttings and this is one of them. In fact all the ones like this that I have are from that one tree.

Expect a few more pictures of the red crinum lilies while they're blooming.

I know you can't see them but there are baby wrens in this birdhouse. I saw one of the parents enter and could hear the cheeping babies...feed me!

And this morning there were 6 whistling ducks in one of the pecan trees. I had seen them several times before further down the street flying into a neighbor's tree when I walk the dog but this is the first time we've seen them in our trees.

So cool, and yes they were whistling little tunes, not a quack to be heard.