first freeze and year end stuff

You can see from my last post Friday, the last day of the year, we were wearing t-shirts and shorts; same Saturday, first day of the new year. I know it hit 80˚, maybe even a little warmer. This was happening in the yard...bluebonnets, 10 petal anemones, and woodland lilies already starting to bloom way too early.

And then 12 hours later it had dropped at least 50˚ because when I got up at 8:30 Sunday morning it was 32˚. I managed to get everything in the house or garage except for a pot of bromeliads which I overlooked and the big yellow angel trumpet in the pot which has two open flowers on it. It didn't seem damaged after it warmed up. We did get the big heavy pot with the cereus in the garage. We managed to lift it the 6” or so off the cinder blocks it was sitting on and onto the garden cart and then again slide it onto cinder blocks with a 3” thick concrete block on top. You can see how monsterous it is.

I cut back the porter weed and covered it. Cut the long blooming stalks off the begonia 

and brought it and the pink angel trumpet in. Got the last plumeria out of the ground and moved both it and the bird of paradise into the garage, brought in the two staghorn ferns.

All this after our usual New Year's Day brunch with mimosas on Saturday and then a nap to sleep off the champagne.

Sunday the sky cleared up and it wouldn't have been so bad out there in the low 40˚s except for the constant 30 mph wind with gusts up to 38 mph. The cardinals were all puffed up to keep warm and they and the chickadees and titmice were busy emptying the bird feeder. I did manage to get the giant tarp up and around the plants in the garage but that's about all. Spent the lion's share of the day on the couch reading after I made crepes for breakfast. I had plans to go over to my daughter's house to see the baby now that the kids are back from Arkansas but I just didn't want to go out in the weather. My feet had finally gotten warm. Or numb. Hard to tell which.

Last night though, it got even colder for longer, a crust of ice on the birdbath when I got up. The big yellow angel trumpet is looking pretty droopy today but I won't know how damaged it is until tomorrow probably.

Now that all the holidays are done, the lost days behind us, the deck built, I'll get back over to the shop this week and do the finish work on the luna moth piece and make another try at photographing the angel trumpet pieces. I also got more of the flex seal paste, only this time in a tube for use in a caulk gun, to make another stab at stopping the roof from leaking in that one spot in the studio.

I've been seeing a lot of good riddance to 2021 posts, that it wasn't a great year but as I mentioned before it was far better than the previous four. Biden has managed to get several important pieces of legislation passed with obstruction not only from the Republicans, even though a majority of the republican electorate is in favor of Biden's policies, but from a few in his own party. He has made headway in undoing so much of the damage that Trump did. The economy is doing well with a high growth rate and lowest unemployment in decades even if poverty wage employers are having a hard time getting workers. The January 6^th commission was established and is making headway, participants have been arrested and are being tried and convicted, maybe not the big dogs yet but evidence is piling up. We got vaccines for covid and just recently, for the first time, an actual treatment for covid. And even though two new variants popped up, it's looking like maybe covid is transitioning from pandemic to endemic, like the flu, which may not be preferable but manageable. It wasn't all good of course. The Republican party or rather now the Party of Trump has passed all sorts of voter suppression laws, worse gerrymandering in states they control, even getting rid of republicans who won't subvert an election they lose. They have not stopped trying to undermine our democracy or the rule of law in order to take over this country and it's essential that they don't get control of even one house of congress after the midterm elections.

For me, it was a pretty good year. I finally got back in the studio after a year and a half, finished a piece that had been lingering and started new work. There's a new baby in the family and a college graduate, and a new deck to enjoy when the weather warms up again. I'm healthy and active, I'm not homeless or in fear of losing my home or hungry, everyone in my immediate family is well and I'm grateful for those things.

So here we go, onward through another year.