back to the mundane

coral butterfly ginger

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If your reason for allowing or supporting this travesty is religion then try again. I do not accept any religious belief as proof of or permission to demonize this small group of people. Your invisible big daddy in the sky has no authority.

I wrote the above down hurriedly last night during dinner after I read something on one of the social media sites so I wouldn't forget that I wanted to write about it. I typed that up and thought to myself, OK, I think that's enough so I'll remember and then went back to the table and now the next day I can't remember what it was that made me get up and make a note. It was about trans people and the attack on their civil rights and healthcare but I don't remember specifically what the post was about.

I have been completely unmotivated since this horrid heat dome settled in and shows no intention of ever leaving. I don't watercolor, I don't draw, I don't sketch, I don't sew; I play games on my phone, read, or stream something on TV. Right now we're watching the second season of The Flight Attendant and Secret Invasion. I go out for an hour in the morning to water or attend to other tasks. The other day I got my clippers and brush/stump killer spray bottle and scoured the property for trees. I bet I cut down and treated 50 little trees...pecans, hackberrys, rain trees...anywhere from 6” to 3'. You'd think that I could just cut them at ground level and they would die but you would be wrong. Those little bastards will come back again and again and again. I don't care how many times you cut them to the ground.

Yesterday I repotted 5 things that were so root bound I couldn't water them enough, things I hope to give away because I already have plenty in the yard. This morning I pulled out the tomato plants and tossed them on the compost pile even though they were still making little tomatoes but the stink bugs had invaded and I haven't had the energy to fight them off for ping pong ball sized tomatoes.

Late spring, early summer every year the Mississippi kites migrate and summer over here. I saw one pair early on but no others since, and not even those again, until last week. There has been a pair that I would see and hear every morning when I was out but no sign of them today.

image via http://www.hiddennj.com/2013/06/lets-go-fly-mississippi-kite-feasting.html

Another thing that has been absent so far are paper wasps. Usually they're building nests all over the place but not a single one this summer. Where are the kites? Where are the wasps?

What I have seen is one of the resident red shouldered hawks on one of the bird baths and just now a pileated woodpecker on the tallow tree out my window. Neither stayed put long enough for me to get a bad photo on max zoom through the dirty glass in the door.

I mentioned I had started to see squirrels again and that the trees are holding onto their pecans and I went out one day and saw the ground under one of the trees littered with half chewed green pecans. I picked these up in about a 5' diameter circle, one day's damage. Fortunately, I haven't seen it repeated, hoping the peanuts and cracked corn I put out every day tempts them more.

I bought a new toy, uh, tool, a small battery operated chainsaw with a 4” cutting blade. It's good for cutting up to 3” diameter and I plan to use it on the wild grape vine and other things that the cord for the big electric chain saw won't reach to. Haven't used it yet because it's too fucking hot out there to do anything remotely resembling physical labor.

I'll end with the tall phlox.