because the extreme heat and drought weren't bad enough...

Everyone I know is sick of this heat and drought. I just looked at the weather forecast. Triple digits for the next seven days, zero chance of rain for the next ten. I am weary of watering every fucking day. I'd let the zinnias which are on their last legs just dry up and die except butterflies are still visiting them.

I haven't walked the dog in weeks but this morning I noticed that the street was mostly in shade so I put the halter on Minnie and off we went. I was sweating profusely by the time we walked to the other end of the street and back even if most of it was in shade. My neighbor Gary has been asking me if my pecan trees have webworms and yes one of the big ones by the house has some about 25' up and the native at the back of the lot has some. He's been telling me that they started at the far end of the street from me and have been moving my way, that the trees at the other end were almost completely denuded, never seen them this bad. I haven't really been worried about it. We usually get a little every year and they don't do much if any damage. Then I walked Minnie this morning and oh my fucking god!

This is horrible! Everyone's trees are covered with pecans, big clusters of fat developing pecans after three years of nothing and now with the trees denuded by the webworms, they might not have the ability to continue to develop the nuts. Or, as Gary says, once the worms die off the trees will try to regenerate using up their reserves that they would use next spring to leaf out. He asked if I wanted him to come and spray the webworms in my tree but the webs are too high for his sprayer to reach.

It's not just that we may all lose our pecans but people are losing their shade. This is a picture of my neighbor's side yard. I don't know if you can really see how much difference a good shade tree makes but the only place the grass is still green is directly under the canopies of those three trees and he's getting webworms in his trees as well.

In other news the bird feeder has been mobbed with white wing doves the last few days. There are 16 in this picture (taken on zoom through a dirty window). 

Also after months of no squirrels on the bird feeder, one bastard of a squirrel has been able to foil my deterrence and for the last three days straight, I have seen it on the bird feeder but have not seen it actually get up there so I don't know how it's doing it. This morning, peanuts and cracked corn and spilled sunflower seeds on the ground and this bastard is sitting on my bird feeder. I moved the ceramic elephant plant stand much farther away in case it was leaping from there and raised the downspout section so it was under the dome by propping it up with bricks but what I really need is a longer section of downspout.

But this morning I saw something unexpected. My bougainvillea froze down during last winter's arctic freeze and never came back and eventually I just quit checking on it but look what I saw today when I was out watering.

Surprise!