rain, the queen, various art progress

It’s dark this morning with lightning flashes in the distance and thunder rumbling. The leopard frogs are barking but no rain so far. The dog is her usual mess but at least I’m not trying to sleep. I actually got a good night’s sleep last night. Only woke up once, maybe twice, and went right back to sleep.

Wednesday night my night blooming cereus, aka queen of the night, bloomed. I never get tired of photographing these.

I finally got out my watercolors again determined to paint the zucchini or move on after ignoring them for months and then put them away before the big yard and house clean up for the party. I did not think I would be able to satisfactorily render the zucchini but I’ve been working on it and it’s not so bad. I’ve been using my colored pencil drawing for a model rather than an actual zucchini of which I have two in the refrigerator because I really like the way the drawing came out and the ones in the fridge are just pretty much solid dark green. I can’t remember what I used as a model for the drawing, a picture or an actual zucchini. It’s not quite done, I’ll finish it today, so no picture yet.

Stephanie asked me at yoga last night how the note cards and prints were coming, that they have been getting a lot of people coming into the market asking if they had notecards or art. They did the final color corrections at the print shop and made up a proof set of the notecards for my approval but I haven’t seen them yet. Sarah has them and I’ll get them this weekend so we’re very close to having an actual product. I think I’ll frame the squash flower/zucchini painting and put it in the market and see if it sells. 

Well, the storm has moved directly over us now with the rain. It got darker and darker and now the lightning and thunder is just about constant.

Wednesday I made the tomato sauce. It’s pretty much a day long process. I started about 11 AM and prepared the tomatoes cutting out the stem part, peeled the garlic, coated it all with olive oil, picked the basil leaves, salt and pepper. Then they roast slowly for about 4 hours. Once the roasted tomatoes are cool enough to handle it all gets pureed/liquified and then put in small jars and vacuumed sealed bags for the freezer. I got 6 cups from about 6 pounds of tomatoes. This time I used half romas and half small regular tomatoes. 

Jade was here yesterday. She had just returned from 10 days in California nannying one of our nephew's kids. They live in Austin but have a summer house in California. They’re taking her with them on a cruise out of Greece this summer. Nice gig. She’s their part time nanny in Austin and the rest of the week she works at the animal shelter for the city. Anyway, she was here to pick up her car and spend the day yesterday. She went with me to SHARE for which I was glad as we were pretty busy and most all big orders. But her main reason for spending the day was to get my help dyeing a dress. She had a bridesmaid dress that was a dusky blue, a color I liked but she didn’t, and wanted to dye it either a dusky pink or brown. We tried the pink first with just really hot water out of the tap but it didn’t take on the synthetic fabric. So then we tried the brown on the stove using the candy thermometer to get the right temperature. The brown dye was specifically for polyester/nylon type fabric which the pink was not and it came out really nice, a sort of not quite mauve, not quite brown color. She wants to wear it to a wedding tonight so now it just needs to be ironed.

The rain is mostly stopped now though thunder is still rumbling in the distance.  

puny garden, crazy hair, rain!, and other stuff

My spring garden hasn’t done diddly squat this year. The tomatoes bloomed but didn’t set fruit and the ones that did set more than half rotted before they ripened.

Still have some green ones on the plants but they aren’t making new ones. I got two or three yellow squash off three plants which have all died. Green beans did well enough but they’re about done. Cucumber finally started blooming but none of them are fruit bearing flowers. Of the other five plants two more finally started growing but not blooming. Onions seem to be doing alright but they won’t be ready for a while yet. Growing flowers is easy, growing food is hard! I finally went to the market down the road today and got enough local, well, hill country, tomatoes to make one batch of tomato sauce. I’ll be able to get some sweet corn from my neighbor’s brother soon which I will put up in the freezer for the rest of the year. Sigh. Growing food is going to become more important. My paltry amount of groceries this week cost $115 (excluding the tomatoes). 

Paisleigh was here Sunday, more chalk art. She likes for you to draw around her hands and feet and she colors them in. We did her body too and she helped with her crazy hair. And hearts, always hearts. I didn’t last long in the heat even though we were in the shade. I’d already worked on the fence some and we had played in the shop with all the Barbie stuff before we came over here but I don’t have any toys in the house and she was ready to see her daddy so I walked her back across the street and then came in. It is horribly hot and still only just May. I’ll need to get some toys for her to play with in the house. 

Rain! We finally got some much needed rain! It got very windy Monday afternoon and a small shower followed. Cooled it down enough to walk Minnie. It has been so hot and there is no shade until much later on the streets I walk that I just haven’t. And then Monday night a tremendous thunderstorm came through, lightning, thunder, hard rain; about 3” worth so said the rain gauge this morning. Of course that also means I got no sleep last night because of a certain neurotic little dog but I did make good progress in the book I’m reading.

Took my shower this morning to see a new resident in the bathroom. It’s a wolf spider and even though it’s missing a leg I expect it to earn its keep. I’m more curious about how it got in there than freaked out. Spiders don’t bother me and wolf spiders are way less annoying than all the little jumping spiders and daddy long legs that think my house is the perfect place to live.

Some more of the local wildlife though these were outside: a red underwing moth and an anole cruising on a tomato plant.

Of course yesterday, Monday, was Memorial Day and I did not, like I did not all through Trump’s first term, put out my flag because that man and his MAGAts make a mockery of the American flag. I do honor those who gave their lives protecting this country and fighting to preserve our democracy and our Constitution but I will not do that by putting out a flag that represents a man and administration that does not honor those men and women; a man who mocks our fallen and calls them losers; a man who never served because he used his father’s wealth and influence to escape the draft; a man who uses his speeches and social media presence not to honor those who gave their lives so that we may live in peace but to brag and lie about himself and air his petty grievances. I cannot put out a flag that no longer represents what that flag has stood for. I don’t think that country even exists right now.  

just another week

I don’t have any pertinent pictures so…more flowers! In order: love-in-a-mist, day lily, day lily.

Once again I’ve spent the week moving the sprinkler around. We need rain so badly, I can’t remember how long it’s been. Highs in the 90s and no rain predicted until maybe next Monday.

The results of my visit with the ophthalmologist last Monday, eye is healing nicely. Took me off the antibiotic eye drop and reduced the other two to just three times a day for a week and then two times a day for a week and then come back. So Monday I did not use the antibiotic eye drops for the last dose of the day. Tuesday I was amazed at how good my eye felt and has since, the gooey feeling gone. So either it was the antibiotic eye drops that caused that sensation or it was the mother of all coincidences. She said I could go about my usual activity. Yoga, forward bend for 12 breaths (not that I hold one for 12 breaths)? Um, maybe just six. Pick up heavy stuff? How heavy she asked. Forty pound bag of dirt? Maybe next week.

Don’t really have much to write about; went to yoga Monday and Wednesday (canceled Thursday), did a CostCo run on Wednesday, went to SHARE on Thursday, worked on the fence line two days for an hour or so (still not done, it’s freaking hot out there). This would have been birthday week when the kids were growing up; daughter’s birthday was Tuesday, son’s birthday was Friday. When I was pregnant with my son everybody kept saying wouldn’t it be great if they were born on the same day as his due date was within a day or two of hers. No! How terrible that would be for them. I kept telling that baby to hold on for a few more days.

I let Minnie out in the little backyard one last time before bed the other night, as I do, and she bolted straight to the base of the tallow tree barking, as she does. We have possums that live under the house and they forage around under there. Well, that night there was a scramble and she started barking hysterically at something so I went after her. Laying on the ground was not quite a baby not quite a juvenile possum, eyes staring deadly, mouth pulled back in a rictus. I picked Minnie up and put her back in the house. If they run she chases but she doesn’t really know what to do with one when it’s playing dead. Of course it was gone the next morning. Probably got up and ambled on a few minutes after I closed the back door.

There was some excitement at SHARE which I totally missed somehow. I hadn’t missed a day that I can remember but I noticed that one of the volunteers that worked in clothing hadn’t shown up for about 4 or 5 weeks and I finally asked one of the guys what was up. He said she had got into it with one of the clients to the point where Jan had to intervene and sent her back to where the food was stored and people pick up their food and clothes and whatever else they are receiving. She was pissed off and venting loudly and cursing a blue streak back there and was told not to come back. Where the hell was I that I was not aware of any of this, she had to have walked right past me and I’m in and out of that store room. This woman has always been very free with profanity when bs-ing with us in the food area and I assume with everybody else. Didn’t bother me especially because, well, I’m fairly free with it myself, but I’m also very restrained with my speech around those churchy people, no point in creating discomfort around people I work with every week. 

The only other thing that went on this week is my grandson fixed the truck, putting in a new fuel pump and put the switch on the battery that connects/disconnects it since we have a short somewhere that drains the battery. Now all I have to do is pop the hood and flip the switch when I want to use the truck. First thing is taking it through the car wash, next thing hauling all the accumulated various metal to the metal recyclers. He also added AC coolant to the car. It has a leak somewhere, hasn’t been cooling very well for a while. Whatever he added has dye in it so that as it leaks out he’ll be able to tell where the leak is. Nice to have a mechanic in the family now that they have moved back here from Arkansas. He’s turned into a fine young man, responsible father of two.

No coherent or tidy ending to my life last week.

flowers, growth, my left eye, and is nothing sacred?

Finally had a magnolia blossom open low enough for me to reach. It's enormous, spans 9".

For the first time in I can’t tell you how long I read and returned two books in two weeks when they were due, not a month later. I didn’t even manage to do that last summer when all I could do was sit on my ass and ‘rest and recover’ from one fucking procedure after another. Emboldened, I checked out two more on Saturday.  

I go back to the eye doctor today to find out if I can resume my normal lifestyle; bending over, picking things up, yoga, finding out when I can stop the eyedrops although I don’t really mind them, and most importantly, when I can rub the eye without damaging the new lens. I freaked myself out last Wednesday. I had been outside, it was hot, I was sweating and when I came in I picked up my bandana to wipe the sweat off my face and out of my eyes and I pressed on the left eye before I registered what I was doing. I was convinced that my new clear and in focus eyesight in that eye was now blurry. Was it? I don’t know. What I’ve decided is that it is still healing and adjusting but still pretty good. It still feels like there is something in my eye sometimes, goo, although both eyes generally feel that way in the mornings, but the last two nights watching tv I realized my eye felt normal so it’s getting there. 

I got stung by a red wasp Saturday. The bastard nailed me on my face about half an inch from the outside corner of my right eye. Fuck, that hurt. I don’t blame it, it was just protecting its nest. I was cutting away some of the virginia creeper, briar, and wild grape that has started taking over sections of the fence between the shop yard and the neighbor again that I spent months clearing about four years ago before we put the house there for my sister. I have not been vigilant this spring and that’s what it requires to keep the growth down. I was working on a particularly dense section when that little bastard zoomed out. I’ll have to look closely to see if I can see the nest. I don’t ordinarily kill them and the nests, they have their place in the ecosystem, but I’ll have to so I can finish clearing that growth. Couldn’t ever see the nest so I just doused that spot thoroughly yesterday.

The zinnias are in full bloom. I put them in a different spot this year, closer to the house now that the pecan tree that was so heavily damaged in last summer’s hurricane isn’t shading that part of the yard. They are mostly various shades of pink but some white, red, yellow, and orange.

The pink plumerias are putting out bloom stalks and even have a few flowers on one. I’ll have to wait longer for the bridal bouquet plumerias since I cut them back severely last fall because they were over 8’ tall but they’re putting out lots of new growth.

I’ll leave this without comment from the Department of What Is Wrong With This Picture:

short stories part whatever, more bloomey things

I subscribe to a newsletter called Nautilus. You have to pay to play to get access to all the articles in every daily email but they always include one free article and they are fascinating. Most recently I read one titled How Life Works by Philip Ball. It’s talking about genes and gave forth this interesting tidbit, that we are not complex forms because we have an abundance of genes, in fact we have barely half of the amount in a banana, but because of the way our genes are regulated. We are half of a banana, I found that amusing for some reason.  Other essays I’ve read via Nautilus recently: Never Underestimate The Intelligence Of Trees by Brandon Keim and How To Quiet Your Brain Chatter by Liz Greene. I have several more still in my inbox I want to read. The one about trees was really no surprise because I’ve held the belief that trees are sentient beings with all the attributes of sentience since my early 20s. In fact I believe all life is sentient. How can it not be and survive?

When my brother was here the topic of ear worms came up. He said that the way to combat one driving you crazy is to mentally replace it with a vigorous marching tune. So I tried it this morning, tired of the short refrain from a song I can’t remember the last time I heard it and had been hanging around for a couple of days (and why does my brain pick these off the wall refrains?), and it worked. Of course now I have this Philip Souza type marching melody bouncing around but not as often and infinitely better because it has no words! And later in the day even it was gone.

We’ve been have really nice weather this last week; cool nights and mornings, low humidity, blue sky days, lows in the 60s, highs in the low 80s. That’s changing this week as highs will get into the 90s and lows in the 70s while the hill country will be broiling. Summer is creeping in.

This is the Chinese tallow tree in the little backyard directly across from the back door on the east side of the property inside the fence and shades the yard and house from the hot summer morning sun. It drops its leaves in the fall and if we get an early cold snap they turn yellow, red, and orange. Even without a cold snap they get speckled with all colors just not all at once. The leaves I drew last fall were from this tree. It’s old, average lifespan 30 - 50 years, and I imagine it’s close to 50, but can live up to 100 in optimal conditions. I love this old tree that gives us shade and color and shelter for birds and squirrels.

You might remember that I got a letter from a Frank Hofer, an account manager with a reputable Investment Bank in Canada offering me half of $9+M for submitting me as the heir to Alan Abbott’s estate who died with no kin to claim said estate. Well, it turns out that Frank is a piker because I got another letter from Noah Mark Esq., an attorney and notary public, also in Canada contacting me about an unclaimed “permanent life insurance policy” held by his client the LATE JEFFER ABBOTT, a real estate investor, who was also a cancer victim and died about four years ago with no heirs coming forth and had a “Life Insurance Policy” savings monetary deposit of $49,375,735.47 (gotta love the 47¢, makes it more authentic don’t you think?) which he will happily split 50/50 with me for submitting me as the heir. Oh and time is of the essence since the money will have to be turned over to the state after being unclaimed for four years. Boy, am I glad I didn’t jump on that first offer. Now I can go for the big money.

A week later and my eye feels almost normal. The graininess and gooey feeling is gone, mostly I’m just aware of it. It feels like there is a bit of a glare on the outside edge but now I’m thinking that’s just because I’m getting more light in compared to the other eye. And I swear, my eye is a different color. I’d been in the habit of using my glasses to watch tv so things were better in focus but now of course my glasses are useless. I was watching tv Saturday night and I suddenly became aware of how sharp, in focus, it was and while I need cheaters to read a book or look at my phone (computer screen is fine) where before I didn’t, my mid range vision is excellent and I’m not really sure how far that extends. Pretty far seems like. 

A few more blooming things: in this picture byzantine gladiolus, day lilies, society garlic;

spiderwort, one of my favorite day lilies, carolina wild petunia which I dug up out of an easement in my old city neighborhood and which has spread all over the little backyard.

bold squirrel, flowers, healing

Zinnias!

I wrote my last post mostly in the morning the day after my surgery and didn’t really get around to proofreading it until the afternoon when it was already published. OMG! So many typos. Now three days after my surgery and I’m ready for it to be healed! I know, I know, patience. It will take weeks to be fully healed and my vision settled. It’s a little better every day, colors are saturated again but I get a grainy feeling off and on and I’m ready for that to stop. I have to wear sunglasses outside even when it’s overcast. In fact I’m wearing them now in the house because it’s a clear blue sky day and the sun is coming in the windows I face and reflecting off the laminate on my desk into my face. I slept off and on most of the day Wednesday after my surgery. Slept a lot Thursday but not as much and even took a couple of brief naps on Friday. 

We’re having cool mornings and low humidity days so the back door is open. First thing I do every morning is fill Cat’s bowl, fill the bird feeder (though I’m out of seed right now), put a couple of handfuls of cracked corn on a paving stone (also out of that right now), and put a handful of peanuts on the ceramic elephant for the squirrels. I missed putting out the peanuts on Wednesday and Thursday though I did on Friday. I keep the bag of peanuts on the shelf under my big work table easily visible from the outside when the door is open and I don’t close it until dusk when the weather is nice. Apparently I’ve been being watched. I was in the next room yesterday early afternoon when I heard a quiet rustling. When I looked through the door into my studio room I caught a flash of a squirrel dashing out the door. This morning the open bag of peanuts was empty except for one nut, the bag had been moved further back on the shelf and there were a few peanut shells laying about. There was only about a handful left in that bag but now I suppose I’ll have to use a clothes pin to close the new bag. We’ll see how clever the little devil is.

I looked out the back door on Thursday to see this.

This is not from lack of water. I’d already cut off two wilted long branches but there was new growth at the top so I figured these older stems were dying back. I have no idea why this Brazilian button is dying and I’m not happy about it. There is one new little plant coming up from seed in the pot so hopefully it will grow and thrive.

Not everything in the yard is pink or purple: developing tomatoes, clasping leaved coneflowers, various daylilies, easter lilies, althea (rose of sharon).

But a lot is: althea (rose of sharon). (I do not know why blogger insists on this type face for these sentences but it will not change.)

And the ginger root from the grocery store finally sprouted!

While I was fixing breakfast and eating the little devil made about 5 attempts. I saw him/her (?) on the shelf under the table and when it saw me watching it scampered out. We could hear the rustling of the cellophane bag while we were eating. A couple of times Minnie chased it out. It managed to get the clothespin off three times, the last time the little bastard tore the cellophane bag (which of course I knew would happen).

Ok, it’s been fun and games little squirrel but that’s all over now. I emptied the peanuts into a ziplock bag and put it on top of a shelving unit further back in the room.

beans and my left eye

My first harvest of green beans, picked and eaten on Tuesday. 

The surgery went well yesterday, no complications. We were there by 7 AM and home by 10. I had a weird dream just before waking yesterday morning. I dreamed we were still at home and Marc was watching TV and I noticed it was already ten minutes after seven. We have to leave, I’m already late and he was all meh. Anyway we got in the car and he was driving in the wrong direction, where are you going? He drove up to the back lot of a big electrical company, why are we here? This is not the hospital. Give me the keys, I’m driving. This pissed him off and he threw the keys and they got hung high on a pole where I couldn’t reach them but he had another set. So I drove us to the hospital and said I was a little late. That’s OK, the doctor is running late and I would be having a different doctor. What, why? We decided so and so would be better. NO. No, no, I don’t want a different doctor. Well he will be doing the procedure. No, I said again, and left.

So that’s how my day started out yesterday. Actually we got to the hospital here in Wharton on time and no, there had been no substitution. I checked in and they took me back to pre/post-op to remove my clothes and put on the gown which was huge, I mean big enough to wrap around three people. There was no way that thing was staying on my body so they brought me a small one. This was the most bare bones pre-op room I have ever been in. A cubicle screened off from adjacent ones by curtains as they all are but it was totally empty except for a narrow bed with only a bottom fitted sheet on it that was in a sitting position, no pillow but a padded headrest, no chair, vital sign monitors on the wall behind the bed. They brought me a blanket when I asked for one. The nursing staff was nice enough, we joked around, I initialed and signed all the forms, anesthesiologist came in and asked a bunch of questions, got an IV, gave me a valium and anti nausea meds, drops in my eye and they laid the bed down flat and wheeled me into surgery and that’s really the last thing I remember. I wasn’t completely out but I don’t really remember anything and then I woke up back in pre-op with a bandage over my eye which I was allowed to remove after four hours. 

The first thing I noticed after I removed the bandage was how bright everything was. I would close my left eye and look out my right eye and everything was the level of brightness I was used to. Left eye only, really bright. I had to wear the sunglasses they provided in the house. The second thing I noticed was the nature of that brightness. It wasn’t a white brightness but a blue tinged brightness that affected the quality of colors. Colors look different from the left eye only compared to the right eye that I was used to. My brother told me I would be surprised by how blue everything was but I thought he meant that the blues would be bluer which I couldn’t understand how that could be since blue looked very blue already. But it’s the nature of the brightness that has a blue tint. A cool tint rather than the warm tint of the light that I was used to. Which got me to thinking about color, the nature of color, the seeing of color and that probably none of us sees any one color exactly the same. And it made me wonder how this is going to affect my watercolor painting. The other thing I noticed is that colors were less saturated with my left eye only. I don’t know if all this is permanent or will change as my eye heals. This is one of the questions I have when I go for my follow up appointment today.

Physically, the eye was very bloody when I removed the bandage and felt gooey, like I wanted to rub it out. And yes, I have restrained from rubbing the eye. I have three different eye drops that I must use four times a day. For how long I asked the doctor, until I tell you to stop she told me. So Marc has been administering the drops. I don’t have trouble putting drops in my eyes but my vision in that eye is kind of blurry, easier to get Marc to do it. Speaking of vision, I have not needed glasses to read for the past four or five years, an improvement in my eyesight caused by the developing cataract. Now I can’t read without cheaters, my glasses being fairly useless. How much of that is trauma from the surgery and how much was reverting back to my pre-cataract eyesight I don’t know.

Today the bloodiness is starting to clear, my vision in that eye is improving some, colors still don’t seem as saturated but better, light still has a blue tinge. The color of my eye seems to have changed. I’ve always had very dark brown eyes which I attributed to my parents never being able to tell if my eyes were dilated when I was stoned as a teenager and young adult. As the cataracts have developed a light white/gray ring formed growing inward and now after the surgery the left eye seems bluer if that makes any sense. Maybe because my vision is still clearing up. It’s only been a little over 24 hours.

Had my post-op visit. The assistant checked my vision in my left eye, says it went from 22/70 to 20/25 and the fuzziness was because “you just had surgery a day ago”. The ophthalmologist responded to all my observations and questions. She says the ‘blue tint’ is because I’m now seeing the true colors, that the developing cataract warms or browns colors and I’ll get used to it. The less saturated level, as compared to my right eye, is probably because I have some inflammation in my eye and it will clear up and colors should seem more vivid. My neighbor’s house which has always been an unassuming gray now appears to have a violet tint to the gray, at least from a distance. Here’s another observation…my computer screen is so bright! Several months ago I was looking at the settings to see if I could brighten it up but it was at max level. Now I may tone it down some.

I have another follow up in 10 days.