a birth day and other assorted matters

OMG, my next list already has 10 items on it and it's only been 3 days.

On a more pleasant note, the two juvenile squirrels hanging out in the yard and romping in the trees are so cute.

You can't really tell from the picture but this little squirrel is about half the size of an adult.

And then on Saturday, this happened...

and then on Sunday, this happened...

peach dewberry

Friday and Saturday were so hot in the house even with doors and windows open, 84˚ 78% humidity, 83˚ 79% humidity respectively, that we finally turned the AC on for a few hours each day. I believe that's the first time to ever turn the AC on in April.

So I did go and get the last yard of dirt for the season last week and shoveled in enough to fill the raised bed with enough left over for the small extension of the flower bed in the Big Backyard by the banana trees. I want to round the other end to match. Today, I pulled all the gone by poppies out and added some compost and turned that in and I'll plant some bush beans later when it cools off.

Since we had no winter to speak of and a lot of things didn't bloom because of that (no daffodils, white iris, purple iris, no miniature gladiolas, the altheas though it might still be too early for them, it's all so crazy now), there will not be much of a peach crop this year. Not in Texas nor Georgia nor South Carolina. Growers are predicting only about 30% of a normal crop. So when I saw on FB Saturday morning (they are only open Saturday and Sunday) that the local peach orchard had peaches I dropped everything and headed out there and bought 4 bags. They think they will have peaches maybe only another two weeks. So that's where the pie came from plus I put up enough for later pies and still have plenty to eat til next Saturday.

Plenty of stuff is blooming though like some of the day lilies and one clump of nile lilies and finally the magnolia bud that was low enough to reach that we have been watching for weeks, opened.

Sunday was my 67^th birthday. I'm sort of unfazed by 67, oddly since it took me til I was about 65 to get over the shock of being in the 60s at all. It's kind of freaky to think about because I'm still me. I don't feel that fundamentally different from my 50s. The day was beautiful, much cooler and dry. My sister came by, I planted two rows of okra in the new dirt, went and visited with a friend, made a pie, put up peaches, had two long phone conversations one with my son and the other with my brother and 3 out of 4 grandkids called too, walked the dog, picked tomatoes. A good day. A good life.

This small plant is only about 1/3 the size of the others, is a volunteer that came up under one of the broccoli plants in the fall garden, and has 20 tomatoes on it.

waiting for the apocalypse

I've spent nearly all day for the last three days outside, like river days. Only on river days I was outside 24/7 though usually it was only 24/3 although I did a handful of weeklong trips or longer. I figured if these were going to be the last three days on this earth as we know it*, I would spend them outside tending to the growing things as if it was just any ordinary day.

Fortunately, cooler heads have prevailed, for now at least.

Friday Marc helped me shovel out the yard of dirt for the flower bed and Friday and Saturday I got it planted. So far...Cinco De Mayo rose, gardenia, plumeria, hibiscus, spirea, nile lilies, day lilies, spiderwort, and still room for more.

Sunday I tended to little things, repaired two wind chimes, repotted a few things, worked in the Little Backyard mostly. Gave everything a good watering.

Bees are swarming the cosmos and larkspur with the occasional butterfly and hummingbird.

*re Trump's evident desire to start a nuclear war with North Korea

one never knows what one is going to see

Yesterday, I was sitting at my work station and heard a raucous cry. I looked up to see a peacock walking parallel to the road across my neighbor's yard.

Grabbed my device and ran around to get some shots of it as it moseyed on down the road.

About 20 minutes later I looked up to see it in my side yard headed for the front. Again I dashed around to get some pictures.

It's not everyday you see a peacock strutting down the street in front of your house.

an empty space

Sad news to wake up to yesterday morning. David Bowie left us Sunday night. Dead at 69 after a long battle with cancer. The good ones always seem to get taken too soon.

I was fortunate enough to see David Bowie in concert in 1990 on his tour, the last tour he would perform his older body of work. He was retiring certain songs from public performance.

No need to tell what a talented man he was, how many boundaries he crossed, how innovative he was, how just fucking awesome and beautiful he was, how suddenly less the world is without him.

Fly high David. 

wherein I don't talk about work

With my nose to the grindstone the last several weeks my posts have mostly been about the progress of my work but other things have been happening in my world at the same time.

The cold weather that dipped down into the low 30s for a couple of nights after Thanksgiving finally triggered the ginkgo trees and they have been yellow torches for the past week. This morning though, the ground was solid with yellow leaves and the rest are steadily falling.

The tallows, those that aren't already leafless like the ones in my yard, have also come out in colors.

My three grandgirls spent the weekend after Thanksgiving here and we went around to our usual favorite shops and I scored 5 glass drawer knobs ( I had previously found three glass bar drawer pulls). I also finally bought these three small hand painted nut or candy dishes (3 1/2") that I have been mooning over for months. I figure each grandgirl will get one when the time comes to divvy up my stuff.

Last year, 2014, I saw almost no butterflies and bees were scarce as well. This past summer, and currently, I am seeing many more, bees seem abundant and butterflies are, if not abundant, present and best of all, I have been seeing monarchs this fall. Not a lot, but a few. I do have more food plants for them now which I have been working on in several spots and the other day I saw four big caterpillars, then just three, then the others were gone also. I've found one chrysalis so the rest are around here as well.

We had three or four days of overcast and drizzle, what I gather people in the NW call 'rain', and a few days later these weird black mushrooms were coming up over at the shop.

Sunday, after the open house, I put Minnie on a long rope and putzed around in the yard all day. We're having some very mild weather, a sort of Indian summer, and so the weather was perfect for it. I repotted a few cuttings into larger pots and dug up the daffodil bulbs from where they were being crowded out, a chore I had been meaning to do for months, to replant them in a better spot. I didn't think they would have sprouted yet but as you can see, they have. They aren't the only early spring bloomers that are getting started; the bluebonnets, the baby-blue-eyes, the early iris, the little red lilies, the evening primrose are all sprouting and gearing up for early spring.

And Thursday night's sunset was one of those rare nights when not just the western sky is pink and orange but the north and the south as well and the very air is pink.

pretty in pink

I plan to fill molds today, the lizard with ginkgo leaves for sure and maybe one or more of the magnolia leaves. I filled the little bee mold yesterday that I want to cast as an inclusion in another flower piece similar to the one I did last year but halfway through I managed to break a piece of the mold. First time ever that I have done that. Or maybe second. I went ahead and finished it and we will fire it because I am eternally optimistic. That loose piece of plaster is going to stay in place and not float around and ruin the bee. Or not.

Apparently I didn't take a picture of the finished model of the lizard.

I think I'm going to start on the next body of work after I finish these little pieces for the open house which I have been referring to as '9x9' (unless of course the small animal hospital job funding comes through in which case it will be a couple of months before I get back to it). I was thinking 9 groups of 9 with a common theme like feathers or the moon or fungi. I've reconsidered that whole idea since it took me almost three years to finish the 20 botanicas. Whatever gods that be only know how long it would take me to do 81 pieces! So now I'm thinking I will do much smaller groupings, like 3, 4 or 6, and maybe not even 9 sets.

So this is what is going on around here this week and what the title refers to.

The only other thing I've been doing besides model making and filling molds is simultaneously trying to ignore the bigots and confront them with their bigotry at the same time. More on that later. Maybe.

Oh! One other thing. I did go to the doctor about my torn hamstring and he examined me and nothing he did produced any pain and his recommendation was just to go about my business as usual, no physical therapy, and if I do something that causes it to hurt then to stop doing that thing. So I went to yoga class Wednesday and made it through the whole session with no problem. He did say it would take 6 weeks to heal properly and probably a year to regain it's former strength.

fall flowers

Now that fall is here some things have started blooming. The confederate rose and the morning glory bush are right next to each other.

Morning glory bush blossoms. I love these, they are such a delicate color.

The confederate rose is a volunteer from the two that became diseased and I had to cut down. Those opened light pink and turned darker as the day progressed. This one, the blooms open white and turn dark pink by nightfall.

The gingers are blooming again as well but it's been so dry, no rain for weeks (which has been remedied in the last 24 hours), it's hard to keep these water loving plants hydrated.

The yellow trumpet flower that I have been chastising all summer for growing well but not blooming finally burst into bloom and made the evening air smell so lemony sweet. There were over a dozen flowers.

And the tall orange cosmos which I have planted in three locations this year

and the Philippine violet

and it's white sibling that is new for me this year

and the toad lilies by the back door.

So if you have been watching the weather, the remnant of Hurricane Patricia has given us a lovely moderate soaking in rain that has lasted almost 24 hours. No flooding here though certain parts of the city had flooded streets and intersections earlier.

 

other signs the wheel is turning

(besides the shortening days that is)

The cotton is ready for harvest,

the deciduous trees are shedding leaves, sparsely but continuously,

the seed pods on the magnolias are pinking up,

the mississippi kites have migrated,

the pampas grass is sending up it's feathery plumes,

(I think my camera lens fogged up when I rolled down the window of the car to take this picture)

the confederate rose is putting on buds,

that day the wind unexpectedly comes from the northeast,

the ox blood lilies pop up seemingly overnight,

and then one morning, it's undeniably cool outside, 

even if only for a couple of hours.