progress and clouds

Here's the cartoon for the luna moth piece. It's not really a drawing but a pattern for cutting out the layers of wax for the model. It will be much simpler than the angel trumpet models; one layer for the leaves and caterpillar and two for the moth. This one will be 6” x 8”.

And here's the detailed drawing of the luna moth, also a pattern.

I haven't worked on the drowned feather piece again because other chores got in the way, like going to the grocery store on Tuesday and making a trip into Rosenberg to the liquor warehouse on Wednesday while Marc made the first of the angel trumpet molds. And a mountain of plates and silverware took up my time between lunch and yoga. And Thursday at SHARE though I did clean up the mold and did my volume measure that afternoon.

Also Thursday Marc got the cracked hose bib off the rest of the contraption and replaced it with a new one but now the converter piece that allows me to attach the outside hose to the hose bib is missing, I've looked all over the shop, the studio, the garage, and even in the house to no avail. So now I have to go out and get a new one of those (which I did but it took me two stores to find it).

Friday I selected my colors (and color combinations) and so now I'm ready to begin filling the first trumpet flower mold.

Then I worked out in the yard for about an hour and when I came in I was totally drenched with sweat from working in the shade! And believe it or not I set up the sprinkler in one of the flower beds.

And it is August on the Texas Gulf Coast Plains. UGH. Hot and humid, the sky filled with puffy clouds which are quite beautiful as long as you're looking at them from inside an air conditioned space or as you dash from one place to another. Though really it hasn't been as hot as it could be, all this regular rain has kept temps in the low 90s.

And the rangoon creeper.

yard work and a little hilarity

The push is on to get everything done in the yard by the end of the month, get the beds weeded, fertilized, and mulched, get the summer annuals in, get everything repotted that have outgrown their pots, get the plumerias moved. This week I got the plumerias, the two angel trumpets, and the nun's orchid repotted, took my neighbor Gary and neighbor Judy some of the dwarf gladiolus, picked up the brick pavers bordering a small flower bed I'm giving up on (too much work to keep the baby rain trees out) and added them to the appropriate pile in the barn and dug up more dwarf gladiolus, spider lilies, day lilies, spiderwort, and amaryllis from that bed and shared them around with Pam and the neighbors. I dithered about repotting the big yellow trumpet flower or putting it in the ground and finally just put it in the biggest pot that the dead star of India was in.

Because of all this outside activity I haven't had my usual blog reading time to see what y'all are up to but I'll be back around.

Last Thursday was food delivery day at SHARE from the regional food bank and one of the things on the pallet was over 200 pounds of this candy. 

Jan sent all the volunteers home with a box and told the guys in the back to be generous with it when filling food requests and one of the guys opened one there at SHARE for us to share (see what I did there). So Thursday night while I was still finishing my dinner (slow eater eating mindfully) Marc attempted to open the plastic box of candy. He struggled with that thing for about 5 minutes and never could get the top off the box. Take a knife to it I told him. I'm about too he replied. We were feeling highly amused at this point but when he got the knife and worked on it to little effect it was getting hysterical. Finally, whatever he did busted the plastic lid with half of it popping off and candy went flying everywhere, all over the table, the floor, and even into the kitchen. OMG we were laughing so hard by this time we couldn't talk or breathe, wiping tears away. 

I have no idea why he had such a hard time opening that plastic box. Alcohol may have been involved.

Yesterday I finally repotted the tall bridal bouquet plumeria putting off pruning it back til fall or next spring. 

Believe it or not, that's a bigger pot than the one it was in. 

I got a bit more done around the yard and then my daughter and the twins, who are in town for the weekend, came by for a visit so nothing else got done and then it rained last night and is currently raining now so that's it for yard work til it dries out some.

Thursday, Marc was looking for a small tiny phillips head screwdriver and he saw a snake in the open toolbox sticking its head up from under the tray, closed it and brought it outside and took the tray out to discover a mouse nest in one corner with the snake now hiding under the small metal box he was trying to move out of the way with the stick.

Several tries later we got it moved enough to expose the little rat snake. I say little because they can get 6' long.

After encouraging it to vacate the tool box and it moved away under the truck I cleaned out the paper trash and there was a dead hairless baby mouse in there so the rat snake was doing its job. Then Saturday Marc scared up another snake while he was mowing which we are pretty sure was a copperhead in retrospect. That one I would have killed had I had a shovel handy so I picked up a long stick and herded it towards the wicked witch of the west's property. It was going that way anyway.

Some miscellaneous pics to end with...

Pam and I spied the neighborhood peacock coming back from yoga Wednesday evening.

Marc brought this magnolia blossom in yesterday and it immediately filled the room with it's scent.

A cloud with eyes.

Getting to be daylily time.

The purple coneflowers in the front are in full bloom.

the aforementioned pretty pictures...

We've been having some really nice sunsets as the bands of storms have moved through the last two weeks.

And some really nice cloud formations too.

We've been getting enough showers that I haven't had to water every day which is a relief and it's cooled down just enough still been hot though that the heat isn't brutal. We actually had a few days that didn't even make it into the 90˚s.

sunsets, flowers, and other stuff

Today is my neighbor Frank's birthday. Frank of the Bountiful Garden. He will be 88. His family has found a wonderful woman to take care of him in his home 15 days on, 4 days off. Yesterday his son and daughter had a combination birthday/father's day party for him.

They have been working on getting the yard trimmed and spiffed up, the way Frank and Dorothy would have kept it, and Saturday they barbequed and had family, friends, and neighbors over. We had a nice time.

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I have a new flower in the yard this year, one that I want to try to get established. I got seeds from a fellow gardener that has them in her gardens and I scattered them in four different locations to see where they liked it best. It is called love-in-a-mist.

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We had some pretty spectacular sunsets right around the time we got that 6+” of rain a couple of weeks ago.

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And some miscellaneous flower pictures.

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The other thing I did last week besides work was I took all my girls to see Maleficent. Marc didn't want to go so I treated my daughter and grandgirls. If you have been living in a cave somewhere and don't know about it, it is a re-telling of Sleeping Beauty only it is Maleficent's story. Angelina Jolie was great. They could not have picked a better person to play that part. Very enchanting with a bit of a twist.

It's probably too late to see it if you haven't already.

ask and ye shall receive

I'd be all 'right on, man' except that I've been asking for rain for months to no effect.

This time instead of being hopeful at the weather prediction, I scoffed.

After I made my post last Thursday, we had a glorious sunset and then it really began to cloud over and the sky was actually dripping a little bit of water. I can't even dignify the amount by saying it was sprinkling.

It did rain during the night Thursday though and it rained off and on all day Friday, though never a sustained heavy rain. Mostly what we have been in the habit of getting plus intermittent heavier showers. Except about mid-day a heavy wind came up with a sudden downpour of heavy rain which lasted all of about 10 or 15 minutes and then it just...stopped. Just like that, no letting up, no sprinkling or drizzling, just a downpour one minute and nothing the next.

It knocked over 5 of the plumerias I have in pots.

And it rained more during the night last night too. I went over and checked my neighbor's rain gauge this afternoon...3.25”. Would have liked more but I am so happy with what we got. I stood out under the eave and watched it for a while last night.

Of course I'd been watching it all day while I worked on this full size drawing for a window, a water scene coincidentally, with flowering plants and a heron.

It has been a beautiful day with cooler temperatures and everything looks so much happier and the air is clean and smells so good.

As long as it was still raining I refrained from posting anything about it here or on FB. If I learned anything at all on the river, I learned not to invoke the gods.

Especially when you are getting something you want or like. Plenty of time to be grateful and thankful after the event.

late summer

It is just so hot and dry here, still. That week in NY has ruined me. It has made me less tolerant of the late summer heat this year. I think if it was spring, coming out of winter, instead of late summer, I would be enjoying the same temperatures.

I've been waiting for it to cool down a little before I tend to late summer chores in the yard because in no time at all my few efforts send me back into the house, dripping sweat.

I know the wheel is turning. The sun no longer sets behind my neighbor's house. Some leaves are starting to fall and I need to rake or sweep the concrete apron in front of the garage. The pecan trees have been dropping green pecans for weeks. The pampas grass is blooming. The titmice and chickadees empty the teacup feeder nearly every day hoarding the sunflower seeds for winter, as if the teacup will disappear. Most of the summer bloomers have gone to seed and everything just looks so tired. The cotton in the fields has been harvested and the farmer just plowed under the stubble from the corn harvest.

We are still in a drought cycle. This summer worse than last but not as bad as two summers ago. Not tree killing drought when millions of trees died. But it is dry. The sky fills with clouds but only teases. Whatever the weather patterns are, they have changed and the rain passes over us. I can't even remember when we had a good hard rain or a day when it rained all day. Most of the showers we get, when we get anything at all, last about half an hour.

I water outside every day but lately, it's not enough. I just can't water enough. I soak the white ginger one evening, letting the hose run, letting the water soak in and 48 hours later, the leaves are curled and the ground is hard again.

My two confederate rose bushes that were so beautiful and amazing last fall, came up diseased this spring. One of the bushes was partially affected last year but this year it was both of them completely. Early summer, I cut them back to the ground thinking maybe they would come out healthy. The new growth came out gnarly and stunted and while a volunteer from last year has grown to 8' over the summer, these barely got 18” tall. I took a section to the garden club meeting, the first of the season, last week. No one could tell me the problem. The speaker, a master gardener, said aphids but I know it's not aphids because there aren't any. I didn't argue with her.

I came home and cut them to the ground again.

The only oasis is the turtle pond and the water lily pond. Big Mama patrols with her posse of goldfish and four little frogs have taken up residence with the water lilies. A steady stream of bees and wasps help themselves to a drink.

The little frogs are used to me now and no longer jump away when I come to pull the string algae and aging lily pads out of the pond.

And the morning glory bush is in full bloom. I love these gorgeous morning glory like flowers and like morning glories, they close up by mid-day.