the mothership, the captive, the next big project and one small one

Monday evening a front started moving in from the west. It looked like the Mothership edging into view. Somewhere around 4 AM long deep rumbles of thunder started but I never did hear any rain. Tuesday morning it was wet and gently raining and continued to rain into late afternoon, the perfect rain that we needed to soak in.

Tuesday I had my semi-annual teeth cleaning and she was running behind, had to wait 45 minutes. She does a good job, no complaint there, but I wish my dentist had a different hygienist because she's a mis-informed, gets her 'news' from Fox, republican. I don't know if she a MAGAt cult member but she was going on today hitting all the republican talking point lies...no one wants to work just live off the government money (so why is unemployment at an all time low?) and then she complained about McDonalds raising wages to $12 an hour and now the price hamburgers is going to go up (to which I replied I would gladly pay an extra 10¢ for a hamburger so the worker could make a living wage) (as if $12 an hour is a living wage), there's no manufacturing in this country anymore, regulations are killing the energy industry, all this green energy initiative wasting money and what's the point since China and Iran aren't doing anything and she doesn't believe in global warming anyway and what about those poisonous electric car batteries that are expensive to replace and people charging their electric cars will cause blackouts in Wharton (right about now I was internally shaking my head at the ignorance). About the only one she missed was the 'crisis' at the border. She was all over the place jumping from one thing to another. About all I could do to refute her idiocy with her fingers in my mouth was to say 'not true' plus I didn't want to spend an extra hour in the chair while I countered her assertions with facts and achievements of Biden's administration. Wouldn't have mattered anyway.

I've started cutting back the mound of vines covering my raised beds from the garden I had over at the shop which after the flood was filled with weeds and seeds and after fighting it for a couple of years I finally just abandoned it and the virginia creeper, briar, native passion flower vine that does not bloom overwhelmed the area, probably some wild grape vine in there too. Kudzu got nothing on our shit. My goal is to cut away a garden cart full every day until I finally get the ground exposed, the pieces of raised bed removed and the dirt spread out so it can be mowed over. Monday I uncovered a small hackberry tree and excavated two tomato cages hauling two garden carts worth to the burn pile which is a good thing since it rained all day Tuesday. This was my progress after Monday (the front half looked like the back half before I started).

there are 4 tomato cages in there still to be uncovered

Wednesday after I got back from doing the grocery shop I spent an hour and another cart load and excavated two more tomato cages. Further progress.

two more cages left

And Thursday afternoon another half hour and another tomato cage. One more to go and then I'll dismantle the little plastic raised bed before I start on the other two raised beds of wild growth.

Our most recent cold front is just a memory and if I'm going to plant the bougainvillea and divide the bird of paradise and plant half of it in the ground I should do that soon, like now, before it gets too late. And pansies! Time to get the pansies in.

Another hour and Friday's progress (and I am soaked from head to crotch). 

After lunch I did pull the bird of paradise out of it's pot, divided it up, dug a big hole for one half and got it in the ground, then put the other half back in the same pot. If/when we get a freeze I'll try to protect the one in the ground this winter but if it doesn't make it, I've got the one in the pot which will winter over in the garage.

And because I wasn't tired enough, Minnie wanted the longest of the long walk because she didn't get one yesterday.

In case there was any doubt about Cat settling in and making herself at home.

odds and ends

We have three wifi connections in our house via two different routers. I generally prefer to use the oldest as it's the fastest even though one of the new ones is supposedly 5G so you'd think that when I wake up my computer (it disconnects from the wifi when asleep) it would reconnect to one of those in the house. And you would be wrong. Often it connects to my sister's wifi across the street (I have her password from back when we were staying with her right after the Harvey flood), skipping our two routers in between my desktop and my sister's house. And that one is very slow.

I get notifications on my tablet. The two were Amber alerts and Severe Weather alerts. I finally turned off the Amber alerts because they always came in the middle of the night but I still get the Severe Weather alerts though at some point they segued into...

So is it going to start hailing stolen children?

Learned Wednesday that the birth of my first great grandchild has been moved up from October 13 to this Sunday if the doctor, who is concerned about her feet and sugar levels, can get an appointment.

Across the road that the west end of my street ends at is a railroad track, a corn/cotton field and then a county road that parallels that road and then the highway. Yesterday evening set fire to four big piles of trees in that field that must have been cleared from somewhere nearby. They were flaming up when we drove by on the way to yoga but never really caught as they were still there coming back and smoldering smokily. When I set out to walk Minnie it was hazy and smelly from the smoke that was drifting into our end of the neighborhood. Thursday morning it was even worse so I guess they smoldered all night.

Another mostly sleepless night Thursday night but boy did I have some weird dreams in the hour or two of sleep I got before I had to get up to get ready for my day at SHARE, part of which involved people milling around my house while someone, the maid/cook was fixing breakfast that these people had been invited for. When we were called to eat, a big table had been set and another table was laid out with a big spread of different food buffet style. I fixed my plate (can't say what it all was except for scrambled eggs, some bread kind of thing, and everything else was sort of fluffy sweet stuff) and decided my place at the table was too crowded so I stood/sat? off to the side and my mouth started watering for real while I was asleep and I woke enough to to know that while I was swallowing all that saliva in my dream, I was swallowing it for real. There was another one that involved some kind of animal, a dog that turned into a tortoise kind of thing later and a swimming pool and feeding it some weird snowflake shaped crustacean like things.

Also last Wednesday, I filled in the rest of the background color even adding a little more, if it's going to turn out darker then I might as well go with it but I don't think it will really be that dark, and then started back filling for the clear layer but ran out of time.

Finally got over to the studio this morning and filled in the last of the clear and then the final white layer and now it's ready to go in the kiln.

I'm sure everyone is breathing a sigh of relief that they don't have to listen to me moan about it, at least til it's fired and I see how it came out. The gallery in Dallas has already contacted me about having these two pieces for the Botanical show in February.

Another sign of the end of summer and the somewhat cooler weather, the Philippine lilies are starting to bloom. They can get to be a good sized shrub though this one is a volunteer I put in a pot and the single stem has shot up at least three feet. I have a white version too but it's not blooming yet.

plumbing done, stubborn daylilies, and a response

Rocky showed back up Friday and replaced a leaky ball joint to what was the connection to the water heater we tossed out after Harvey and have not replaced. I have no idea if it worked since we never tried to use the hot water previous to the flood. And then he replaced the galvanized pipe that ran above the studio to the sink connections, then reattached the flexible hose from the water pipe to the sink faucet and then turned the water on again...softly, slowly...and it all held and ears to the bathroom wall listening for the sound of water leaking and nada. Phew! Then he cut out the section of ruined sheetrock in the ceiling to see why the roof repair didn't hold. Except I went over a couple of hours later just to check and discovered two very very slow drips, one from the p-trap under the work sink and one from the connection to the shut off valve to the toilet. I just put basins under each until Rocky comes back to finish repairing the roof and ceiling in the studio. It was so miserably hot over there.

It is so miserably hot outside today. It's currently, at the time of this writing, only 87˚ with 58% humidity. But here's the forecast for today...

Note the real feel is 103˚, 98˚ in the shade. In the shade!

My daylilies should be in full bloom by now. I've had 3 varieties bloom but sparser than usual, a couple of others put up only one or two flowers, and my common double orange daylilies that comprise 80% +/- of the daylily bed are not blooming at all, no bloom scapes except for one or two plants but the nile lilies surprised me with three blooms.

I didn't think they would bloom this year since they froze to the ground and took a long time to come out. Another surprise was two easter lilies since they also froze to the ground though smaller ones that were just beginning to grow survived and these flowers came from some of those.

The red crinum lilies are putting up their bloom stalks

and the yellow angel trumpet in a pot is blooming again

and even the pink one has put on a couple of buds.

The butternut squash vines growing out of the compost pile are taking over the yard. I picked four more today for a total of six and counted 14 more on the vines from 3” big to big ones.

You might remember I bought a large faceted glass ball a while back. It hangs in the window where I sit at the computer and this morning it was casting rainbow spots all over the walls and ceiling.

And finally, I did get a return email from the precinct 2 commissioner who assured me he did know how to drain water since I questioned that in my email to him and he agreed that just a scoop at each end of the culverts does not solve the problem and would get it fixed in the near future. He also said he would be by my house Thursday or Friday but if he did come by, he just drove by because nobody around here ever saw him.

 

no clever title today

Rocky stopped Thursday while I was out in the front pulling up clover. “I'm about finished up with B's house so I'll be by tomorrow to assess things and get the guys started next week, you gonna be home?” Yeah Rocky, I'll be here. He stopped again mid-morning on Friday while I was out front. “After lunch,” he tells me.

I guess he never had lunch yesterday. But that's OK, I know I'm on his mind. He'll get here when he can actually give me his attention.

So, believe it or not, I've put in some good hours this week on the current model. Got all the leaves on and halfway cleaned up. 

Next are the three flowers. Not quite sure how I'm going to approach those.

I made it to the garden club meeting Thursday morning and I did my yoga routine Friday morning and today. Am I on a roll or what?

Some days it's winter and some days it's spring and some days, like yesterday, start out one way and end up the other. I had both doors open in the afternoon while I was working and the little glass wind chime that hangs in here was tinkling in the cross breeze. 

I hang it inside because our wind would be too much for it and the gold vanes are paper anyway and I don't have a protected spot outside to hang it.

The spring weeds have taken over the yard, the yard in which we used to have a solid healthy st. augustine that started dying in large patches two years ago. Instead we have a meadow, I guess, full of the little anemone, fleabane which will bloom later, sow thistle (which I dig up), dandelions, birdseye speedwell which has tiny blue flowers, woodland violets, chickweed, plantain, henbit

which has taken over one end of one of the flower beds as well.

It rained during night, not very hard but was accompanied by lightning and low rumbles of thunder which sent Minnie into paroxysms of trembling turning the bed into one of those 'massage' vibrating beds in cheap motels.

And today it is spring.

new normals?

It's November 17^th was and I'm sitting here in a tank top and summer shorts, barefoot because it's been in the mid-80s all week, the doors and windows open. I heard and saw a huge flock of geese overhead flying north. Many of the spring weeds have already sprouted like the sow thistle and the clover and the stickyweed and the 10 petal anemone 

but oddly, no dandelions. The bluebonnets are growing, not sprouting, growing

as are the little red lilies that generally don't start to appear until late December. 

The baby blue eyes are sprouting and there's a single clasping leaved coneflower blooming in the mini-wildflower meadow. It's November. We haven't even had winter yet. I mean, it's not unusual to be in t-shirt and shorts or jeans and barefoot in November or even December, but not in the 80s. I have volunteer tomatoes growing lushly and putting on fruit. That's not normal. Yesterday, the 18^th, the high was 84˚ but a front was blowing in all day and the predicted low was a 40 degree plunge to 45˚. That's actually kinda normal.

You might remember way back when this started as a single 4' x 4' bed for strawberries (dismal failure) and has grown over the years into what it looks like now. I planted those three little banana trees April 2016, 

this is what they look like in November 2017...

totally barging their way through the nice neat border I spent days creating, tossing concrete landscape blocks and brick pavers aside as if they were cardboard. Marc says we'll as in me need to move those banana trees. Yeah, no way those banana trees are going to be moved. Easier to change the shape of that bed to accommodate the trees and their expansion.

So, studio is painted but hasn't been inspected for touch ups yet so everything is still covered over and taped off. Waiting on the last door to arrive to be installed, base moulding still needs to go on, and the floor installed. Then put the fan back together and get the light fixtures and the duct grates and my hooks back up. 

I like the color, I do, it's just that everything is the same color and it's all so...white! We're practically snow blind when we go in there so definitely the molding will get another coat of paint to add some color and definition for the windows and doors and, of course, when I get all my stuff in there it will look very different.