the usual

It's only Tuesday, the day after I taped over the third hole in the outlet, but I do believe I'm getting the upper hand in my battle with the ants. Maybe not won the war...yet, but no ants on the kitchen counter today and one of the ant traps was doing brisk business next to the other pocket door in the kitchen. And again no ants this Wednesday morning. I'm encouraged.

Now if my pecan trees would stop dropping green nuts that would be fine. I've been watering the trees every day for what, two weeks now, and this morning I picked up about two dozen green pecans and even more that had already turned brown. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll get a crop or not though I still see a lot on the trees. I water them for about an hour and a half to two hours depending on what time I get up and how weary I am of watering stuff every morning and evening. Today I slept late and did the minimum out there.

Had a wakeful night last night. Spent a couple of hours playing games on my phone. The dog was restless, I guess I was disturbing her sleep. Then she decided she needed to go outside and when I got up she started barking until I could get the back door open. She went out about 5', turned around and came right back in. What the fuck dog? What was that all about.

When I went out this morning after sleeping later than usual, it was in the 70˚s outside, with an occasional little breeze, it was...nice but here at 10 AM it's almost 90˚ already. Triple digits for the next week and then it's supposed to drop in the high 90s and still no rain for the foreseeable future. I have no desire to invoke the gods but I wouldn't mind a little tropical storm right about now.

Our local red shouldered hawk has been visiting lately. I've seen it several times either on the chain link fence railing or the edge of the old turtle pond. I've just been letting the water evaporate because the thing hasn't been mucked out in years and really needs it. It's down to about 10” deep now, too shallow for the hawk to drink from from the rim, too deep for it to get down in there and splash around so I put a plastic basin on Big Mama's old sunning spot and filled it with water. 

I don't know if that will be helpful for the hawk or not but it was the best I could do. And I moved the birdbath from where it was into a more shady spot for now though now I can't see it from where I sit in the mornings.

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Since I don't have anything to write about besides hot and dry or ants and pecans, I'll report on the current state of the Republican clown show.

Trump and his minions co-defendants are doing everything they can to lie and cheat their way out of the indictments against them, the consequences of their actions, from claiming that they were only challenging the results of the election or acting on orders or that their position at the time gave them immunity or trying to get their case moved to a different jurisdiction where they believe they can get it to disappear and so far the DAs and judges are having none of it. Well except for Judge 'Loose' Cannon who seems to be bending over backwards behind the scenes to get the documents case thrown out. Other republican politicians from state level to federal are doing what they can to make the cases disappear including but not limited to calling for investigations into DAs Willis and Bragg on state and federals levels, threatening to refuse to fund the government if the DAs prosecuting Trump et al aren't defunded, in Georgia invoking a new law about to go into effect that allows them to remove elected prosecutors not doing their jobs, screaming that this is election inference from a weaponized DOJ under the orders of President Biden all while Trump himself is saying he intends to jail his opponents if elected, once again threatening civil war if Trump goes to trial Their desperation to shift the focus off Trump and onto Biden is pathetic.

Since republican efforts to impeach Biden via all those bogus investigations produced not one scintilla of evidence or proof of wrongdoing even from their own whistleblowers and witnesses they just can't let go of that particular wet dream of retaliation. Now, their position seems to be who needs evidence or proof of wrongdoing. Joe Biden is president. That's reason enough for them. Apparently McCarthy knows he doesn't have the yeas to pass a vote for an impeachment inquiry so he may just start one anyway or maybe just go straight to drawing up articles of impeachment to mollify the far right wackos that elicited that promise from him during his fight to become Speaker.

plagues...ants, heat, drought

Every time I foil the ants it takes them a few days to find another way in. This morning they were on the kitchen counter maybe coming in from the upper cabinet but no definite entry spot. Killed them all, started my watering cycle of the pecan trees, fixed breakfast, sat at the table and looked down to see a thick trail of ants coming from under the baseboard to an ant bait that my sister gave me that is under the table. I had never heard of these or seen them before, Terro liquid ant bait. You snap open the tube and inside is a sweet borax laced liquid that draws the ants which then lay a pheromone trail to the food source and back to the nest encouraging more ants to come and eat their fill. The borax kills the ant after they ingest it. When I looked down at the bait tube and it looked to be half full of ants crowding in.

So I put a second one down next to the baseboard where they were getting in. Then I checked the one between the refrigerator and the wall, and yup, it was starting to draw ants. Checked the second one by the baseboard about an hour later and it was already half full of ants. I only had the three so I ran up to the hardware store and got more.

Several days ago I decided to pick up the green pecans that had been falling to see really how many I was losing before I started watering my three trees. I set the sprinkler out with a 4 or 5 foot diameter water spread for half an hour and then move it to another spot from about 7:30 – 10 AM. The ground is so dry and hard that I'm really unsure how deep the water gets but hopefully now, a week after I started this, it's getting deep enough to reach the feeder roots which only occupy about the top 15 – 18 inches of ground. Anyway, so far I've picked up a 5 gallon bucket's worth though not all big green ones (they turn brown a day or two after they fall) but all sizes from about an inch to the big fat ones still hanging on. 

I had no idea I was losing so many. And that bucket does not include the one the squirrels plucked and gnawed on. The other reason I picked them up is because when the mature nuts start to fall, I won't be fooled by the bad ones that have already dropped.

I've cut back more of the coral ginger and swore I was going to cut back the yellow ginger because during the day they are shriveled up but this morning they looked not great but not terrible and I couldn't do it even though I know there is no hope of them blooming. And because temps from 100˚ - 103˚ which is what we've been getting every day aren't bad enough, Sunday is predicted to get up to 108˚. Just the one day though and then back to what we've been getting. Not supposed to drop below 100˚ til next month.

Looks like the farmer won't need to spray defoliant on the cotton this year. The intense heat and drought are doing a fine job of defoliating the plants, probably already dead.

Well, I did actually accomplish something this week besides watering. The stool I rest my feet on at my high desk was an ugly plastic covered thing that was cracked and split with the little bit of stuffing coming out so I cut three squares from the old quilt batting and cut a bigger square from some left over fabric from one of my skirts, sewed a casing, ran some elastic through it, and voila! New footstool cover.

Jade and I did finish putting her quilt back together last Tuesday. Joanne's (from Cup On The Bus) sister is going to quilt it for us so I need to get it mailed up to her. Here's the front and back.

Not much blooming out there now and what is is not profuse...a couple of the plumerias, the yellow bells, the crepe myrtles, and this little double purple althea.

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!

 

another few days in the life

It continues to be hot and humid and dry. So dry. The cotton in the field at the end of the street is suffering, wilted with large swaths yellowing. 

I don't remember this happening the year of the terrible drought when the whole state was in exceptional drought and Texas lost millions of trees to wildfire and also from lack of water. Feed corn must have been planted in that field that year which they don't harvest until it is completely dried out anyway.

Monday evening, though, it was raining east of here and a rainbow developed while I was walking Minnie

and then Monday night a storm blew through but was mostly just lightning and thunder. We recorded 3/8” of rain. It cooled things down a bit if only temporarily. And then this morning I woke to a decent rain, or rather it was raining decently as long as it lasted, less than ¾" worth.

My neighbor whose husband died suddenly last December had a crew come in and whip her acre that had gotten out of control (this is not to be construed as a criticism especially considering my own yard maintenance style but simply as an observation) back into shape. It took them two days. There was a lot of stuff to recover and uncover. It made me wonder if she's thinking of putting the house on the market soon.

Grandgirl Jade, who is finishing up her third year at University of Texas San Antonio I know, right! is moving into a new apartment with a friend and she claimed our old dining room table that we have been keeping for her over at the shop. You might remember I got the score of a lifetime at an estate sale, a round oak table with lion paw feet, a leaf, and 6 chairs for $80. She came and fetched the table and chairs weekend before last and last Friday I got this text from her...

I'm going to have to stay away from the news and all things Trump for a few days. Trump's deployment of his DHS and prison guard and border patrol thugs in Portland and the upcoming deployment to Chicago to instigate and engage in violence is making my afib act up. Trump is doing this as part of his 'law and order' re-election strategy, and he's only doing this to democratic run states and cities as a way to delegitimize the Democrats, as proof that Dems are soft on law and order and that if they get elected the country will descend into chaos. So he is sending in his secret police to escalate the violence to create the 'proof' he wants. And in Portland that's exactly what happened. The protests had dwindled down to about 100 diehards hanging out at a park, barbequing and making music and now with the uncalled for violence from these unnamed police, the protests have resurged. Never mind that the country has descended into chaos under Trump's hand ot that this maneuver is illegal as no one in Portland asked for the feds and federal law enforcement must be requested. As for Chicago, their mayor is a black woman. He needs no other reason to demonize Chicago and send in the feds though I did read today that the police union sent a letter to Trump asking for help because they are just as racist and misogynistic as he is.

A few more pics from around the yard...

been seeing more of these little tree frogs

and I saw the tiniest little anole yesterday that must have just hatched but it scooted away too fast for me to get a picture.

Summer stalwarts Katie ruella which is basically a dwarf tamed wild mexican petunia though they also spread easily,

and the yellow bells (also called esperanza and tecoma stans) are blooming,

and the coral ginger is starting to bloom.

the nut at the wheel and other things

The latest piece of Trump's insanity that has come to our attention...he thinks nuking hurricanes to prevent them from hitting the US is a fine idea. What could possibly go wrong? He denies saying it of course, just like he denies saying everything people ridicule him for saying, which as far as I'm concerned only confirms that he did float the idea. And then, of course, he spent his final press conference at the G7 in France promoting his floundering bedbug infested property Doral in Florida for next years G7 meeting to be held in the US. 

We still have 17 more months of his insanity/inanity, minimum, because Congress won't get off it's ass for whatever justification and stop him so it's up to us, the American people. Vote blue no matter who.

Oh well, on to other topics. They lied again. They told us we were going to get rain this weekend. It rained in El Campo to the west, it rained in Houston to the east, it rained on the coast to the south. Us? We got a scant 1/4” of rain Sunday. But it was overcast all day and so stayed in the high 80˚s all day.

I took advantage of the cooler weather and got the last wax slab poured and basically all the cold work done that I can do for now. 

the last two molds to be made

I still have lots of fine tuning and grinding to do once the last three pieces are out of the kiln. I rummaged around and determined I have just enough glass to fill the box mold and the two gray slabs which I also got altered or trimmed down and ready for molds on Sunday.

I haven't filled the box mold yet even though time is ticking away because I've been waiting for it to dry out a little. The castings come out much cleaner when the mold is dry and I'm using dry frit  but that's on the agenda for today. 

And then this also happened Sunday (click to bigify)...

    

It's hard to tell but this is a huge limb on one of the pecan trees that broke but is resting on another big limb lower down preventing it from completely breaking off and crashing to the ground. So now we need to find a tree service to come take it down. My sister also lost a big limb on one of her pecan trees this weekend and driving through town I saw several others down, a result of no rain and high winds. Pecan trees are bad about self-pruning when they feel stressed. They've also been dropping lots of green nuts, big ones too.

Another miserably hot day out there. 9 AM and it's 83˚ and 85% humidity, high predicted to be 97˚. I'll be hanging out in the house today y'all.

the doldrums of August

I finished the second heron box model Saturday. It's glued down and waiting for the mold to be made. I found the timesheet for the first one...27+/- hours. I didn't keep track this time but I think it went faster especially since I didn't carve the wavy lines like before but incised them instead and scraping more lines in between with a wire brush. Still, it took me a week. 

I like it in wax.

I didn't keep track of my time this time because I've decided to stop doing that. The point was to help me come up with pricing but in reality, it only made me realize how little I get when a piece sells because you can't price artwork by how much time you have in it unless you are one of those artists who have people clamoring for your work.

After I finished the box wax I sorted through my color samples and picked out three dark blue ones 

and then tweaked the formulas for nine new samples which went in the kiln yesterday. And as long as I was at it, I made pure color samples of the 7 colors I have acquired since the last time I did this. I meant to take a picture after I had filled all the little squares with frit but forgot. Here's my set-up though. 

The two sections on pieces of firebrick are tilted up at an angle so I'll get a sample that is thin at one end and thick at the other. At least that's the plan. The kiln was 130something˚ when I looked at it a little while ago.

And here they are out of the kiln.

Nothing much else going on around here. Still hot, flirting with near triple digits, still no rain despite the scant 1/4” we got the other day and were getting into the first stages of drought, still going out and watering first thing in the mornings and usually in the evenings as well, still trying to keep all three bird baths filled with fresh water.

The white wing doves hang out at the one in the little backyard, just to the left out of sight in this picture.

Saturday I caught sight of one of the local red shouldered hawks perched on the naked lady's head but it flew off before I could get the camera up for a sneak pic through the door glass.

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.

from one 'mas' to another

Yay! That's over for another year.

There is one reason why I do like christmas day though. Not the christmas season, not the two months of having a holiday I don't celebrate crammed down my throat everywhere I go, not the attendant hypocrisy of good will and gift giving and good deed doing by people who every other day of the year can't be bothered with those things, but the actual day.

Christmas day is one of the few days of the year when you can be a complete slug, spend the whole day on the couch with a good book doing nothing, accomplishing nothing and no one will think ill of you for doing so.

I know the madness isn't really over yet, not for a few more days while everyone takes back those gifts that were lovingly or thoughtlessly selected, those gifts they really don't want and exchanges them for something else. It sort of cheapens the whole thing to me, this wanting the value of the gift but not the gift.

So here we are now on the other side of the winter solstice, the shortest day and the longest night. The days are now getting incrementally longer, the light is increasing but with it also comes the coldest days of the year. Now, winter sets in for real. The solstice here was ushered in with a thunderstorm and it's been cold, overcast, and rainy, ever since.

I am glad of the rain. We've had more rain this week than in all of last year I think. There are still some puddles here and there around town. The ground has been so dry that puddles have been a rare sight. I heard last week that they think Texas lost a half a billion trees from the drought. Five hundred million trees died of thirst.

Well, the only thing left to do before the end of the year is Marcmas. That's tomorrow. It's the special 60^th anniversary this year. We think we might drive down to Aransas Pass and see the whooping cranes to celebrate. Maybe. Marc already got a present...

sniff sniff sneeze

busy days

Let's see. Where was I? 

 Or maybe the better question is, where am I?

We received a commission to make 100 fused glass crosses for a church in Houston so for the past week or so, my friend Gene and I have been cutting up thousands of tiny pieces of glass as each one of these crosses is composed of 34 separate pieces that have to be assembled. While we were in the city to do our two small etching jobs, I spent a day over at Gene's while we assembled crosses and got 35 in the kiln.

It's always weeks between visits to the city since work has been so slow and driving in this time past Memorial Park was just heartbreaking. It looks like nearly every single pine is dead and many oaks and other trees as well from the drought which is still ongoing. I didn't get a picture this time, got these of the park via google, but now there is one lone green tree surrounded by dead ones instead of the occasional dead tree starting the middle of August. Passing by on the West Loop maybe one in ten trees is living. Maybe. I think that's optimistic.

Today was the presentation to the Garden Club on the various glass techniques and how they could be used architecturally or as a stand alone sculpture. They decided on the carved glass for the side lites and transom around the double doors that enter the library. Now I need to do sketches and a formal proposal, so that went well.

Marc and I spent the rest of the day getting stuff packed, five boxes and a stack of books, for our workshop this weekend. It's basically a repeat of the one we did earlier in the year only students will make their models out of wax instead of clay. In the clay workshop they got to make two or three pieces. In this one they will make one piece but it's larger and they will have all day to work on it doing the mold making and mold filling on Sunday.

We're having our coldest weather to date since summer finally ended. It even rained late yesterday afternoon as the front moved in. A nice rain but it didn't last long. It's supposed to get down to 45˚ tonight. 45˚? Really? It hasn't been that long since we were having triple digits every day. I'd like to have more than a month between air conditioner and heater if you weather gods don't mind.

That big cloud on the left is the backside of the storm edge of the cold front moving in.

So, a working weekend ahead, one day off and then three days at Miss Hattie's Place while my sister is in Lubbock. Our aunt, our father's sister, died about a week and a half ago and my sister is the executer of her will. She was the last living member of our parent's generation making my sister the oldest living person in our family. We are now the altacockers.

Our aunt had one child, a son who is one day younger than I am, but he falls into the autism spectrum and although he functioned well enough day to day as long as his mother was alive, even has a job, he has always lived with his parents/mother and she always took care of everything so we are a little concerned about his ability to live long term on his own. He seems to be handling the death of his mother well enough and my sister keeps in touch.

Hopefully by the end of next week I'll have the time to look around me and think of other things besides the task at hand or the next commitment.

I might even finish my post for the letter S.