a look around

First, thank you everyone for all the wonderful compliments. It feels strange to be done. I've been working on that piece for months. Life has revolved around that piece for months. Almost four to be exact. I'm happy with it, happier than I thought I'd be. The only thing I would change is to make the box color a little lighter and less green. The little corals inside are loose, not glued in, in case the buyer wants to take them out.

So now looking around at what else is going on...

The red shouldered hawks have been very active around here the past several days. Marc was sitting out the other day when one landed in the flower bed about 10' away and then flew off. I saw two flying around from one tree to another in the yard the next day and later Marc looked out the window and one was on the bird bath. I love seeing them. I looked up Monday to see one perched on the T bar of the old clothesline and got this picture through the glass in the back door and on high magnification and then later saw it swooping low over the empty lot next to me. I haven't seen or heard any of the smaller Mississippi kites that summer over here lately so I suppose they've left for the season.

Besides the kites leaving and the cooler temperatures though by no means 'cool', still hot and humid, just not as hot, other signs of the turning of the season are showing up like snow-on-the-prairie in the pastures and the pampas grass starting to send out its plumes, the oxblood lilies popping up, and the porterweed blooming.

The Chinese fringe flower trees/shrubs are blooming again though not as profusely as in the spring and a paler pink. Still getting some zinnias but they are ragged. The phlox is still blooming and while the pink butterfly ginger is done, the yellow butterfly ginger is putting out its bloom cones, very late as it usually blooms mid-summer.

The squirrels are still stripping the bark off the branches of my ginkgo trees. They have stripped so many, the ground is just littered with 1/2” x 2” strips, that I fear all those branches will die or are dying. Food is scarce I guess. This is the third year in a row my pecans trees are bare of nuts. Neighbors' trees aren't faring much better.

We had a very large dead branch fall off the oak on the side of the house and onto our internet cable dragging it down to the ground. Fortunately it didn't disconnect from either the house or the pole. I got the ladder and pulled it up as high as I could (that fucker is heavy) and wrapped it around the thing on the house so at least we can get out of the driveway.

Granddaughter Autumn is here for a few days. Her mom dropped her off Monday afternoon. She brought a pile of little crop tops that needed tiny straps sewn back on and some pants that needed the elastic waistband re-sewn, another pair that needs the zipper replaced so we worked on that yesterday.

 

another mold in progress and misc. pictures

Sunday I unloaded the car and put away the display, rehung the work I had taken down to take, and in general put it all to bed til the next time. Monday, I selected the colors and color combinations from my samples for the luna moth mold and pulled all the frit out.

Tuesday, I measured out all the initial amounts of all the colors and color combinations, even sifting the frit of some of the colors to winnow out the smallest particles, in between powder and 'fine', for the small spaces. I don't usually do that. Usually I measure out a color when I'm ready to use it and I have never sifted out the finer particles before but I think it will be beneficial, in fact, I can't believe I never thought of doing this before now. So now I'm ready to actually start filling the mold. I hope that measuring out the initial amounts in advance will speed up the process.

Wednesday I started filling the luna moth mold and right off the bat I messed up. Started with the moth body and got it all nice and tidy and then looked at the picture and realized I hadn't put the band of maroon in that goes from wing tip to wing tip and across the body. Sigh. Took it all back out and started over. I thought I had a check up this morning with the electrophysiologist but they never called to confirm and it turns out I don't have an appointment for today, Robin has a late shift so I basically have a free day today to make more progress.

Some miscellaneous pics...my confederate rose was very late to bloom and the first ones to open were stunted but it finally gave me some pretty blooms.

I have given volunteers to two of my neighbors and theirs bloomed fully before mine. A couple of weeks ago another neighbor knocked on the door after one of them told her I had given them the plant wondering if she could have one too. I happened to have a small one in a pot in my 'plant nursery' under the magnolia tree that I had dug up in the spring and happily gave it to her.

I guess we finally had some cold enough nights to finally trigger a color change in some of the trees and leaf drop over the weekend. The ginkgoes turned yellow and the tallows turned red and orange. Some of the other area trees also turned color like the sweet gum I pass by and the bradford pears.

With every gust of wind it rains leaves. There's a solid blanket on the ground now.

I popped in to see Miss Paisleigh yesterday when I took Robin home after work. She's two months old tomorrow.

My morning oatmeal loves me.

This morning's progress.

another day in the life

As it turns out my son-in-law's injuries were minor, the three cuts small enough to be glued together so no stitches, no concussion, no broken bones, just bruised and sore. He's at home getting a few paid days off.

I did come up with a solution to the luna moth composition. I decided to remove two leaves and have them float instead of running off each edge, plus I took the stem out, too fiddly. I like it and have started back on the wax model.

Friend Kathy called yesterday to say she and Dick are considering having the open house this year though they won't be turning on their furnace so no glass blowing demonstrations which is what brings in the crowd and our attendance has been not that great for some years now even with the demonstrations because of all the other art/craft shows going on those first weekends in December. But it also means that we can have the other craft artists and artisans. It may just be one weekend or maybe two, nothing is firm yet. Like everyone else, Dick and Kathy want to feel like they have a life again after nearly two years of covid isolation. I doubt I'll have time to get anything else new done since it's already late October but like them, I have plenty of old stuff hanging around.

Yesterday was one of our rare gorgeous fall days, cool, clear, no humidity, an intense blue sky. In fact the last three days have been wonderful but it's already starting to warm up a little today.

I'm still leading the yoga class on Mondays and Wednesdays though last night there were only four of us. Wednesday might be the last time as I think Abby will be back next week. I'm always a little nervous right before but once I get started, I'm fine. And speaking of anxiety, I'm still having some weird dreams but not, thank all the gods, every night and whatever kicked my afib into high gear the month of September and into October has settled down into a mostly steady rhythm with only an occasional short flare.

I did call the plumber Monday but they can't get out here til Wednesday afternoon. Now I'm off to the grocery store and my turn to fix dinner.

Also, here's a gratuitous baby picture.

a break in the weather, Queen of the Night, Friday's appointment

We had our first cool fall day fall on the first day of fall. How cool is that? The last three days have been glorious; cooler (temps in the mid to high 50˚s at 7 AM), brilliant blue sky, and low humidity.

While I didn't get to see the cereus in full bloom Monday night, I did get out and see the last three blooms and just those three were scenting the air. If it follows the pattern of the last few years it will put on another big set of blooms in a month or so. It is truly the Queen of the Night.

Saw another little frog on the glass in my back door, this one a green tree frog. This one and the brown mottled one I posted earlier are the first frogs I have seen all year. Usually I come across them more frequently.

The last three days have been very busy for me. We went into Rosenberg and turned in a very old Apple computer with the heavy bulbous monitor and the tower that went with it and the TV whose screen went dark. We'd only had it 5 years but apparently that's sort of the lifespan. It was a chap ass TV to begin with. I expected to have to pay for the monitor as that's what it says on the Best Buy website about the recycling program but the guy didn't ask for a penny. I gather it was so old it didn't contain whatever monitors contain now that is expensive to recycle. And while we were there we bought a new bigger TV, a whopping 32”, the same size as the one we turned in. We just don't watch enough TV to justify getting anything bigger and having to clear wall space and rearrange the room. I also got a new tripod, one that will accommodate my iPhone which is the only camera I have right now. I'm so happy. Now I can take pictures that are level and plumb. That's really hard to do holding a phone camera. And then very busy at SHARE on Thursday, the work was non-stop either filling baskets or restocking my shelves and then took the recycling that had been piling up.

So yesterday was my appointment with the EP. I had been keeping a diary of my days on and off afib since about the 5^th. The pattern is about two days on and two days off. If it holds I should go into afib later tonight. We'll see. Anyway, I was in perfect sinus rhythm during the appointment. Of course. I asked him about the sweating and whether or not he thought my flutter had come back (no, he said to that) but he did note that I’m on thyroid meds and thyroid malfunction can contribute to both sweating and afib, asked when my last blood work was done, December, so he’s ordered another thyroid panel to make sure there isn’t any easy solution to these sudden long episodes. Then we’ll go from there. If the medication is no longer controlling the afib then probably the best option is the ablation because he doesn’t want to increase my med dose as he feels I am on the highest dose for my body size and condition though if I want to put it off for a few months that’s fine. Once again he said the condition isn’t life threatening, just quality of life issue. I asked him about that, that I was getting questioned a lot when I told people that. He said that the irregular rhythm, rapid rhythm in and of itself is not life threatening. I asked about the threat of stroke, he said that strokes aren’t always fatal, that the usual effect is paralysis, and I’m on medication to prevent blood clots from forming. So, I will hear from his office when the results of the thyroid panel are back but I don't expect anything has changed and then I will have to decide if I'm ready to go through with the ablation. Probably depends on if this pattern continues (which it did, back into afib Friday night, still am, just irregular though, not rapid).

I did look up the fatality rate of stroke which was 1 in 8 people die within the next 30 days and my father's death certificate lists stroke as cause of death. He had an event in the middle of the night and died immediately but no autopsy was done because my mother didn't want him cut up. My father was a pathologist and one of his duties was autopsies and since he was a member of the medical community, the doctor acquiesced to my mother's wish and just listed stroke as cause of death based on his medical history, a stroke two decades or so previous and high blood pressure which he would not take medication for. So we don't really know what killed him. Could have been an aneurism or a massive heart attack.

Edit:  Let me reiterate since no one seems to be understanding...my EP does not take the threat of stroke casually or lightly. His father died of stroke and he is adamant about no strokes happening on his watch. It's why I had to have the interior ultrasound before I had the previous ablation to make sure no clots were in my heart and why I will have to do that again before I have the other ablation before he goes in my heart to do the procedure. It's why he insists on me taking the very expensive eliquis instead of any of the much cheaper ones because it's the best de-coagulent so that clots won't form. Also why he stresses quality of life. I'm not stupid. I read up on all this stuff. 

the days, they just blend together

 
I wish I had something profound or meaningful or even interesting to write about but since I'm avoiding all things Trumpian, truth to tell, one day is pretty much like the one before it and the one that will come after it. I'm not an early riser and it's usually about 8 before I drag my butt out of bed and take my thyroid med on an empty stomach and drink a small glass of water first thing, then my yoga routine, then my two cups of coffee while I visit blogland or write a post and then finally go fix breakfast at 10. This is how every day starts unless I have something to do for which I need to leave the house early.

One of which is that I've started volunteering at SHARE here on Thursday mornings, the only day they are open right now, and I try to get there between 8:30 and 9. SHARE is an organization that provides food and clothing and in some cases monetary aid to the needy so I go and help fill the baskets of food depending on how many in the family and help restock the shelves to be ready for the next week. It's a church sponsored organization and the other people there are religious. The lady in charge finally had me fill out a form, basic information I imagine to do a background check though she didn't say so as two of the other volunteers are my neighbors. The last line was what church or organization did I represent if any. I wrote in 'humanity'.

We've been having some cooler weather since Beta blew through, or didn't blow as the case may be. It has dried up enough to get some weeding done which I did yesterday until I ran out of shade. It's still hot in the sun and getting warmer but the weather liars prognosticators are promising us more cool weather next week, even down in the 50s! We'll see. There are several tasks I've been putting off for cooler weather...cleaning out/up the garage, also the barn, also the shop...all three in desperate need. Still need to continue moving cast glass stuff into the new studio room and set it up. Not to mention all the fall yard tasks. Speaking of which you may or may not have noticed I haven't been writing about pecans which I usually do starting in July when the trees start shedding immature nuts. There's been very little of that and while we had the best crop we've had in years last year, I don't think we're going to get any this year. I'm not seeing any nuts up in my three trees and the few that have dropped are rotten inside. My neighbors' trees however are producing so maybe I can beg some of their excess crop.

The hummingbirds continue to ignore the feeders for the most part. I see them more often among the flowers that are blooming. The rain from Beta has produced a new round of rain lilies and oxblood lilies, even two of the bulbs I have yet to get planted have bloomed! 

And speaking of blooming flowers, Sabine at Interim Arrangements posted a picture of one of every flower blooming in her garden a couple of posts back which I really liked so I've done it too. Here's what's blooming today sans one other that I forgot, a yellow walking iris.

I've finally decided where I'm going to plant the oxblood lilies I dug up out of the ditch over a year ago! I created this space in front of the buddha and I'm going to plant them there.

Still haven't started a new drawing but at least I know what it is I'm going to draw when I get around to it. Mostly I wonder what to do with these drawings. Leave them in my sketchbook and let them accumulate or try and frame them for possible sale. Which reminds me, I have to get my images and bio/artspeak blurb sent in to be uploaded to the Height's Artisan Market website for the online sale. I don't actually expect to sell anything but it's good exposure. I also have a new idea for the gallery page on my website which will take a couple of days to build. Now that it's too hot to work outside comfortably perhaps I'll work on that today.

Or I may try and finish the book I'm reading.

finally fall, for a few days anyway

Tuesday (with edits)...There's a cool front blowing in and it's raining leaves. I had just swept the concrete apron of the driveway clear of leaves a week ago and already yesterday it was nearly covered again. Even though the days are still humid and climbing into the low 90s, the trees know when to shed their tired dingy leaves. The oaks and the maple and the crepe myrtles and the tallows have been dropping their brown and dried up finery for weeks. Now this cool dry air blowing in will encourage them to release more. The oaks are starting to drop acorns as well and the pecans, well, the pecans have been dropping in their husks for months. Though I have been picking up nuts free of their husks for about a week they are as dried up inside as the leaves falling on the ground. I doubt we'll get many good ones this year.

While the new color samples will come out of the kiln later today and I will be filling the ready molds this week, today I am going to take advantage of this cool weather blowing in to dig out all the nut grass from one of the raised beds (done!) and repair the weed cloth between the beds where the flood lifted it up and moved it around (not done), something I've been putting off because it has been so hot and humid. Not that that has kept me from working outside during this weather but I do try to work in the shade. No shade over there where the gardens are.

Rocky is still getting the hardy board up around the outside of the house. He could finish today but probably won't. He's got his crew split up working on at least one other house and maybe another (as it was, he didn't show up, had been sick all weekend and was feeling pretty terrible when he worked on Monday). My poor ginger and ferns and mock dogwood and hummingbird bush are taking a beating growing right next to the house as they are. I had to move one small azalea before he trampled it to death. It seems to be recovering in it's new location.

Today...It's so nice and cool outside, a relief from the oppressive heat and humidity of this long summer. We even pulled up the quilt and slept under it last night. I turned off the AC and opened some windows and doors yesterday and didn't even break a sweat clearing out the nut grass in the garden in which I have several volunteer tomatoes that are blooming!

Well the samples came out and I numbered them and cleaned them up and I'm pretty pleased with them. Have one more combination I want to try when the first three drowned feather molds go in the kiln later this week.

So yesterday I had just enough time to get to the library and was ready to head out the door when I couldn't find my phone. Well, poop. I put it down somewhere. “Call me” I told Marc. Silence. Hmm, it's not in the house. Walked over to the shop where I had been working earlier. Not there either. It doesn't sit very deep in the rear pocket of the shorts I had been wearing so I looked around outside trying to remember where all I had been in the yard or on the street or around the shop. Still no phone. Finally I remembered that I had been playing chase with Minnie, who was loving the cool and not humid air and was feeling very energetic all day, at the back edge of the property beyond the mini wildflower meadow (which is now just a big weedy spot) and the compost pile and there it was, laying on the ground.

hands in the dirt

I like to dig. It's one of my favorite parts of gardening. I like to get my hands in the dirt, get out the weeds and crumble the clods, mix in mulch. There's nothing more satisfying than preparing a flower or garden bed, just the pristine dirt at the end waiting to sustain. It's not just plants the dirt sustains. When we get our hands in the dirt we boost our immune system, we breathe in those happy making microbes, we commune with nature, we connect with our roots so to speak.

The dirt was perfect for digging. Not too wet, not too dry, crumbled easily. The day was perfect for digging. Cool, warm in the sun, low humidity with intermittent clouds. So that's what I did. It was my one Saturday a month off, my wild card day so I decided the wait was over and I tackled the end of the little garden in the Big Backyard that had poppies and evening primrose last spring and has been basically abandoned since then. Some of that, a lot of that, was due to, you know, summer. I'd been watching the nut grass slowly take over until one day it had completely colonized that end. So I've been waiting for the weather to cool down enough and Saturday was the day and Sunday as well.

I got all the nut grass out, rousted this spider out. She scurried off and buried herself in the dirt again. 

Shooed away many a toad,

and then reset the concrete blocks that line it which, having been set originally at different times, were not uniform. Now they are which added several inches to the width. Except for the end which I didn't get to. The day ran out and my hands had had enough as well. I'll just square it off next weekend and get it filled with dirt so I can get lettuce and arugula and spinach planted for the fall and winter. Carrots may go over in one of the raised beds. Eventually, hopefully, this fall, I'll get the end rounded out to match what I did this spring on the other end and then foolishly planted the three little banana trees about two feet away which have thrived on the edge of the drain field and the full sun and are now only inches away from the border. You might remember I started this bed as a 4' x 4' for strawberries back in 2011. It's grown considerably since then.

I'd spend the next several days outside if I could but alas, it's Monday and I have to get to work. I'm on the last stencil. Once I get that done, my work on the job is done besides consulting as it gets etched and then cleaning and sealing the finished panels but the bulk of my time will be freed up to work on other things like...yard work and flower beds or new waxes or cold work on the finished castings or housework.

Well, maybe not housework.

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.

finishing up

I gave my back and legs a workout Sunday and last night I was feeling it. It was warm with a nice south wind and I put on shorts and went out and cleared the rest of the gone by field sunflowers and grasses out of the wildflower spot. Now is the time to spread seeds.

I picked one of the last confederate rose blooms and brought it in.

This is a volunteer from the parent bush which has some weird thing wrong with it and it grows all deformed so I don't let it grow any longer, snapping off all the new growth sprouts that are still coming up from the root. The flowers on parent bush opened pink and got darker but the ones on the new bush open white and turn dark pink by the end of the day.

Monday morning, it was still warm so I made a small mountain in the back of the truck from the two piles I had made the day before and drove it across the street to the burn pile over there. That one is our official burn pile now. The one behind the house is on land we have poached from the 13 Acre Field. After loading it all in the back of the truck I went in and changed from my jeans into the shorts I was wearing Sunday so I was standing on the tailgate pulling and shoving dead and dried plant debris out and onto the new burn pile. It was very dark to the northeast and suddenly the air went from warm to chilly. The temperature dropped that suddenly. Guess I was a little hasty in my change of clothes and changed back into my jeans when I was done. It rained the rest of the day so I worked on the peach pit waxes, getting them ready to send off to be cast in bronze.

Today I picked up what may be the last bucket of pecans. The leaves have pretty much finished falling in the last week and the trees look pretty empty. The leaf cover was so dense on the ground, I quit looking until Marc mulched with the mower. Same for the ginkgoes and tallows. Nothing but empty branches out my window now except for the evergreens.

Standing in the street I noticed how the three trees leaves are different colors changing from brown to red to yellow to the still green grass beyond...hackberry, cypress, ginkgo.

I'm sort of goofing off today since I got all the cold work done on the cast pieces last week and I will be working all weekend at the open house. We set up on Thursday and then the preview is Friday evening and then all day Saturday and noon to 5 on Sunday. Tomorrow the frames are supposed to be ready for the lizard on the leaf and the bee on the bark so I will be busy finishing up those, getting them mounted.

Here's the finished pieces except that the two aren't finished until they are in their frames.

2” x 5”

4” x 4”

2” x 3”

2.5” x 5”

4” x 7”

2” x 5”

election day blues

Today is election day, the last day to vote in this mid-term election. I am staying off FB today and not watching the TV, though Marc will turn it on, avoiding election news. I am fearful that all the predictions will come to pass, that the Republicans will take the Senate and hold the House. I fear that those crazy far right wingers like Greg Abbott and his ilk who think a racist pants shitting draft dodging coward who sings and brags about committing statutory rape and writes screeds about killing the president and loves to pose with his guns is a stand-up American will take our governorship and further grind Texas down into the ground. Greg Abbott, the man who did a stupid thing like jogging during a hurricane and sued the pants off everybody he could and got a multi-million dollar settlement after a tree fell on him and paralyzed him and then when he became Lt. Governor he passed tort reform so no one else could get the kind of settlement he did. If we thought Perry was bad, we are in for a world of hurt if Abbott and Patrick get in office. All people have to do is look around at how poorly the southern red states are doing to know that the policies that these Tea Party Republicans support only help rich white men.

OK, enough of that. It hurts my heart to see what is becoming of this country.

Yesterday, I had three things on my to-do list...dig up more grass, plant a plant, and work on some small models for the up-coming open house. I got two models done and a hole dug but did not get the plant planted because I decided I wanted to go to the feed store and get some bags of compost to mix in before I planted the pink angel trumpet. Also, no grass got dug up. But Marc did finish the sandblasting on the window. Haven't cleaned it off yet.

It was breezy and gusty yesterday and it once again was raining pecans. I picked up over two gallons worth and still the ground was covered. Surely I am getting close to my 100 pounds I am holding back to sell. 55¢ a pound for 100 pounds. My neighbor says they had to raise the price because no one was bringing them in. I now have 6.84 pounds of shelled nuts. Not counting the ones we have eaten already. The wholesalers will buy pecans up until January or February if they are still getting people bringing them in. I'll shell until I get sick of it or until January when I will sell all the remaining pecans.

All except for the bag on the far left (leftover from last year) is this years harvest...so far.

It's warm and overcast today and we might get a few rain showers but I suspect not. Perhaps tomorrow when the cold front moves in. The fall blooming tall orange cosmos which volunteered and spread from the four plants from last year are blooming nicely and I saw my first monarch in about two years flitting among them the other day.

Today besides avoiding the news, I will continue on with yesterday's chores. And since the local wholesale nursery has not opened it's little retail stand so far this fall I will have to drive further to get the pansies and sweet pea seeds I want.