spring and yard work and flowers

Friday night’s sunset

Not much to report. The first part of the week was so windy and blew in probably our last cold front of the winter, down in the 40s for two nights last week but now we are having highs in the 70s. Friday I was out in the front pulling weeds, clover and other little wildflowers away from the bluebonnets, isolating them so I can go back with the trimmer and cut down the weeds, grasses, and clover which is about calf high now and I want to cut it all down before they go to seed. I didn’t get much of a return this year on the bluebonnets, I assume from the long hot dry summer last year and they were being smothered by all the other stuff. Yesterday I did get the trimmer out and cut down all that stuff leaving just the small leggy bluebonnets, probably less than 3 dozen plants. So sad compared to years where they were solid across the front. Ever since the flood they have struggled with the clover and hay grass that invaded from the field behind me. I do have some plants in the back and a small grouping on the side that are big and full and starting to bloom.

Then I used the second tank of gas to cut down the hay grass taking over a portion of the back end of the big backyard, cutting a swath to the compost pile. The native peach tree in the back is in full bloom. I guess it likes these cold winters as it has never bloomed this much before.

I still need to finish getting the ground ready and plant, especially the tomatoes and potatoes which I plan to do today. Before I started with the trimmer yesterday I finally went to the new feed/hardware store because I needed more potting soil for some big pots, compost, and mulch too. It doesn’t help that the bottom has rusted out of my wheelbarrow which I discovered when I was filling the critter hole under the steps. The shovel went right through and now I have a big hole. I’ve got some flashing so I’m going to try and put a patch on it with JB Weld but that will have to wait for another day. 

Instead of planting yesterday after I used the trimmer I used my little toy chain saw to cut down all the rest of the dead wood in the two yards…hummingbird bush (2), purple orchid shrub which has never bloomed because it has frozen to the ground every winter since I planted it, the enormous yellow bells and the little ones (5), the confederate roses (2), and used the long handled loppers to cut them into smaller manageable lengths. I still have to tackle the rangoon creeper but it can wait. Torching the burn pile is also on the agenda since there’s no wind to speak of today.

So, what else. The azaleas are blooming. They are so vibrant they almost hurt your eyes.

The little wild onion/garlic flowers are having a banner year and people’s yards and the fields are white with their flowers,

the chinese fringe flower trees are blooming,

as are the ground orchids (bletilla).

------------

I’m in for a little break. I added compost, landscapers mix (something you add to my clayey dirt to improve it), and fertilizer and got it all turned in this morning and now finally I am ready to plant which I’ll do later this afternoon. 

Some of that will be for zinnias. After I did that I torched the burn pile which had gotten enormous once again. 

So now I’m going to bathe the little dog and take her for a walk since she didn’t get one yesterday.

bonfire, rain, and bodily explosions

Correction on my previous post...Murdoch does not own the Washington Post, I meant the New York Post.

It's Saturday and it was raining when I woke up, not hard but a steady light rain. The weather prognosticators say it's going to rain all day and so far, yes, and that's fine as long as it's this same steady light rain. Of course I'm pretty sure that means no Farmers Market this morning and last week, while it wasn't raining it was cold and windy and wet. I did not venture out so I don't know if anyone bothered to set up or not. I wouldn't have.

Yesterday I torched the burn pile, had quite the bonfire going there for a few minutes while it consumed all the dry monster rose bush prunings and the mass of vines that I've cleared so far and whatever else had accrued before I piled those thing on top. Then I worked on the vines for about 40 minutes before I went in for lunch.

Moving further backward in time, Thursday at SHARE was busy, the most people ever since I've been volunteering there. We filled 42 food requests, mostly medium to large families. The little waiting to be interviewed area up front was packed when I got there at 9, which is when we open, and stayed packed until about 12:30 (we close at 1 PM). We were short one of the volunteers that do the interviewing so one of the guys that work in the back got pressed into service, I've been demoted, he told me. (We like our little niches in the back.)

Speaking of SHARE, it has become my first go to if I'm looking for a specific article of clothing as they have better quality than the thrift stores and...free. This summer I got two pairs of capris, one jeans and the other a lightweight cotton with lots of pockets and this fall a really nice blue long sleeve cotton shirt from L. L. Bean and when I told Jan I was looking for a lightweight jacket of sorts (she was still bringing the winter clothes out and putting away the summer clothes) she brought over five or six items...no, no, no, oh hell no, yes, no, no. The 'yes' is a buttery soft tailored suede like (but washable!) jacket. I love it.

And Thursday night is yoga at Hesed House here. One of the things about yoga is that some of the asanas and movements put pressure on your intestines that cause you to do something we try not to do in public. Like fart. And so, much to my chagrin, during one of the core strengthening exercises, I did. Now, it's not the first time I have farted during a yoga class but they've been barely audible little things. Not this time, no no, it was a sudden loud explosion and fortunately it was quick. I knew I had a fart building up but how do you stand up and excuse yourself for a minute in the middle of class while you go outside to release it. I was trying to have the proper muscles clamped down so it would release slowly, quietly but no such luck.

Ah well, no one laughed. Out loud anyway.

fire!

One of the elementals of nature. Powerful. Consuming. Awesome.

Last Tuesday we got to witness, due to the magic of far seeing, commonly referred to as 'TV', the destruction by fire of a 550 unit, 5 story luxury apartment complex that was under construction. It was consumed in about an hour and a half.

A giant column of black smoke could be seen from the city house. The location of the fire, while not one of my trails (I use a different artery one light down), is definitely in my stomping grounds when I am residing in the city.

all images from here:  http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news%2Flocal&id=9479417

It reminded me, in a very small way, of the fires in the beach community where my parents had a house when I was growing up. Those timber houses on stilts would go up and be consumed in 30 minutes due to the dry wood of their construction and the winds off the Gulf. It was all over but the cryin' by the time the volunteer fire department would get there.

I saw more than one of those little houses go up.

And then there was the Brindsmaid fire when I was growing up. The Brindsmaids lived, not next door, but the next house down. Which is deceiving since this was not a regular 50' x 100' lot neighborhood. Lots were measured in acres. We had only one acre but our neighbors had more I think. Anyway, there were three houses on our side of the private road and we were on the corner and the Brindsmaid's were at the dead end.

One night about 10 PM, in a way I don't recall, if it was sirens or a phone call, we ran out to see the Brindsmaid's two story house engulfed in flames. It was a three alarm fire. In my memory, the flames are reaching skyward and the black smoke invisible in the night. Fortunately, they weren't home, having gone out to dinner.

I wrote this Tuesday night. Yesterday, Wednesday, there was another fire, same time of day, only this one was closer, 4 blocks N and about 8 blocks E. One two story wing of a large church burned but the fire department put it out before it could spread. Same time of day.

edit:  the authorities don't think the two fires are connected.  No word on how they apartment building caught but they think the church was arson.

here today, gone tomorrow

I took the pictures of this old long abandoned and overgrown barn last Sunday.

Yesterday, Tuesday, as I left the house around quarter to six and turned onto the road across which is the plowed field, I caught sight of dying fire and smoke out of the corner of my eye and turned to see what was burning.

They burned the barn.

This is all that remains.

What used to be this...

is now this...

What really surprises me though is how much of the overgrown vines and stuff around the edges didn't burn.

hot stuff

Some of you may remember that Marc does the cooking around here. Well, he does the dinner cooking and often provides lunch as well.

Since he's usually had a couple of drinks before he gets started in the kitchen (we eat dinner late), sometimes dinner is, well, unusual. But I always eat what is presented and always say thank you because I am thankful.

And he's become a pretty decent cook.

Fast forward to last night. I was working late filling a mold when he came through and out the back door, flashlight in hand.

Directly he comes back in again with a handful of small jalapenos.

We've been enjoying the peppers off our two plants all summer. He stuffs them with cheese, wrapped with bacon and grilled (or broiled) and they have been really good. Lately though, we haven't been getting much from the garden. The only things left is the okra, bell pepper and jalapeno peppers. As the drought deepened, the fruit has been slow to grow and is not getting half the size of what we got earlier in the summer. Well, except for the okra. It would grow three inches overnight.

When he called me for dinner, he had fixed a pizza with pepperoni, fresh tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and jalapenos.

Here's a thing you probably don't know about me. I have a sensitive spot in my throat that when something stimulates it it sends me into a paroxysm of coughing and eye watering followed by sneezing and my vocal chords seizing up so I can't talk to reassure people that I am, in fact, not choking for all the world that that's what it looks like is happening and I'm OK followed by more coughing until it finally eases up and goes away.

This is not to be confused with the times when I actually am choking from having aspirated whatever I'm drinking or in some cases the syrup certain candies make when you eat them (weird, I know, that candy wants to get in my lungs) or the time I was just dreaming I was eating candy and my mouth started watering and I aspirated my saliva. Let me tell you, that wakes you up in a heart beat. Things got a little woozy and Marc had to give me the Heimlich.

I think these two things are related in some weird way. Maybe I was hanged in a previous life or was a glutton that finally choked to death. I am a Taurus and I read somewhere that the throat is the body part assigned to that sign. And all my stuff seems to happen in the throat. In addition to the whole choking/not choking thing I have had to have my tonsils removed and my thyroid is cranky about working too hard.

Generally, jalapenos (or really any kind of pepper but hey, oatmeal has done it too) will stimulate this reaction. And usually, once I make it through the seizure, I can eat whatever set it off with impunity.

So last night when I saw the jalapenos on the pizza I didn't really give it a second thought. I'd been eating them all summer and they had only set me off once or twice. And they were small, maybe only as big around as my little finger. I did notice that he had not seeded them. I usually avoid eating the seeds but I shrugged it off.

I'm sitting down with my plate and he's pointing out to me the jalapenos...easy to see and pick out, he says.

Yeah, yeah, I say. I'm not worried.

Famous last words.

About a third of the way through my piece of pizza, I felt that tell-tale little tickle or scratch and knew what was coming. I always know when it's coming and there is no way to stifle it like you can sometimes with a sneeze. Marc shoots me the 'I told you so' look and keeps eating.

So, calmed down I continued to eat thinking I'm good to go now.

About two thirds of the way through my piece of pizza, I thought I was going to die.

I chewed and swallowed the hottest piece of pepper I have ever eaten in my life. My head exploded, coughing, gasping, rivers flowing from my eyes as it continued to get worse. Burning, oh man, burning. I have my head in my hands, wheezing, when he asks me if I'm OK.

NO. I am not 'ok'.

We don't keep milk in the house so I got up and got some salt out of the kitchen and dissolved that in my mouth. A little tea and I felt like I was going to live.

Oh, man. That was seriously painful.

I went and got my second piece of pizza and carefully picked off all the jalapenos.

up in smoke

I've written before about the drought Texas is undergoing. Add to that record heat, hottest AND driest on record and NO humidity (that happens just about, oh...never). The green life first got pale, then droopy, then brown, then crispy. Crispy is where we're at now. Well, except for the parts that are ash.

Texas is going up in smoke.

We've been plagued with some terrible wildfires the last week and new ones keep catching. 49% of all wildfires in the nation have been in Texas this year. Over a million and a half acres have burned since April. 63 new fires since last Sunday and a 500 - 700 acre wildfire popped up 25 miles from the country house yesterday.

Besides the big fire in the hill country, where thankfully both my friends houses have been spared albeit with a burned landscape all around them now, there is a three county fire just NE of Houston. The smoke from that fire is now hanging over the city.

And in the city, as we are this week, I am sad to see how many more trees have died, over 1,000 in Memorial Park alone. The city is turning from green to brown. Now it is not just trees but shrubs. The three large azaleas and the two ligustrum in the back yard here have died. They were here before me and I've been here for 35 years.

All grass that isn't watered...yards, easements, fields, swards, esplanades, parks...is brown, dry and crunchy. The dirt which was at first just dry and hard is now turned to dust.

I wish it would rain.

I know it will eventually rain again.

I hope.

lady bug, lady bug, fly away home

Some of you may remember that during the summer of '09, we had an arsonist in our neighborhood. He targeted abandoned houses and burned down somewhere between 15 and 20 old homes, all within a couple mile radius of the city house. Eventually they arrested someone for one of the fires, one that was only blocks from me, and although there were a few more after that, they eventually stopped. We were only spending three days a week in the city then and were fearful our house would be targeted so took to leaving the porch light on all the time to let him know the house was not empty. The porch light is still on though not because we are warning away the arsonist but because the switch to turn it off no longer works.

before

I tell this as an intro to a totally unrelated fire. Early Monday morning in our city neighborhood (the chi-chi part), a $2 million, 10,000 sq ft Victorian replica house completed in 2007 burned to the ground. The fire must have been well under way before it was noticed and called in and eventually it was totally consumed by the fire. Unfortunately, the owner and her health care attendant were also consumed by the fire.

This house was 9 short city blocks to the east and 2 ½ long city blocks to the south of our house. It was built in what had been the 'wealthy' part of the neighborhood of Houston Heights. Our little house is actually in Height's Annex, the poor step child of the Heights, a working class neighborhood when we moved in 35 years ago. Was, actually. Oh, our house is still there, but with the gentrification, it's all wealthy now.

I am amazed by how fast and how completely this house burned. I've been watching the gentrification of the neighborhood for about 7 years, the demolishing of the small one and two story bungalows with yards and their replacement with two and three story town homes built nose to butt, a hand width apart. Even the large expensive homes are built to fill the lots. I have seen them go up in a matter of months (although this house was 2 years in the building), matchstick frames covered by a house of cards, modern flimsy pre-fab structures that shake and shudder in high winds, a far cry from the solidly built structures they replace. That it didn't take out the adjacent houses, considering how completely engulfed by fire that it was, is a friggin' miracle and a testament to the firefighters on the scene. Even so, I'm sure they must have sustained some damage.

after

all photos via the Houston Chronicle at

http://www.chron.com/news/photogallery/3alarm_fire_on_Heights_Blvd.html