personal stuff and political malfeasance

The white orchid tree has been blooming but it's done now.

I have poison ivy, fairly mild as these things go, on my face, on my right cheek and jaw line, the space between my eyebrows and under my right eyebrow which has my right eyelid a little swollen and droopy, and on my left temple. I'm pretty sure I got it from Minnie who goes poking around in the wild space at the back of the property that is full of poison ivy and then comes and rubs her face against mine showing her affection. Thanks dog.

Wednesday I vacuumed the whole house except for the work room which I swept. Yesterday I used Murphy's Oil Soap to clean the top of my oak table and then used lemon oil. So far that's the extent of my housekeeping efforts.

Lily has shown zero interest in going outside since she came in Tuesday and spent the night in. She's gone out in the little backyard a couple of times for about 10 minutes before coming back in. She goes to the vet next Monday and I hope they can tell me she's not pregnant. She was pretty slim, though not bony, when I started feeding her about two weeks ago and her stomach is filling in and I hope to all the gods that it's the food and not babies. I set up a litter box for her since Tuesday night she used the door mat.

My jar of frit came yesterday so I'll be busy today getting the last three molds filled. Edit: Only got the mold for the top filled and selected two of the three colors for the inlay when a friend I have been trying to connect with for two months called. So, tomorrow, I'll get the last two molds filled and then it will be time for the part over which I have no control...casting in the kiln.

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We watched the J6 hearing last night like we have every single one previous, this time focusing on Trump's dereliction of duty and the violation of his oath of office. Once again the general information before the hearings was that Trump did nothing while the riot at the Capitol was ongoing until several hours later and once again the Committee brought the details and receipts from hardcore Trump supporters and witnesses. Not only did he sit in the private president's dining room watching it unfold for 187 minutes ignoring all pleas from his advisers and family for him to issue a statement deploring what was going on in no uncertain terms, there are no official records and no photos of that time. The call logs and the daily diary are blank and the official White House photographer was told 'no photos' even though we know through previous testimony that he was making and receiving calls. And now we know that 24 Secret Service agents wiped the call logs from their phones for the 6^th and the 7^th and are now under criminal investigation.

Not only did Trump fail to act, he refused to act until law enforcement was mobilized by Pence (when he found out Trump had his press secretary tweet that it was Trump himself who had called them in) and it was clear that his attempted coup had failed and still he did not condemn what had occurred instead telling his supporters that they were good people and he loved them and the recorded out takes from that speech show just how much he loathed having to make it. At this point I'm curious why the committee hasn't brought up the executive order of martial law that had already been prepared for Trump to use if the coup had succeeded.

If you didn't watch the hearing last night, Heather Cox Richardson's newsletter yesterday gives a complete and succinct report of who the witnesses were and what all they said. You can read it here. 

I have to admire Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger as well, for their determination to discover and hold responsible those who tried through force and violence to overturn a free and fair election and destroy our democracy, installing Trump as president when all their previous efforts had failed. I don't care for her hard core republican politics, she voted for Trump twice and with his agenda 97% of the time in the House, but she is steadfast in her defense of our democracy and constitution and laws. She tweeted the other day that she thought the J6 committee was probably the most important thing she has done in her life so far and perhaps even her entire life. 

And while I don't know how she or Kinzinger personally voted on the following bills passed by the House this week, this is how the republicans voted:

209 voted against protecting abortion rights

205 voted against protecting interstate travel for healthcare

190 voted against protecting access to contraception

157 voted against protecting marriage equality

The news pundits would have you believe that republicans are poised to take back the House in the mid-terms and if they do they will vote to make all the above illegal and then they are going to come after Social Security and Medicare. It is essential to keep the House and increase the democrat majority in the Senate so that we can get these protections codified into law now that they are subject to the chopping block since the Supreme Court took the ax to our rights to privacy.

You know what needs to be done. Don't forget, don't let anyone else forget either.

what I do with my days, the stray, and pink things

Well, it's been 6 days since I last posted but nothing is happening, nothing changes. I spend the time between breakfast and lunch over at the studio filling molds except for Tuesdays and Thursdays when I'm either doing the week's grocery shop or I'm at SHARE. After lunch we spend the hot afternoons binge watching streaming shows. Then it's walk the dog, though we skipped three days in a row because even at 6:30 it was just too hot still to go out, and fix dinner.

Currently we're watching The Boys. We're enjoying it but I don't recommend it if you are sensitive to gore. Almost the very first scene in the very first episode a body explodes into meat grinder mush raining down. They really like this CGI effect and use it a lot. I guess it helps that our TV is small, only 32”. Anyway, it's about a group of people who were 'born' super, 'supes', though it turns out they were made as babies. All their powers are different and/or similar, some dangerous, some just dumb and not really useful, backed by a giant wealthy sinister corporation that manages them, their PR, sends them on missions only there's a lot of collateral damage. They're not all bad but really there's no way to control the most powerful ones and Homelander (think Superman) is the most powerful, mentally unstable, and dangerous of them all. And then there's an underground group of regular humans, if you consider criminals regular, that has pledged to take them out, to undo them with or without government help. Anyway, the plot lines and characters are really good if you can get past the gore. We started season 3 yesterday.

So far I've filled the 6 coral molds, the five I'll use and the extra. The last one I did though I may empty out and redo the volume measure because I'm not sure it's correct for boring reasons I won't go into here.

What else. We've gotten three little rain showers the past week, probably less than an inch all told or just over so not nearly enough. I thought I had found the owner of the little calico or 'tortie' as they are calling her. I posted her picture on a lost and found pet page on FB for the area and a woman responded that it was her cat, they had moved to Houston, had been back a couple of times to find her. I asked where she had lived and she replied with a street that is at least three miles away and here is a woman you can check with to verify. So I had a mutual friend check with the woman who says it's not the same cat. There's more to the story that I'm not going to post here that convinces me beside the fact that I don't think this little cat traveled three miles to my house. I had another lead on a possible owner from the woman who claimed the kitty as hers, saying that the only other cat like this was at a house at an intersection of two streets much nearer to me. So today I stopped there, picked one of the four houses at random and knocked on the door. Are you missing a cat, this cat, and showed them a picture. And yes they were missing this cat but it had run off twice (got it back the first time) and so if I wanted her that was OK because the woman felt like the cat didn't want to stay with them. We talked at length, yes it had on a collar but she couldn't remember what color it was and yes, no tag, yes it is young, less than a year. I'm convinced this is the owner. I gave her my phone number and address if she wanted to come by and have a look. The kitty's name is Lily. So I guess she's mine if I want.

Lots of pink things are blooming...the begonia, the plumerias, the rock rose, the phlox...

 

more molds and little lives

We got more rain Thursday night, or rather early in the morning, which is good. Friday mid-morning in the 80s which was a much appreciated break from the mid to high 90s we've been suffering through except for one thing, the humidity. With the high temps and no chance of rain the humidity had been staying fairly low, mid 40s%. Friday it shot up to 91% before it dropped to the 60s%. This Saturday morning it's 83˚ and 89% humidity which basically makes it feel like high 90˚s. Can't win for losing. Even when the temperature is tolerable it still feels oppressively hot.

Yesterday 7 of the molds got steamed out. By that I mean the investment aka mold material, which is a plaster/silica flour mix, with the wax model encased is placed open end down over a pot of boiling water, the steam rises up and melts the wax out of the mold.

Once that's done I inspect the molds, clean them up, rinse them out and then do the volume measure so that I know how much weight of glass it takes to fill the form. I do that by weighing a container of water, pour some into the mold filling the form of the model and then weighing the container of water again. Subtract one from the other, multiply by the specific gravity of the glass, 2.5 in my case, and it gives you the weight of glass needed in grams.

I'm going to set these aside for a week or so to let the molds cure while I select the colors as well as decide to use transparent or opaque glass, frit or powder (I won't bore you about why these choices matter). Two more molds got made today, next week the last four.

Here's half the frivolous post, the little creatures who live here with us.

This honey bee seemed a little confused about which part of the flower she was supposed to go to as she explored the ends of several petals on the white orchid tree flowers.

This tiny gecko which couldn't have been longer than 1 1/4” head to tip of it's tail and looked to be just hatched was on the wall in the bathroom and we have no idea how it got there.

This little golden orb weaver is young, her body is only about 3/4”. She'll get much bigger.

Big Mama, our 32 year old red ear slider, felt it necessary to remind me she hadn't been fed today.

And last a little tree frog hanging out on the molding of the back door. I took this picture through the glass. First one I've seen this gray color.

 

molds, rain, treason

Monday was the first day in I don't know how long that I didn't have to go over to the studio and work. Marc was over there painting de-bubblizer on the waxes which helps prevent bubbles from sticking to the surface when the investment mix is poured around them. Yesterday we didn't go over there as I would be gone in the morning doing the weekly grocery shop and then the surprise J6 hearing started at noon here and by the time it was over it was really too late in the day to go start on anything. But he was over there yesterday making molds. It's nice to have a second person handy (me) to apply some dry plaster to stop a leak in case the mold material finds a way out of the containment surrounding the model and also to use a straw to blow the investment into small spaces that might still be harboring bubbles as he pours.

So I'm sort of at loose ends here after weeks and weeks of heading over to the the studio for my minimum 2 hours a day. That will start again soon enough as soon as he has molds made but in the meantime I need to be on call for when he's ready for me. In fact, this afternoon, I'll need to do the water volume measure to determine the weight of glass needed to fill the molds he's steaming out this morning while I'm at SHARE before they start to dry out.

The weather prevaricators had been predicting rain for several days this week and so just as it was time for me to start getting ready for yoga class on Monday thunder started rolling and gale force winds started whipping the trees around and blowing over the plumerias whose pots weren't sunk in the ground. I could see the rain across the cotton field and then the rain got to us blowing nearly sideways. It's hard to tell how much rain we got since it wasn't coming straight down but my sister's rain gauge registered 2”. No more rain since but at least we got a little relief.

So, surprise J6 hearing Tuesday. I missed the first 20 minutes or so, came in as they were listing the weapons that had either been confiscated or had knowledge of. Of course we knew his supporters were armed with various things during the riot but when Trump complained that the secure area for his followers during the speech wasn't filling up, his secret service detail informed him that people were armed and weapons were being confiscated as they passed through the metal detectors and so many did not want to go through and have their weapons taken. Trump's response was to demand that his armed supporters be let through. “I don't fucking care that they have weapons,” Trump responded, “they're not here to hurt me. Get rid of the mags and let my people in, they can march to the Capitol from here.” So Trump and his inner circle knew about the quantity of people with weapons before his speech and in his speech Trump exhorted them to go to the Capital and fight, fight, fight. He intended to go with them but his secret service detail took him back to the White House. When Trump learned the attackers were chanting 'hang Mike Pence' he refused to do anything to stop the attack saying Pence 'deserves it'. As the fighting got worse and the Capitol was breached he again refused to do anything to try and stop it, even though his inner circle advisors, family members, and congress members were urging him to call them off, because he “didn't think they were doing anything wrong”. It wasn't until hours later that he recorded a message for them to go home, saying we love you. So many people knew things were going to get violent even days in advance, and yet not a single person had the decency to go public with what they knew to try to stop him from inciting an attempted takeover of the government.

The other rather shocking bit of information was the video of Trump's former national security advisor Mike Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, taking the 5^th when asked if he believed the violence was justified and moral and when asked if he believed in the peaceful transfer of power. That's some heavy shit right there, a retired Army general refusing to say he did believe in the peaceful transfer of power.

I keep waiting for a little breather to do a totally frivolous post on flowers and critters but the shit just keeps hitting the fan. But here's one picture. The rangoon creeper likes the heat.

 

getting there

For those of you interested in making the Israeli couscous pasta salad, do scoop the seeds out of the cucumber before you chop it up. I don't have a precise recipe, just eyeball the proportions.

Tuesday I drilled the holes in the sides of the shadow box frames and got two light coats of the flat black on the plywood backs. One more coat and then I'll start on the frames with the glossy black. I'm ready to get these two projects done, the luna moth in the kiln and the trumpet flowers mounted, so I can start on the next two models. That's my favorite part, making the models, turning those blocks and sheets of wax into a 3 dimensional or bas relief sculpture. There's a third one I need to make, a small botanical for a friend to fulfill my half of a trade. I've had the giclee print of her painting framed and hung for at least a year. Maybe longer.

Well, the pain in my rear is back (no, not the husband, he's here all the time), not my hip but on the right side of my butt near my tailbone but at least it's not the sharp pain it was before. Now it's more like a dull ache so I guess I pulled a muscle down there somehow though every day it's better.

The white glass I ordered came Tuesday so Wednesday, I got the last two layers of frit, clear then white, in the mold and it went in the kiln this morning.

I also finished painting the plywood backs and got the little risers nailed on that the glass will be glued to so that it floats in the frame and got two coats of the glossy black on the frames.

Here's one of the shadow boxes assembled and the next step is to nail the frame to the back piece, attach the hanger to the back, and finally glue the glass panels in place. 

an experiment with fonts and stalled progress

I'm going to try a little experiment with this post and see how the different fonts translate into the mobile version of people's phones and tablets (I had a really hard time picking 4 other fonts, especially the 4th paragraph, I want sans serif but most of them are just boring with zero character) starting with Comic Sans, then Ariel, Avenir Medium, Cochin, Chalkboard, and the last sentence back to Comic Sans.

This was supposed to be included in my last post but somehow got overlooked...When we left Wharton to head to San Antonio on Saturday we took county roads until we hit I-10, 102 to 3013 back to 102. It's a really nice drive especially the last section of 102 when you start getting into the hill country. There was a stretch of 3013 before we got to Eagle Lake that had thousands and thousands of starlings hanging out in the early morning light just before the sun rose above the horizon. There were many small groups flying their murmurations, even larger groups converged on the power lines and twice we came to a huge group covering the roadway so densely that a good 15 or 20 feet looked black. We'd get almost upon them before they took flight. No picture though, it all happened so fast.

Wednesday I decided to add another layer of the background color so had to build up a little barrier with clear around the edges of the design elements to prevent the background color, olive smoke again, from spilling over into the other colors, wouldn't have mattered with the green but might have altered the moth color, and then filled in with clear over the other colors.

I also added a solid layer of clear over the whole thing, did all my math and still need to add the final two layers of clear and white. But as I feared/expected I don't have enough white to insure a good solid layer. The amount I have is borderline so I've ordered more white but I'm having trouble getting it as the manufacturer has been out for a while now and so the distributors that ship are also out. I ordered 4 pounds from one place but all they can send me right now is two, their last two pounds of plain white. There are other whites...opaque white, dense white, reactive white, translucent white...and those are available but not what I want. So now I'm waiting for my glass to arrive to finish filling that mold and getting it into the kiln. In the meantime I'm going to work on painting the shadowboxes my brother made for me and getting the trumpet flower panels installed in them. Once the luna moth mold is in the kiln I'll start on the two new models I have planned.

I got almost nothing accomplished the past two days, Thursdays being my SHARE day and yesterday being one of my days to fix dinner so I took the dog for a long walk after lunch since the weather has been temperate and then we watched two episodes of The Witcher on Netflix before I started on dinner which was stuffed shells from a recipe I got off the internet. It made a lot, enough to serve 10 people (there's just two of us) but all the recipes I looked at were basically the same. I don't think I'll ever use that recipe again (in fact I may never have to make stuffed shells again ever), total overkill on the cheese...2 pounds of ricotta, one pound of mozzarella, half pound of parmesan...and it was sort of weird as half the mozzarella and half the parmesan was mixed in with the sauce, also some sliced mushrooms. It filled two 8" baking dishes. We ate less than half of one and that was all we had. I lay there last night after I went to bed with dinner heavy in my stomach thinking I should have fixed a salad to go with to balance out all that cheese. And then, now that I have so much left over and divided up in the freezer, I realized I could have easily just divided the recipe. What was I thinking!

Obviously, I wasn't. 

weird font substitutions and more progress on the luna moth mold

Blog weirdness...I had a reader ask me to go back to the font I had been using before I switched to Skia because she had a hard time reading it. I'm happy to oblige so I switched back to Comic Sans. I changed the font on the reading list post and either changed or posted the next one in Comic Sans. The post about Jade I definitely composed in Comic Sans and published it. The mobile version on my phone is showing that post in the very flowery and hard to read font Zapfino. And that's how it shows on my sister's laptop as well. I have no idea what the fuck is going on but if you switch from the mobile version to the web version on your phone (there's a link at the bottom of the post) it still won't be in Comic Sans but it will be a much easier to read font. At least it is on my iPhone. And to make it even weirder, it showed up in the font Wingdings for another reader. So if this post shows up in weird fonts for you please let me know. I may have to find a new font though I have used Comic Sans with no trouble for many years.

Sunday morning the dog was going crazy barking. I let her out in the little backyard and she zeroed in on a spot under the house barking madly. Called her in and she sniffed along the exterior walls baseboard and then climbed up on the loveseat to look out the window and bark, hackles up. I looked out. It was one of the possums that live under the house or under the Wicked Bitch of the West's container. I guess this one lives under the container, an old boy slowly making his way back to his den.

Friday afternoon's progress on the luna moth.

Sunday I had an uninterrupted day to work and got all the color into the design areas so basically the fussy part is done. The only thing left to do is decide on the background color, fill that in, and then put in the clear and white layers.

Monday I got the background in. Now I have to weigh all the leftover colors to determine how much weight of glass is in the mold so I can know how much more I need to add as the clear and white layers. I may add more of the background color first though.

indecision and preparation

I'm no closer to deciding what to do about the shadow boxes than I was a week ago.

I pulled out the four stains I have and stained wood samples,

pine

red oak

I found a small black frame I haven't used yet and held the glass over it,

I painted a piece of trim white,

I painted a piece of plywood and trim black.

In the past I have always framed my work for hanging with black frames, custom made for each piece, as it sets the colors and luminosity of the glass off nicely though most just show a 1/4” edge of black around the work.

There are a few exceptions like this blue jay feather for which I bought a cheap commercially available frame

and the shadow boxes my brother made for the feathers.

I suppose I could try one of the stains and then paint it if I didn't like it.

Any decision will have to wait for another day or so. I spent yesterday making the cranberry sauce and all the prep work for the dressing which I need to get in the kitchen shortly to put it all together and get it cooking for our family gathering later today for Thanksgiving at our daughter's house.

Also yesterday I trimmed and cleaned up the mold of the luna moth that Marc made on Tuesday and did my volume measure and repaired some pretty deep holes where bubbles didn't rise up or got caught.

While my glass blowing friends Dick and Kathy opted not to do the open house again this year for various reasons, they and our friend Gene who does fused glass and myself are going in together for a booth space for a one day Artisan's Market show the first Saturday in December so I need to figure out which pieces I'll take and what I can fit on my display board as I'll only be using half my regular set up. I don't think I'll actually sell anything as my price point is mostly out of reach for this particular market but I'll enjoy hanging out with my friends whom I haven't seen in two years.

Wishing everyone a loving gathering with family and friends today be it small or large.

the terminally stupid, dogs, birds, caterpillars

Someone reported a week or so ago that there was a new conspiracy theory on Breitbart (no I don't read it) that liberals were dunking on MAGAts and other far right anti-vaxxers so they will dig in their heels to 'own the libs' and die. Who knew their refusal to get vaccinated and wear masks is really a heinous liberal plot. It seems somebody finally noticed that most of the people dying from covid are the nut job republicans.

Yesterday morning Minnie started going nuts barking her head off. There was a big white dog over at the shop yard, very friendly and chill, totally unconcerned with Minnie, barking hackles raised, when we went out. Pam checked the tags on her collar, had a name and number so I called. By the time he showed up the dog had headed down the street and I didn't know where she was but told him if I saw her again, I'd call. A couple of hours later I was heading over to the house from the studio when I turned to make sure Minnie was following and she and that big white dog were nose to nose. So the dog followed us home and into the garage and I called the guy again and then closed the garage door, the dog was just laying down in there. Anyway, the guy showed up, a youngish guy, says he has a hard time keeping her in, spent a week looking for and repairing holes and tears in the fence around his 10 acres where she's getting out. She's a Great Pyrenees, guards his goats, has already killed two coyotes. She likes to range, he said, but you'd think 10 acres would be enough, said she was gone for three weeks once and someone found her in Richmond 33 miles away, took her to a local vet, she's chipped.

Saturday's progress on the mold. You can see some of the shading I'm trying to get this time. I've put in marigold yellow, which is a little more orange than the canary and the pale yellow. I wish I had remembered to take a picture of the green tones in the barely open flower before I covered it with the yellow. Second photo I'm filling in with the yellow. I'm using a less intense yellow than on the first piece. I can get varying shades of yellow by mixing different ratios of the pale yellow frit with the very saturated intense canary yellow powder. In the first piece I used two ratios; 10/1 and 10/3; and got that deep yellow. This time I'm using just the 10/1.

Still getting some rain most days but thankfully without the lightning and thunder and intense downpours. It's very wet out there and very humid. On my walk around the yard yesterday early evening I spied two of these, monarchs in the making.

And the bird feeder is getting lots of action. I'm seeing adult cardinals and juveniles in various stages of getting their adult plumage chickadees, titmice mostly. The other bird feeder with the grain is not so I wonder where the sparrows are. Maybe I need to move it to a different location.

 

getting started and much needed rain

I have that mold over in the studio to fill and Sunday I even went over and pulled jars of frit off the shelf and onto the table and I sit here unmotivated. Today is my usual day to do the week's grocery shopping and again I sit here unmotivated putting it off til tomorrow. I've been having bouts of insomnia, did again last night, a couple of hours at least, which makes me sleep late and so I don't get my exercise routine in before breakfast. Add to that I had to jump start my day before I was even remotely ready, fixing my breakfast early so that I could go pick up my grandgirl Robin and get her to her first day of work on time as she doesn't have a car and the parents did not make any arrangements so that she could get to work, granted they do leave early to get to their own jobs in the city. I did volunteer yesterday to take her if need be when I talked to her but I'm not going to be available every day. I've bailed out my grandson many times, helped the twins now and then, but Robin has never asked me for anything so I'm glad to do it for her when I can.

I wrote the above yesterday and I did actually move my butt over to the studio and started on the mold. Didn't get far, just the green sheaths the flowers descend from but it's a start. Doubt I'll get much done on it today if anything as I still have to do the aforementioned grocery shop and the dishes need to be done and pick up Robin from work and take her home and it's a yoga class night.

In a show of good timing, my yellow trumpet flower has a couple of open blooms.

My white orchid flower tree made a couple of seed pods this year for the first time ever. It's getting big enough now that I'm going to have to think about planting it in the ground somewhere as it's getting too hard to move it around to protect it in the winter and unlike the purple orchid flower tree/shrub planted over at the shop, which has never bloomed because it has frozen to the ground every winter since I planted it, this one has thorns. A little out of focus but there it is.

We finally got some much needed rain yesterday, 1 3/4” - 2 1/2” depending on whose rain gauge, one at either end of the street. It dropped that amount of rain in about 30 – 40 minutes amid lots of lightning and thunder and high wind. I had to drive through it coming back from picking up Robin after work and it was raining so hard as I neared the house that I was going only 20 mph and still couldn't see a damn thing. Pulled in the driveway and had to wait it out in the car because I would have been drenched by the time it took me to go the six feet to the garage. The power was off when I made it in the house. A lightning strike...the flash and boom almost simultaneous followed by a sizzle had knocked out at least four transformers in the neighborhood but they had the power back on by a little after 6 PM. Bonus for me since it was my night to cook and we have an electric stove so I got takeout from the place down the road; fried catfish, bacon potatoes, mustard greens, fried okra.

Another thunderstorm came through last night dropping another two inches so I didn't get much sleep last night either thanks to a panicky little dog. Four inches in 12 hours and no standing water in the low spots, that's how dry it was and more predicted for the next three days and late afternoon today so I'll probably be canceling yoga class this evening.

I can't even read some days about our political situation with the republicans filibustering everything the democrats want to do for the common people and to rebuild our faltering infrastructure. Now they won't even vote for a stopgap government funding bill or raise the debt ceiling, something they did three times when Trump was in office after their massive tax cuts to the rich and greedy adding trillions to our national debt, just to make Biden look bad. They don't give a shit about this country, our democracy, or the other 98%. The only thing they care about is power. And the two democrats in name only who won't vote to get rid of the filibuster which was put in place to guarantee white men would stay in power are playing right into their hands. And what's going on with the 1/6 commission? They've issued subpoenas that are being ignored and it remains to be seen if they will enforce them. It's just all too depressing to think about. 

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.