good things and horrible things

Fridays sunset. It was just past peak before I could get back out there with my phone to take a picture.

I’ve been seeing juvenile cardinals at the bird feeder; small, slender, don’t have their full adult coloring quite yet, unsure, looking around for mom or dad to feed them before tentatively pecking at the sunflower seeds but getting bolder. Just now a juvenile male and an adult female, mother and son?. He is spotty with color, raggedy looking fluttering his wings at mom, beak open. She turned her back on him, it’s right there in front of you son. Finches, sparrows, juvenile cardinals tussling for position until an adult male cardinal flies up and they all scatter.

It rained Friday, maybe about an inch, and a short shower today but still overcast and thundery, so it’s been relatively cooler. Yesterday was overcast and only got to 90, relatively being the key word here. Haven’t really been working out in the yard this week though I did dead head the zinnias again and moved some concrete mortar bricks to the barn, moved the white orchid tree in it’s pot to a shadier area. The pot it’s in is too small and it dries out fast in the sun. I’ll repot it this fall. Did a little weeding. These less hot days would have been good to be out there doing stuff but I just didn’t feel like it.

I’ve been working on my violet drawings, still in the pencil stage. Enlarged one in a 4” square and transferred it to the sketchbook. Been reworking another paying more attention to the whole photo and I’m liking it a lot better, also in a 4” square. New version looks much like the previous version. 

When I did the initial drawings I cropped the photo on my computer to a 6” square, made four copies and then cropped each to one quadrant and that’s what I looked at when I did my first small drawings 2.5”/3” x 3”. I probably need to do that with the other one too. I need more variations of purple pencils before I do it in color so when we go to Costco next Wednesday I’m going to stop at Michael’s on the way. Last time I was there they had a fairly large selection of individual Prismacolor pencils so I made a list of what I have and the ones I want.

My daughter and Paisleigh came over Saturday. Paisleigh, who will be four in October, wanted to paint so she and I got out her watercolors. She has a box here that holds her paints, crayons, colored pencils, sidewalk chalk, her own little art box. The first time we got out her watercolors I taught her to clean her brush between colors and that way the colors wouldn’t get all muddy. So I asked her if she remembers what to do, how to paint and she said yes, to clean her brush between colors. The child is so sharp and she’s very good at doing just that. There was some discussion of which brush she wanted to use. My good brushes are not an option so I held up brushes until she finally chose one. Others rejected for various reasons, one because it looked like a makeup brush. 

The wolf spider living in my bathroom has regrown its leg. I looked it up and yes they can regrow legs if they are not fully grown, are still molting, but I’m pretty sure this one is and was grown when I first spotted it and it was missing a leg so who knows, maybe it was just tucked away where I couldn’t see it. It seems to like being in the trash can as I find it in there often, though I don’t know if it can get out once in as the inside of the trash can is very smooth while the outside has some texture. Anyway, I will generally scoop it out when I see it in there.

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Just a few of the myriad horrors here: Ghislaine Maxwell, a woman who procured and abused children for Epstein’s rape culture and who lied on the stand and was charged with perjury along with sex trafficking of children was interviewed for two days by Trump’s ex personal lawyer now 2nd in command at the DOJ in an effort to ‘get the truth’ and dispel the controversy surrounding Trump’s participation and the client list while Trump dangles the power to pardon her. And why wouldn’t he? He’s already pardoned other sex traffickers and criminals. 

It’s costing us $10M for Trump to go cheat at golf for 5 days at his club in Scotland but there’s no money for food assistance for hungry people here in this country, all that has been slashed. And get this, he thinks the Palestinians suffering from starvation should tell him thank you for food they aren’t getting because Israel is using starvation as a weapon. FEMA has designated $608M to states to build detention centers to hold people whose only ‘crime’ is being here and not being white after denying aid to Americans in several states suffering from devastation due to natural disasters because Kristi Noam already blew through the DHS’s budget for ICE raids.

I commented on a post on SM about why people are distancing themselves from friends and family if they had voted for and support Trump. Someone called foul on that, that you shouldn’t cut off your family over politics. My comment was that it wasn’t about politics but a difference in morals. One guy replied that if Trump was so immoral why did so many people vote for him? Unfortunately and sadly, the answer to that is self evident. 

 

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.

 

more flowers, more days in the life

The wind finally died down late last Friday I think and when it did the humidity came back with a vengeance. Had to turn the AC on for two days...in April. Lots of sweating while I did whatever I did out in the yard. Mostly I started watering since...no wind to speak of, moving the sprinkler every 45 minutes or so. Everything mostly got a good dousing. I woke  Monday to cooler and drier air so thank the powers that be for that.

So, watering, digging up sprouting pecan trees, poison ivy, wild grape vine, and briar; swept the deck of the oak tree blooms, tossed some zinnia and pink cosmos seeds some of which are already sprouting, moved all but one of the plumerias in pots to their summer locations which involved sinking the pots of the biggest with a tendency to fall over in the wind but still have to plant the two biggest ones that go directly in the ground, pruned off the dead branches of the spirea which is struggling. I'm sure there were other small tasks over the last three days. The one plumeria in a pot that didn't get moved is being donated to the garden club plant sale. I was told it was white when I bought the small thing but it turned out to be pink and I don't need another pink one. I can make pink ones all day long since their branches are easily rooted.

After doing some maintenance on my ingrown toenail a few days ago and again Sunday night and really painful and tender, I finally called the doctor's office Monday and I have an appointment this Friday to get it taken care of. Am and am not looking forward to that. I'll be glad to have it taken care of but not looking forward to the process.

Aaaand Tuesday the wind was back and a bit chilly. Tuesday is my grocery shop day but it's being put off while we wait for our new credit cards. Last month's bill showed four bogus charges and further review showed one of them repeating for the past couple of months. None of the charges were extreme, ranging from $8 to $30 some odd and all connected to Amazon. Third or fourth time over the years we've had to get new cards.

I didn't do much of anything yesterday, finished my book, just wasn't feeling that great, a little afib and upset stomach but by evening it had all settled down and I feel fine today. Currently overcast and still very windy. I think I'll work on the sketches today.

So just a couple more pictures of the wildflowers around (though I wish I could get a picture of the medians between the north/south sides of the highway because they are filled with evening primrose from dark pink to almost white)

Indian paintbrush

Queen Anne's lace and clasping leaved coneflowers

and stuff in the yard

and a few encounters with the local wildlife.

baby praying mantis

She has blue eyes!

Minnie enjoying the sun on the deck

a correction, weird dreams, and other miscellanea

Let me start out by correcting myself about the morning glory bush. It is in the morning glory family, Convolvulaceae as is the sweet potato. Family: Convolvulaceae, Genus: Ipomoea carnea. The Heavenly Blue morning glory that grows on a vine is Family: Convolvulaceae, Genus: Ipomoea tricolor (also Ipomoea purpurea). Sweet potatoes are also in the Ipomoea genus. So I was right and wrong at the same time.

The heavenly blue morning glory seeds I planted last spring still have not produced a single flower though the vines have taken over four of the five fence sections I put up between me and the neighbor in the back but the wild smaller flowered purple common bindweed that's growing on part of the shop yard fence is covered in blooms.

And this Saturday morning it is down right cool outside and low humidity. What a relief. Cooler even than yesterday morning though it's supposed to get to 90˚ today. It's nice to have the door open again to listen to the bird song. Next week our highs are supposed to be mid 80s˚ but it won't get as cool at night.

The afib had flared up again after only a day but it settled down Friday evening and seems to be holding steady right now.

Of course today is the 20^th anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Down here in Texas it was a distant horror but if I'm completely honest, we, as a nation, have wrought as much horror and more on other nations in our past and did again after. We just thought we were bullet proof. Less than 3,000 died that day and in response we killed hundreds of thousands, sent more than 7,000 soldiers and over 8,000 contractors to die in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attack, and Afghanistan with over 30,000 coming home mangled, missing limbs and eyes. So which was the real horror. And that's all I'm going to say about 9/11.

Last night was one of my nights to cook dinner and I fixed Italian sausage roasted with apples and shallots. It was a bit late though as grandgirl Autumn FaceTimed me from Ecuador where she is doing a semester abroad when I should have started preparations and then her twin Jade FaceTimed me just as I was finishing eating so I got to see both of them last night.

Well, it's warming up out there so I think I'm going to finish the last dozen pages or so of the book I'm reading and then go over to the shop and finish the edges of the trumpet flower piece, and thank you all so much for your comments on that, and then maybe start on the next mold or maybe I'll do that tomorrow.

I did finally sleep well last night and my dreams were full of me trying to rally people to gather anything that could be used as a weapon like spears and baseball bats and stout limbs and the like and pile them all up to fight some sort of tentacled monster that was approaching and there were two tigers that I had to dispatch that came up out of nowhere which I did with a knitting needle-like thing by driving it into their skulls and what a crazy fucking dream.

A few pictures to end...yellow ginger, coral ginger, and a mass of baby spiders.

 

the summer yard part 2 – the critter version

The frogs and toads are quite noisy with their singing at night since all this rain.

Saturday I looked up, or down as the case may be, to see this pretty green ribbon snake...in the house. It seemed to have trouble getting traction on the vinyl floor and I can't imagine how it got all the way across the room from the door without me being aware of it but it did. I got my back scratcher, the nearest long handled thing, and gently herded it back out the door. It was about 18” long and not even as big around as my pinky finger.

I've seen some swallowtail butterflies in the yard and some little brown skippers and this tiny little hairstreak. It's true color is grayer than this.

I watched while this young squirrel sniffed around and then dug up a pecan and started eating it.

Big Mama hanging out.

Spider webs are everywhere. In this part of the yard I quit counting at 12.

A young banana spider with her mate,

these little green spiders with their neon orange spots,

and shield back spiders which I couldn't get an in focus picture of.

Not sure what this is but I thought it was a cool picture even if it is out of focus. Maybe a shield back spider with it's egg case seen from underneath.

I'm not sure what kind of egg case this is, my best guess from searching images is a jumping spider egg case.

Wasps tending their nest under the eave. Since wasps are only aggressive when they feel threatened I generally leave these pollinators alone unless they want to build their nest somewhere inconvenient for me and then I just wait til no one is home and knock it down.

Marc called me out to see this wasp and a wolf spider battling it out. By the time I got out there the wolf spider was dead and the wasp was dragging it across the yard.

spring is just a memory

and summer with its heat and humidity and mosquitos is firmly settled in. Ugh. I usually try to hold out til June 1^st before turning on the air conditioning but when the thermostat said 82˚ and 82% humidity inside at 12:30, I caved.

Any work outside not done will probably not get done. Or at least minimally. The summer garden is more subdued than the riot of color of the spring garden and while we get the threat of rain it doesn't materialize and I'll spend a lot of time watering, like I did this morning. And will again this evening.

It's been a snaky spring. Besides seeing the resident coral snake twice in one week I saw this guy twice in a matter of days as well. First spied when I noticed the dog with her curious stance looking closely at something under the magnolia tree.

At first I thought it was trying to swallow an old seed pod from the magnolia thinking what an idiot. When I looked closer I saw it was swallowing a toad with only it's back legs and butt sticking out. 

I thought it was a rat snake but my friend Andy says it's a hog nosed snake, that toads are toxic except to them. Then I saw it again a day or two later by the garage door.

Besides the living snakes I came across two medium sized snakes squashed in the road while walking the dog and two little garden snakes as well. And while digging out more of the mexican petunias I found this shed skin.

Saw a clump of orange dots, looked closer and this is what I saw...

they started spreading out when I jostled the foliage. These baby spiders are about the size of the head of a pin (click to bigify).

The green frog was back on the bromeliad but I haven't seen him again since.

Big Mama was out prowling around. She does this for two reasons in the spring. Either she's feeling the urge to lay eggs or she thinks I'm not feeding her enough. I'd lay odds on the latter. I noticed I'm down one more goldfish. Her posse is getting smaller.

And while I don't have a picture, the lightning bugs have been coming out in the evenings and I saw my first dragonfly, sure signs of summer.

I spy with my little eye

I went out to water the little backyard this morning and looked up to see this, just bold as you please, hanging out, checking out the neighborhood...

I have two birdhouses up on 2x4s attached to the fence so I turned to look at the other one and sure enough...

In case you can't tell what those are, they're tree frogs. I don't think birds have ever nested in either of those bird houses, at least not that I've noticed, so squatters moved in. The pictures are at high zoom so not so clear, especially the second one since that one was very shy and at the least movement would duck back and out of sight. It took me three tries to sneak up on it to get a picture.

A week ago when reinstalling the toilet was eminent I set about to clean it since it had been sitting outside the back door for 10 months and when I took the top off the tank to see if there was water in there I found this one making itself at home...

When I finished watering and went to hang up the nozzle (I hook it on a small branch of the shrubby tree thing next to the faucet) I noticed this...

I haven't seen one of these since we bought this place. This property had been vacant for a year and the first time we came out to look at it big banana spiders were everywhere. The next year we had a few and then after that, none so I was very surprised to see this one just after Ms Moon and I talked about sending me an egg case since she has lots of them. This one is little, body less than an inch, so it's either a young female or a male.

A couple of days after I returned from my trip to Portugal I looked out the glass in the back door and saw this red shouldered hawk on the fence scrutinizing the turtle pond with its fishy denizens (also high magnification as I was shooting through the glass in the back door).

I guess it figured they were more trouble than they were worth because it flew off after a while.

On the way back from the art festival we passed a vendor selling Fredericksburg peaches so we stopped and bought some. Fredericksburg is a small town in the hill country.

And finally, it's July and right on schedule the pecan trees are dropping immature fruit. These are all an inch or less. We haven't had a decent harvest for three years so I was hoping for a good one this year since we've been getting rain. It remains to be seen.