who is that person in the mirror?

I think all my wrinkles underwent mitosis the other day.

I did take the truck over on Sunday and gathered up all the pruned branches off the white orchid shrub and the tallow tree and the vines of the virginia creeper and Eric emptied it onto the burn pile for me. Eric works with my grandson Mikey at the same auto repair shop and he and his wife rent a room in my daughter’s house (long story about how that came to be but it’s working out well for all parties) and so Eric is often over at the shop too after hours and weekends. Works for me. The boys are quick to help me with whatever I need. And since Paisleigh was also there on Sunday she tagged along with me. We ‘played chalk’ and she’s getting better at drawing a hopscotch and writing the numbers with a little help and guidance and then we came in and played doctor with one of the stuffed toys. Then she wanted to look at some pictures on my computer and when we got to the picture of the carrots I pulled the other day we went out and she pulled a carrot for her Pop Pop (my son in law) for him to cook and eat.

Then we looked at more pictures and then she wanted to write with my keyboard on the computer and this is what she wrote:  l pxooxaos-0qs0iqi  q os oq  iiufhofofooioir4utlkkhdjjcjkjkkjksjkjglllhskslljfojf’lofjrfhfljj. Then we played taking a nap and after that I took her back to her dad over at the shop so that I could go back home and take a shower and an actual nap. Only I sat quietly and read for a while instead.

I caught my neighbor Gary on Monday coming back from his evening walk and while he doesn’t have a pole chain saw he has a pole saw and he said he’d come cut the branches for me the next day, which he did Tuesday morning cutting more of the high branches above the weatherhead and some that were close to the end of the house. 

So already I have another load of branches to pick up and haul to the burn pile including a pile at my house from Monday when a windstorm blew through bringing a little rain that dropped a bunch of small to medium branches and one fairly large limb. I love that my house is surrounded by trees but why do they have to all be ones that self prune and drop branches all the time! 

Small forays out in the yard Wednesday, watered the plants in pots in the morning then later dead headed the zinnias which are still blooming but waning. Flowers are smaller and some of the smaller plants have died back. Pulled a few weeds. This will be the modus operandi for the foreseeable future entering the dog days of summer. 

Last spring you might remember that I moved a bigger table into the barn to keep my gardening and potting stuff on and put up a small shelf which almost immediately wasn’t big enough. I cut a longer shelf board a while back and today I finally put it up where the short shelf was and then put the short shelf underneath it. 

The mexican bird of paradise, also called pride of barbados, is still blooming as is the rangoon creeper,

the morning glory bush, 

the aforementioned zinnias, and the yellow bells.

On a closer look this young lady was looking for her next meal. She’s only about 2” right now but will get much bigger.

post freeze work, finished painting, med report

Mid 50s out there, overcast and damp, dreary. Saturday was nice enough that i got out there and started cutting back some of the dead stuff; the lantana, the yellow butterfly ginger that hasn’t bloomed for a couple of years and probably won’t get any this year, the pink butterfly ginger at least what’s left of it, picked up the orange cosmos I had pulled out the week before, worked more on clearing out the overgrowth at the end of the shop. That five feet or so of cleared ground on the left is what I’ve done so far plus some behind the air compressor that was completely engulfed that you can’t see. That area used to be a nice patch of dewberry vines until the virginia creeper and wild grape vine took over.

I uncovered the ponytail palm and it looks good. Uncovered the other plants that always freeze to the ground and they did but I think covering them helps protect the roots. Took the larger pots out of the house and the smaller pots out of the garage so they could get watered by the rain predicted on Sunday.

I’ve declared this first part of the painting done, 4" x 4", and removed the blue tape 

and penciled in the shape of the zucchini below. 

I figure if I don’t like the way the zucchini comes out I can just cut it off. I’ve sort of picked an image for the next painting. I saved a photo of a landscape with the moon, all fading deep dark indigos. It will be another technique/skill building exercise. Not sure I can pull it off.

I had the TEE yesterday. I’m getting to be an old hand at this joking with one of the nurses that I could tell her what to do. I got the results today via the patient portal: “The WATCHMAN device is in good position; there appears only very trace leaking between the device and left atrial appendage (with maximal diameter of 0.2 cm). No evidence of any thrombosis in this leaking area or left atrium.” So, no change in the Watchman, the heart tissue did not heal over the leak in the last three months. No sign of blood clotting but I am on low dose aspirin and plavix so I wouldn’t expect there to be. I want off the plavix, the whole point of getting the Watchman was to get off the blood thinner and since this very small leak is within the normal range I expect to be able to stop taking it. I haven’t heard from the doctor yet about what the results mean and probably won’t until the end of the week. 

So the Watchman is stable but there were some other notes concerning the aortic valve that were not noted from the TEE three months ago. One that there are mildly calcified leaflets (part of the structure of the valve) meaning slight hardening (I looked it up) that can be a result of age but not necessarily. The other note was mild aortic regurgitation, meaning a slightly leaky valve. I have no idea if these conditions are newly developed from three months ago or just not noted previously or something to be concerned about. The third note was concerning the size of the ascending aorta, the value increased from 27 to 30 and while 30 is still normal the increase seems worrying. Anyway more stuff to talk to the heart doctor about. So that’s my health report for today.

a birthday with old friends, monster rose bush tamed

Sunday I vowed to myself to stay off social media and focus my attention on happier things or at least things that need attending to. The county lifted the burn ban Thursday so torching the burn pile was on the agenda. Also make more progress on the book I’m reading. Maybe put my sewing machine away even though I could start on the skirt hidden in the fabric I bought for that purpose over a year ago and maybe start a new watercolor. 

Saturday we went to visit our friend Gene who lives in Hockley with his partner Brian. It was Gene’s 77th birthday and they were having a gathering of friends. Gene is my second oldest friend. I met him in the second half of 1977. Sarah was still an infant and I was going around to the few stained glass supply businesses trying to make contacts for if they ever had anyone asking about etched glass. One such business told me to try Gene’s little stained glass studio he had with two other guys so I went there and introduced myself. Gene went out on his own shortly after and we’ve been friends ever since. We did the Renaissance Festival together for about 6 years early in both our careers, we collaborated on projects now and then, put on exhibitions together, started the Houston Glass Artists Association, we supported each other in many ways and became lifelong friends. This picture, taken in 1978 of Marc and I and our baby daughter Sarah and Gene, was taken in Gene’s studio for an article about us in a local little publication as I recall.

You might remember that when Gene and Brian decided to leave Houston he moved the contents of his studio into our shop for storage while he had his house moved, got a well and septic installed, fixed the house up, built the private deck out front, and finally, finished out the interior of the metal building erected for his studio, a process that took about three years. His place in the piney woods is so gorgeous, everything he does is done artistically, even his yard tools behind the studio are hung artfully. The man has an incredible touch, very serene with plantings and fountains scattered about on his acre, a small pond, bird feeders, a garden. He built a sweet little greenhouse for his tropicals and orchids and he did it, does it all himself, with found material and objects. He’s amazing.

So it was a nice gathering seeing friends we haven’t seen since our last open house at Dick and Kathy’s glass blowing studio right before covid. Bill and Larry for whom I did my very first etched glass commission were there, Dick and Kathy who were very involved in the arts and who were instrumental in dragging us our of our cave and into the light of the public, various other artists we have known and associated with over the years like Liz, Lesley, Michael, and Daniel.

And when we left I stuffed the car with 6 huge bags of pine needles, had to lay down the back seats to get them all in, to put around my azaleas instead of the pine bark mulch I’ve had to use.

Sunday I did not read, did not sew, did not start a new painting but I did stay off social media. My grandson Mikey came and got the original heavy plastic formed stairs that came with Pam’s house that we never got rid of after Rocky built the little front porch and steps on the house to use for the travel trailer he and Audra and Paisleigh are living in. While he was here he torched the burn pile for me. Since I had been waiting to heavily prune the monster rose bush over there until we could burn I got my baby chain saw and worked for the next hour and a half. The days of the monster rose bush’s unrestrained growth are over. What is left is about one fifth or one sixth of what was. No before picture of course.

Trees and wild grapevine and virginia creeper had grown up in the solid thatch and had to be cut out. I’m going to keep it pruned and cleared from the ground so that Joe can mow and trim under it. I tried to find a recent picture but to no avail, apparently I didn't keep any of the pictures I took of it this year. This is what it looked like two years ago when I pruned enough of the bottom out so that I could get under there and clear out the trees and virginia creeper and had gotten even bigger. 

Later I spread out three of the bags of pine needles. Still have the other azaleas to do but they can wait until next weekend.

The sky Friday evening.

new theme, crystals, and why is my subconscious dragging up my mother

I’m going to try a new recurring content in my posts, My Life in 100 Objects, the idea taken from Rosemary Murphy of Share My Garden. She has a separate blog for this but I’m just going to scatter them through my own future posts. So here is #1.

This painting, 47" x 37", by William Anzalone hung in the breakfast room of my childhood home directly across the table from where I sat. It’s what I looked at during breakfast and dinner. I have claimed this painting as my own almost from the time my father first bought it though I don’t remember what age I was. Anzalone would, in the future, have a big impact on my artistic ability. I took Drawing from him in college at the University of Houston during which I learned not only how to draw (as opposed to just sketch or scribble) but how to see the thing I was trying to draw and other rules (who knew there were rules for drawing) like how to render a curved object and perspective among much more. I remember the first class when he told us the hardest thing to draw was a straight line, not because it was so hard but because of our fear of putting pencil to paper. I didn’t get possession of this painting until after my father died and my mother went to live with my brother in the PNW. It currently hangs above my bed. 

Sunday I finally hung all the rest of my crystals that I've been accumulating. They look great. What took me so long! Well, beside the fact that my desk is up against that wall of windows and it’s a tight squeeze to get back there.

I took the screen off the window first which I had been planning to do for some time now so I would have a clearer view of the bird feeder since the screens are old and cast a gray filter. Also I don’t ever open those windows (see above) and they won’t stay up anyway, have to be propped up. I just leaned the screen up against the bank of windows on the outside, hadn’t put it away in the garage yet, and the next morning a little green tree frog and an anole were taking shelter behind it.

The frog was still there when I put the screen away.

Every day when I go out there’s another branch or two or three that has fallen from the oaks and the pecans, ones that were broken during hurricane Beryl but not fallen. I’ve just been piling them up next to the magnolia tree during the burn ban instead of putting them in the truck which pretty much makes the truck unusable for anything else. 

As you can see I also pulled the kidney shaped small pond out of the ground since it was finally light enough with all the water evaporated and the water plants dead. Now I have this big hole to fill. I may set the pond up elsewhere in the future but I won’t sink it in the ground as before.

I had another weird dream Monday morning. I was in the kitchen of my childhood home and it was a mess with dirty dishes and empty food containers strewn over all the counters. I was shocked that no one was cleaning the place up or providing decent food for our old senile mother who I suppose was in her bedroom (where in real life she spent much of her time sleeping her life away). She wandered in and got a box of dry cereal from the cabinet and started just eating handfuls out of the box. When I tried to take it away from her telling her to at least put it in a bowl with milk she grabbed it back and wandered back out of the kitchen. When I walked into the family room and looked out the sliding glass door into the backyard, there were three men digging up bulbs and plants. I opened the door and yelled at them to stop and to leave and then I went back into the kitchen and out the back door to get the license plate number of the car they must have come in but it was a police car and there was no license plate and as I was writing down the name of the police department the men came around from the back and tried to drive away. There was more to the dream before I woke up but the rest of it is murky now.

Today is the day. I am not going to watch any election returns and plan to stay off social media, preferring the shock or awe on Wednesday morning but hoping to greet the day with jubilation.