enough cold for color

While I didn't take any pictures of the very colorful trees in the city, I did take some of the ones in our yard when we got home. These trees all turned during the three days we have been gone, well except for the tallows which were giving us some brightly mottled red, orange, and green colored leaves. Now, though, they've all gone mostly yellow.

a tallow on the edge of the driveway

one of the three big pecans in the big backyard

the maple

the oak by the garage

another tallow with the oak behind it

city life too

It appears those two consecutive nights last week where the temperatures dipped to 30 just before dawn were enough to trigger some color in our deciduous trees.  The city is yellow and burnt orange for the most part except for when it is brown from the dead ones.  The tallows, the ornamental pears and the sweet gum throw some red and bright orange into the mix but its mostly a yellow and brown landscape.  The cypress are a mystery to me because they rightly turn brown and the needles fall.  But they also love water so I guess we won't really know if the cypress survived the drought until spring.

That little frost also took my pole beans even though I covered them.  And it nipped my zucchini, which I also covered, but didn't kill it.  It's in a big pot so I'm prepared to bring it in next time.  Get me a little grow light.

We're in town to do two small jobs.  One we finished up today and the other tomorrow.  But this long hot summer and lack of use required a half day of equipment repair.

Coming back into the city is always interesting.  While I was living there, changes were a little bit more gradual but not entirely.  Even then new construction would spring up whole and leave you trying to remember what had used to be there.

The city is finally repaving the two main arteries, the eastern and western boundaries, our N/S corridors.  In other words, I traveled on those two streets for practically everywhere I wanted to go.  Those were the two closest bridges over Buffalo Bayou, the only natural bayou left in the city (there are 4 major bayous passing through the city and I can name 8 in the larger metropolitan area).  

They have been needing to be repaved for many years but only now that the population density and per capita income in this part of town have both increased considerably has the city finally got around to it.  

I had occasion to go to a mall today, a very large mall, one that I haven't been to for a good many years.  It's a little farther than I ever wanted to go and it's also quite larger than it was last time I went.  I was taking my twin grandgirls to get their hair cut at the place of their choice but this isn't really about that.

It's about all the stuff that is for sale, everyone vying for those dollars.  As if the number of stores itself wasn't overwhelming enough, all the corridors were filled with carts and kiosks and they are all selling stuff!  I couldn't even look at it.  So much totally useless stuff when you really stop to think about it, whose sole purpose in being is to generate the transfer of cash from one pocket to another.  

Although I did see a very cool remote control helicopter that flew and hovered and the operator had it fly right to his hand where he plucked it out of the air.  I kept walking.  We were on a mission, not to be delayed or sidetracked.

The twins got their haircuts, had ice cream and a pretzel, we browsed Claire's, and made it back to the truck in an hour and a half.  Not bad.

Tomorrow we go home.  The cat will be glad.  She was starting to disbelieve in the existence of the dog and was wanting out.  We wouldn't let her out and a little while ago her faith was restored when the dog started barking and making his presence known.

T is for...

T is for...tree houses

I think we moved from the house I was born in to the house I grew up in when I was about 6 or 7. Well, I wasn't actually born in the house but it was the house my parents lived in when I was born in the hospital like all good modern babies were.

We moved from a post-war housing neighborhood to a custom built home on one acre in a neighborhood carved out of a pine forest across Buffalo Bayou from the heavily wooded and mostly undeveloped (then) forest of Memorial Park. We didn't actually live on the bayou but it was a short walk down the street and through the yard of a house that did back onto the bayou.

A couple of years after we moved, my father built us kids a tree house. He selected three large pines on the wooded side of our acre so that our tree house was triangular in shape and built maybe 10' off the ground, perhaps 6' x 10' on two of the three sides. The only picture I have of it is the one in my head so I'm guessing at any and all dimensions. It had a board ladder nailed to the trunk of one of the supporting pines, low walls probably 3' high and was roofed and sided with cedar shakes.

Well, probably he built the tree house for my brother, but I spent many an hour up there.

Like all kids in all neighborhoods we would, every so often, divide up into factions and war on each other. Every year after christmas, we would make and raid each other's christmas tree forts but what I really remember were the pine cone wars. Not for the meek were they. They would always start in someone's yard, pine cones were plentiful and hurt like the devil if one of the missiles hit their mark, but once we retreated to the tree house, we were unbeatable. We had not only the advantage of high ground but we also kept a stockpile of the closed hard prickly pine cones up there.

Eventually, as we all grew older, the tree house was abandoned and after we were all grown, my parents sold the house. A high rise stands now where our house and the tree house once stood. The woods and fields we played in are also gone.

I've never lost my love of tree houses, gained though watching many a Tarzan movie, and I sometimes wish we had moved out to the country sooner. Any one of the three large pecans in the big back yard or even the tallow in the little back yard would hold a small tree house. I fear the grandkids are already too old though for one to hold much mystery for them.

While the one we had as kids was quite simple, I could easily live in one of these.

If you would like to catch up on the rest of my alphabet posts, click on the link on my side bar. It's up there near the top under 'stuff about me'.

the gift exchange

The Garden Club christmas party was last Friday night and they do a gift exchange. If you want to participate you bring a wrapped gift, value not to exceed $10 and put it under the tree. I'm really terrible about going out and shopping so a few days before the party I made a little mobile out of colored glass strips, beads and fishing tackle, found a little box and wrapped it up. I didn't have any wrapping paper on hand but I do have a large roll of white bond paper for the full size drawings I do for the etched glass so I used that and then drew holly leaves and berries on it with the markers I keep on hand for the grandkids.

Everyone brings some sort of food item as well and after everyone had eaten we all drew numbers and one by one we selected an anonymous gift from under the tree. In past years they have played the game where you can select a new unopened gift or take one from someone else who then gets to pick a new unopened gift.  The club has grown quite a bit in the last year or two so this year we didn't do that, just selecting a gift and getting to keep it.

We oohed and awwed over things like pruning shears, a watering can, a couple of birdhouses, garden plaques, note cards and journal, an amaryllis, and other garden and not garden related things as they were opened.

There had been only three actual wrapped packages, mine being one of them, everyone else opting for gift bags (that's a rant for another day). I had drawn a very high number, there were about 30 of us participating, so when my turn came, I chose one of the wrapped packages. Under the paper was a box of Celestial Seasonings herbal tea which I was very pleased to have picked as I was just about out of the ones I had at home and showed it around to all the ladies sitting near me.

After all the gifts had been opened and we were tidying up, one of the members sidled up next to me and said very quietly, “It's not really a box of tea.”

It had never occurred to me to open the box to see what was in it even though the lack of cellophane should have tipped me off.

So I opened the box and inside was a sweet little ceramic bird.

I can be such a dolt sometimes. 

holiday parade

I live in a small town now, less than 10,000 people, so small town entertainment is what I have available to me. I'm OK with that since I didn't avail myself of the city entertainment when I lived there. Always too much traffic, too many people, too much money.

This year I went to the christmas parade around the square which they held the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving. It was my first time to go and I went with my sister. She's been living here longer than me and has even been in the christmas parade back when she and her husband were part of the farmer's market, back when he was still alive.

Anyway.

I remember when my kids were little. My best friend lived down at the other end of the block and she had two boys that roughly equaled the ages of my girl and boy so we spent a lot of time together and every Thanksgiving, we would get up early and bundle up the kids and take them downtown to see the Thanksgiving Day parade. I guess we did that about four years in a row until the kids stopped wanting to go. I knew a back way in to town and where to park so the walk was relatively short. Houston always had their Thanksgiving parade in the morning and it was always windy and cold downtown.

Anyway.

It was windy and cold here too so all my pictures are out of focus. All of them. I blame it on the fact that everything was moving when I snapped the pictures except the things that weren't. Even the things that were stopped in front of me, the pictures are out of focus. I think the wind was blowing the lights around or I was shivering, one or the other or maybe both.

Along with the parade there was (I hesitate to call it) a craft fair. Maybe a dozen or more vendors offering 'goods' and some other food vendors and a couple of guys walking around with those chemically colored light sticks of different shapes and sizes. The square was all decked out in its lights. But it was night and most people didn't have lighting. So all my pictures are dark as well as out of focus.

We sat on the edge of the sidewalk in front of Miss Hattie's which was about two steps higher than the street.

If you have ever wondered what a small town christmas parade is like, I can tell you. It's truck after truck with it's goose neck trailer and semi after semi with it's flat bed trailer filled with hay bales and kids and christmas lights and fire engines from every little town in the vicinity. Come along with me and see some of the over 70 entrants. I'm surprised there was anybody left to watch it.

approaching the square

vendors

the courthouse square

light wands and cotton candy

the first of many fire engines

a few angels

drummers drumming

some christmas cheer

teens with bikes with lights

a boat...wait, a boat?

kids on horses (can't very well have a parade in the country without kids on horses)

this was my favorite though

those blurry lights resolved into this when it stopped

pageant royalty

finally Santa in the back of the fire department pick up truck

and I hope you enjoyed the parade.

fall reads

A shorter list than usual, I didn't have as much time for reading this quarter. That or there were some long ones in there.

Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner - Four women, strangers all involved in the conception and gestation, are brought together over the birth of a baby.

Mortal Fear by Robin Cook – a doctor whose patients suddenly start dying after passing a complete physical is contacted by a researcher who says he made an important discovery, that it's already being used and that someone wants to kill him and then the guy starts hemorrhaging right in front of the doctor and dies. The doctor sets out to discover what that important discovery was and in the process learns what is killing his patients.

The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory - back to the Tudors. This is the next book in the series after The Other Boleyn Girl so I've read it out of sequence. It's told in the first person by three different women, Anne of Cleves (Henry's fourth wife), Jane Boleyn (sister-in-law to Queen Anne Boleyn and lady in waiting), and 15 year old Katherine Howard who becomes Henry's fifth wife. It covers his marriages to Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard.

The Ruins by Scott Smith – this is a sort of horror tale. I guess that's how you'd classify it. Four young adults go to Cancun between college and graduate school. They meet other young adults from Germany and Greece and get involved in a search for one German's brother who has gone off in search of a woman he met at a bar who is on an archeological dig in the Mayan jungle. Instead they become the inadvertent victims of an age old 'horror' kept contained by a tribe of Mayans.

The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card – a little sci-fi tale. Have I mentioned I'm a big sci-fi fan? We've read most of what Orson Scott Card has written. He's a very good storyteller and his books tend to run in series. The first book of his that I read was Ender's Game. Afterwards I gave it to my son, who was about 12-14 at the time, and it, along with More Than Humanby Theodore Sturgeon helped hook him into the world of reading. Anyway, back to the story. A modern tale of ancient 'gods'. The gods throughout the history of Earth have actually been from a different planet where the people have talents and powers working with the elements of nature, one of which was the power to open gates between the worlds capable of transporting you instantaneously from planet to planet that heals all wounds and illnesses and strengthens powers. About 900 years ago, the gates between worlds were closed stranding the 'families' on Earth or Westin and gate mages are not allowed to live. Now a new gate mage has been born on earth and gone undiscovered til he was 14 and forced to flee his family. As the gate mage learns his way in the world outside the family compound and learns how to use his power he discovers there is someone on the Westin end determined to keep all gates closed. This is the first of a series of novels about this character and this concept of the sister worlds.

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See – another by the author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan which I enjoyed a lot. Two sisters living in Shanghai come of age in the late 1930s China. Being the modern girls they are in a 'cosmopolitan' city, they model for artists that illustrate calendars. Their family is wealthy enough for them to be unconcerned and spoiled and then their lives change dramatically when their father tells them he has gambled away their fortune and he has offered them as brides in exchange for his debt. He has, in otherwords, arranged their marriages. This event coincides with the invasion from Japan and their world changes as they make their way to Los Angeles and start new lives. It's a very good read not only about the historical and political times but also about the close sister relationship and the strength of women.

Smokin' Seventeen by Janet Evanovich –The continuing adventures of Stephanie Plumb, bounty hunter. I guess it's been long enough since I read one because the last one didn't make me laugh so much, maybe because I don't think her car got demolished. What's up with that, right? This one though, made me laugh several times. And I hear they are making a movie and it's the first book, which I never actually read. I met Stephanie in the second book and kept going. But I'm not too pleased about the cast selections.

Dreams Of Joy by Lisa See – the sequel to Shanghai Girls or, rather, the continuation as this one takes up where the other left off. Joy, the daughter of the sisters, learns the true tale of her parentage and family in the US at the end of the previous book. She runs away to China, enamored of Mao's Revolution, to find her birth father and help build a China for the people. She finds herself trapped in a small village where the ugly side of the cultural revolution slowly reveals itself.

Game Of Thrones by George R. R. Martin – fantasy fiction, the first of four books (though my sister tells me there is a fifth one coming out). Iron age feudal system alternate world. Most of the action takes place on two continents joined by a narrow section of land but some of the story and characters are on a third, separate continent. Summer lasts for years as does winter and the story unfolds as summer is coming to an end. The seven kingdoms had been united 300 years or so previous by a king and his army, a refugee from some disaster on the other continent and that royal line was overthrown some 40 years previous to the beginning of this story. This book is about palace intrigues between the 'great' houses (families) in the south and the coming of winter in the north with mysterious things happening beyond the Wall, the northernmost point of the kingdom, where a group of men patrol to protect the world from the 'Others'. The tale is told from the point of view of different characters, adults and children, males and females. Although there are a lot of strong female characters, it is still a world where women are subservient and, for the most part, powerless with the exception of one 14 year old woman on the other continent. Its a good story with good characters and I don't want to give too much of it away. It would be nice, though, if, for once, a man could conceive of a world where women are not subservient and powerless but equal to men. When I finished this one I immediately picked up the next.

city livin'

If I needed a reminder about why I moved out of the city, I certainly got one this trip...rude drivers who will happily let you change lanes as long as you do it behind them, road construction that narrows busy three lane roads with merging traffic down to one lane, and huge helicopters that hover over the house at night with searchlights while sirens blare from who knows how many cop cars while they conduct their manhunt.

Made me think of several apocalyptic sci-fi books and movies. We all laughed when 1984 came and went but the joke's on us. Big Brother is watching and there is no escape. They were probably after some little 6 yr. old boy for playing doctor with his 5 yr. old girl playmate while the real crooks and criminals get off scott free.

Well, good things are here too...getting to spend time with friends I don't see very often now, lots of choices for places to eat out, stores that have what you need without having to drive 25 - 50 miles, my daughter and grandkids.

Driving in past Memorial Park you could see that they have been cutting down the dead trees. Whole stands of trees in undeveloped acreages across the city have died and many in residential areas as well. Over 6 million. That's 6,000,000. My four here at the city house are still living and I am amazed since we are not here to water them. One of them, the magnolia, we planted.