just flowers

some of the things blooming around here the last three weeks or so...

I don't have much full sun over at the house but the shop yard is nothing but. I started planting things over there last summer and fall and again last spring. You can't see everything in this picture because I have stuff spread around but the three on the right...yellow angel trumpet, spider lilies, and pony tail palm went in last summer while the two on the left...porterweed and plumbago...went in last spring.

 

Over at the house the yellow bells have been blooming all summer and are now attracting the migrating hummingbirds (and the porterweed too).

The datura, the cinco de mayo rose, and this little water plant in the filter for the water lily pond have also bloomed all summer

while the morning glory bush and the swamp lily didn't start until August.

The ox blood lilies announce the end of summer

and a couple of nights ago I had two blooms on the night blooming cereus and the night air smelled so sweet.

lone stars and small animals

I've been pretty busy since last Friday doing some remedial work on the 7 1/2” diameter circles with the lone star carved on them for the San Jacinto Monument Museum. They ordered 30 this last time and on all but four of them, the tape that was supposed to protect the polished edges from getting blasted while the face of the circle was being carved did not do its job. The force of the blasting medium blew the tape away so I had 26 of the 30 circles with varying amounts of over-blast on the edges and I would not be able to deliver them to my client like that.

I had three choices. I could remake 26 circles with all the time and expense that involved (and kiss any money from this job goodbye), I could take them to my glass guy and get his shop man to polish them out for me which would be less expense but still would probably eat up most my profit, or I could try and do it myself since I do have the equipment. So I tested out one or two of the least affected circles with the little bit of cerium oxide (polishing compound) that I had and determined that I could successfully bring the edges back up to a high polish.

So, since I used up all the cerium oxide I had (which amounted to less than a tablespoon's worth) testing out the two circles, I looked online for a supplier and they had like 40 different kinds. One phone call and a recommendation later I ordered the cerium oxide which came last week.

I have a small, 12” diameter, flat lap with diamond discs. The way that glass is beveled and/or polished is to grind the area with a coarse disc, then medium, then fine, then very fine, then what they call composite which replaces the old cork stage, and then finally the polishing compound on the felt disc. I didn't need to do any grinding since the over-blast was very fine, though very visible, but it was enough that just using the felt disc was not going to do the trick. So first I had to go over the affected areas with the composite disc and then the polishing disc. I finally got them all finished yesterday afternoon so now I'm getting them cleaned up to deliver.

Other work news, the glass for the master bath window is now in the shop so I will be getting that stencil cut this week and I submitted my last (hopefully) proposal for the three large panels for the small animal hospital. The job is going forward, though we haven't got our deposit yet, and what at first looked to be a fun job has turned into a chore. Instead of any of the really delightful sketches I did initially of groupings of different animals, they want some very specific imagery and very specific representations. Would have been nice if they had given me that info before I wasted nearly a week on the other sketches. Oh well. It won't be a fun job but it will be a good job.

other signs the wheel is turning

(besides the shortening days that is)

The cotton is ready for harvest,

the deciduous trees are shedding leaves, sparsely but continuously,

the seed pods on the magnolias are pinking up,

the mississippi kites have migrated,

the pampas grass is sending up it's feathery plumes,

(I think my camera lens fogged up when I rolled down the window of the car to take this picture)

the confederate rose is putting on buds,

that day the wind unexpectedly comes from the northeast,

the ox blood lilies pop up seemingly overnight,

and then one morning, it's undeniably cool outside, 

even if only for a couple of hours.

OMG! this stuff piles up so fast!

The recycling had mounted up in the kitchen again so I sorted it into all the different plastic bags and added it to the growing pile in the garage. I try and send it home with my daughter who lives in the city or take it there when I'm in town but still it accumulates. This little town recycles plastic bottles, aluminum cans, newspaper, and corrugated cardboard. The other plastics, metal, office paper, cardboard packaging, and glass are thrown out. Unless I bag them up and take them to my daughter's house in the city which does recycle those items. But that's not really fair to her since there are six people in her family and she also recycles and that's a lot of stuff to store til recycling day. Not to mention a lot of stuff to set out. But what else can I do? Since I sold the house in the city last year, I have no place else to take it. And I can't accept just throwing it all away, adding to the already bulging landfills and lost resources.

I don't care for our throw-away culture, the lack of respect it shows towards the planet that we, ironically, need for survival. I have been taking my own bags to the grocery store since sometime after plastic bags became ubiquitous, long before it was the thing, back when the checkers and baggers rolled their eyes at you for doing it. When the newspaper piled up I would take it to the local paper plant that bought paper and they would look at my little truckload and say, lady, that's not enough for us to buy, but they would take it. When a local grocery store chain had locations that would accept aluminum and glass, I would lug it all down there. Plastic bags went to whatever place would take them. I've even taken big bags of styrofoam peanuts back to any box stores that will take them. I was thrilled when the city finally started the curbside recycling program. More and more items were accepted and less and less went in the trash. With a compost pile, we generate about one large size grocery store plastic bag of trash a week with the occasional run to the transfer station for big heavy things. The rest, which is considerable considering the way this country loves to package things, is what can be recycled...if you have access to it.

I'm lucky, I guess, that this little town, whose city government and economic council seem to put roadblocks in front of anything new in a (hopefully doomed to failure) attempt to keep this town from being prosperous and growing, has any recycling at all. But I still don't want to throw all this stuff away.

Maybe I'll just start making midnight forays into the edges of the city on different recycling days and add a little into everyone's bins.

the aforementioned pretty pictures...

We've been having some really nice sunsets as the bands of storms have moved through the last two weeks.

And some really nice cloud formations too.

We've been getting enough showers that I haven't had to water every day which is a relief and it's cooled down just enough still been hot though that the heat isn't brutal. We actually had a few days that didn't even make it into the 90˚s.

press 1 for English

Another rant. I know, right?

  

Friday I was out in the car and was listening to a show on Pacifica (the local public radio station). The topic was Jeb Bush addressing a latino community in gasp Spanish. The caller didn't think that was appropriate...this is America, these people need to learn English, these people aren't even trying to learn English or assimilate into this country they just want to take without giving back...on and on he went. The show host eventually, through judicious questioning, got him to admit that by 'these people', he meant Spanish speakers. The show host rightly pointed out to him that this country was built by foreign language speakers, that there is no official language in the country (which the caller tried to dispute by saying the Constitution was written in English), that many presidential candidates in the past have addressed constituents in Italian, Polish, German, etc...how else do you inform voters of your position who don't yet have a good grasp of English? The caller sort of brushed that aside as his focus was on Spanish and his opinion, one completely devoid of facts to back it up, and he gave an example of how disrespectful it is about going into a store and the clerk/cashier he dealt with didn't speak English. This highly offended him and he went and spoke to the manager about why he hired people who couldn't speak English (uh, to help with customers who don't speak English or speak it well?) and he was convinced that this woman was an illegal even though he had no proof whatsoever and when pressed on why he thought she was, all he could say over and over was...I guarantee she was illegal.

Obviously, English or no English, they managed to communicate well enough for him to buy whatever it was he was buying so the non-English speaking clerk didn't really affect him in an adverse way. It makes me wonder though, what his objection is really about, why he and people like him are so intolerant of other people conversing in a language they do not understand, as if they have some sort of inalienable right to understand every word spoken within their hearing.

I was recently pilloried on FB resulting in the unfriending of one person and the blocking of his granddaughter and one of her friends because I took issue with an 'English only' meme he shared which I found to be petty, pointing out that, like it or not, this is a multicultural and multilingual country, that this country was built by people who did not speak English.

Wave after wave of non-English speaking people have immigrated to this country. It's why we have Chinatowns, Italian quarters, German enclaves, Jewish and Muslim neighborhoods, Barrios, etc. First generation immigrants do not usually assimilate. They may cling to their language, their culture because being in a new place is daunting and scary. They get comfort in familiarity but they are here for the same reason all of us are here...they want better futures for themselves and their children. They come here and they work hard. If they have trouble learning English as an adult (and English is a hard language to learn), so what? It is their children who assimilate. While they may have a different cultural heritage, these children and their children grow up fully assimilated. Assimilation takes time and to proclaim that first generation immigrants don't want to assimilate is absurd.

This is a big country filled with great diversity and instead of accepting that diversity as the strength it should be, too many people spend far too much time being divisive with hate for and fear of their fellow citizens who are different...in color, in heritage, in culture, in religion, in sexuality, in language, the list goes on. What they aren't seeing is that we are ALL equally Americans and I don't understand why anyone would object to companies and local/national government making information available in however many languages it takes to insure that all citizens get the help and info they need.

I mean, really, how hard is it to press 1 for English?

Next post I promise will be pretty pictures.

the reason we have separation of church and state

Well, I see that Ms Kim Davis accepted jail in defense of her principals, that she is standing by her faith that same sex marriage is an abomination and she won't let herself be tainted by that sin. It's too bad she doesn't show the same adherence to faith and religion when it comes to her own personal life since she hasn't observed the other strictures concerning marriage that are laid out in her scripture.

I think she is wrong not to comply with the law regardless of her position on marriage and who may or may not get married as dictated by her religion. She may have been raised to think that marriage didn't exist until Christianity but that does not give her the authority to deny the license required by law, not religion, to any couple who wishes to marry. Her faith does not give her the authority to determine the course of other peoples' lives. Her religious beliefs do not allow her to break the oath of office she took when elected to her position. Her religion, her beliefs, her faith are pertinent to her life alone. It is not for her to judge the lives of others. If her religion tells her something should not be done, then she should not do it. It is not her place to force others to comply with what she deems acceptable. Indeed, her own religion tells her not to judge. Her own religion tells her that her faith is a private thing. Her own religion tells her to obey the laws of the land.

In her own arrogance, in refusing to sin, she has sinned many times over. If, of course, you believe in all that sinning stuff. Which I don't exactly. Right/wrong, yin/yang, light/dark, up/down, in/out...duality, opposites, balance but also that great gray void in-between. Anyway, that's beside the point. 

The point is that if her religious beliefs, her faith, were such that they compelled her not to do her job, a job she was elected to do, and worse, prevented others in the office from doing the job, then she should have resigned her job even if what she was required to do was not required when she was elected. She took an oath to uphold the law, not whatever law she agreed with.

Had she just done that, instead of wrongly thinking she had the right to impose her sense of morality on the public at large in defiance of the law, she would not be in jail today.

I'm sure the Founding Fathers never imagined this sort of struggle between religion and rule but they well knew the danger of religion in law.