the last one, puppies, and a bare hint that summer will end

Bearing down on the end of August and the end of summer as if the end of August is the end of summer here. Alas, not. But next week, the last week of August is also the last week of the summer of medical issues. Hopefully. For a while anyway. The Watchman procedure, the one that will close off the little pouch on the side of the left atria that will get me off the blood thinner, is scheduled for next Thursday. Then one more week of resting and recovering and I will finally be able to be over it all! 

One of my neighbors had acquired two big dogs via family members, a german shepherd and another of indiscriminate heritage but equally as big, and they had four puppies. They are not restrained by a fence or other means and the adult dogs kept mostly to their yard. The puppies however, playful and joyful, would roam and mom or dad or both would follow to keep an eye on them. They often found their way to my yard because I’m not that far and Minnie would go berserk barking trying to chase off them off. The more she barked and ran at them the more they were convinced she wanted to play. Apparently, two of the puppies have found new homes and the remaining two are old enough now that mom or dad don’t follow. And these two puppies are huge. They are going to be very big dogs. 

This summer has been hot and dry lately and they discovered my small kidney shaped pond several weeks ago that was filled with water plants. Was, past tense. The pond is just the right size for one puppy to get in and get soaked, then the other gets in. 

They show up every day, get wet and go romping around the yard while Minnie goes engages in outraged barking. If I let her out she tries to run them off. She’ll chase them off a short way and then they will chase her back. They’re monsters as far as she’s concerned but they’re just big golumping puppies, not even a year old yet. Yesterday when Minnie retreated to the front of the garage where I was standing one of them came up to her, kind of bowed down and whined at her. Minnie was having none of it. I keep telling her they just want to play.

Yesterday evening I tried to get some pictures of them just outside the gate into the little backyard but they were like perpetual motion machines. So this is what I got.

Back to the end of August and the promised end of summer. While we will still have hot weather for the month of September, the crepe myrtles and the tallow trees are starting to drop their old tired foliage. This is usual and a sign of the coming change of season though it will be months before those trees lose all their foliage.

barn doors and heat loving flowers

Rocky spent two and a half hours over in that hot shop yesterday morning trying to fix the bay door. Operative word here ‘trying’. He finally, after tightening things over and over, unhooking and re-hooking the cables to no avail, determined that the main springs at the top were bad and needed to be replaced. Or he could dismantle the bay door and put a man door in the space or we could replace it with sliding barn doors which sounded good to me. And then he happened to look over and see that we already have sliding barn doors in the shop that close off what had been a storage room that I have never once closed off. 

So barn doors it is. He’s going to replace the bay door with those barn doors.

While he was doing that I had gotten up early, and by that I mean 7 AM, and went out before coffee or breakfast and mowed the little backyard with the small electric push mower and then used the trimmer to do the front yard with a cooling off break in between til I ran out of trimmer string, then a trip to the library and the Evil Empire. The big backyard is in even worse shape and I was going to get out there this morning with the trimmer but we’re supposed to hit triple digits today and tomorrow and two days in a row without coffee and breakfast wasn’t going to happen so it will be Friday and the weekend before I can get out there again when it cools off some (ha ha) to the mid to low 90s.

At this point, I’m really missing the shade we used to get from those two pecan trees. Some of my flowerbeds back there are getting almost twice as much sun as they’re used to and the things growing there are not happy at the sudden change in the middle of high summer. I’m going to have to rethink some of the stuff planted there. The orange cosmos doesn’t seem to mind though. It’s been blooming sparsely and is getting taller than I am, getting ready, I hope, to bloom in the fall when the butterflies migrate through. And the mexican bird of paradise will probably like the extra hours of sun too. This is the one behind Pam’s house that gets full sun and always blooms better than mine.

I’ll have to plant a yellow bells back there because they like the sun too.

finished painting, naked tree fingers, and other miscellania

I’ve finished the painting, 9" x 6", signed it, removed it from the board. Looking at the last image I posted I’m thinking maybe I should have stopped there. This painting is from a photo David took and posted on his blog Travels With Birds months ago. I thought I still had the image which I downloaded but apparently I deleted it after I printed it out.

Last week, my sister’s friend and our ex-employer from the antique store, Donna, came and got three pieces of furniture of Pam’s that we wanted to get rid of. She no longer has a store but has a space in an antique mall in Rosenberg. Friday she brought one of them back, a large chest with four drawers that are divided that my sister used as a jewelry box (my sister had a lot of jewelry, costume and otherwise) because on second thought she didn’t think she could sell it. I had asked her to bring it back if that was the case rather than set it out for trash. Since Robin didn’t want it back in the house, I decided to put it in the shop for now until I decide what to do with it.   

The plaque on it says ‘The National Cash Register Co.’ and now I recall that it was part of an old cash register. There’s a slot cut out on the top for the mechanism that pushed the drawers out I assume. The actual cash register sat on top.

Robin’s bf Evan was helping to get it out of Donna’s car but first we had to lift the bay door in the shop. It’s been probably 6 months since that door was lifted and it was balking about 2’ up but between the two of us we got it all the way up but then it wouldn’t stay up so I had to prop it up with a 2” x 4”. Obviously, something was broken and we probably broke it forcing it up instead of looking to see why it was balky. Anyway, we got the chest in and went to lower the bay door and now it won’t close all the way leaving about an 18” gap. Upon further inspection I saw that the cable on one side had become disconnected. Rocky came and looked at it this morning. If he can’t fix it he’ll disconnect the cable on the other side so that at least I can get it to close all the way. We’ll still be able to lift it with brute strength but it will have to be propped up every time. I have too much other stuff to deal with to worry about fixing that bay door right now.

And speaking of other stuff, I finally finished cutting away the canopy of the pecan tree closest to the house last week, ending up with four piles that have to be hauled to the burn pile. Today I emptied the truck on the burn pile and then refilled it with two of those piles of tree debris. I have to burn before I can add that load. But now those hanging branches look like a multi-fingered hand digging into the ground. 

I might have mentioned that I saw some plants just under the back porch of Pam’s old house that I thought were hostas and that I was going to dig them up and move them over to my place on the shady side of the house this fall. Well, they bloomed and they aren’t hostas at all but hidden ginger. 

I’m still going to move them because I’ve lost all my white butterfly ginger and most of my pink butterfly ginger from the well blow freezing winters and the horribly hot and dry summers of the past three or four years. I still have lots of the yellow butterfly ginger but they haven’t bloomed the last two years and don’t look like they’re going to bloom this year either.

more work on the tree debris and the painting

This surprised me yesterday when I went out to water the plants in pots. It didn’t bloom at all last year.

I finally got out there Saturday morning cutting more tree branches and hauling my three loads to the street. And again Sunday only by the time I had three piles, I was done. Figured I’d get them to the street later. I’ve been working on the pecan tree closest to the house, the one that has four major limbs broken at the top and hanging down, either not completely detached or just not fallen yet. I’ve been cutting away everything 4” in diameter or less that I can easily reach that are not weight bearing, basically what was the leafy canopy. I don’t want to cut away anything that might shift the weight and bring the limb down on me. I’ve not quite finished this tree, one more day I think, and have barely touched the other pecan tree by the barn that’s in the same condition.

Well, those three piles will not be getting hauled to the street because the county showed up early this morning and picked up everything that I already had out there. The guy working the scooper was amazing. He had a very light touch, picking up the smallest stuff without disturbing the grass or dirt. Everything else from here on will have to go on the burn pile.

I’ve worked on my painting Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I’ve got the fallen tree in, though I want to add another small branch, and most the shadow/reflection of same in the water. I still need to work on the water adding in some reflections and finally some small twiggy stuff in the foreground and on the left.

The only other thing going on here is streaming. We finished watching the first season of FallOut on Amazon which we liked. It’s been renewed for a season 2 but it’s not projected to be available until early 2026. Then we started watching Good Omens, a fantasy comedy also on Amazon, about an angel and a demon who have become fond of life on earth and team up to try and prevent the looming Armageddon, based on the book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett of the same name. How can it not be good? I’m enjoying it immensely.

Today no work will get done on the hurricane damage or on the painting as I’m accompanying my friend undergoing chemo to her doctor’s appointment to try and find out why her platelets are so low that she has not been able to get her chemo treatments for the last two weeks. It’s a two hour drive there and a two hour drive back from Galveston which is where she is being treated.

on painting

I didn’t work on my painting Monday. My hour and a half/four cart loads just wore me out. By the time I cooled off, showered, and had lunch it was mid afternoon so we sat down and watched the last episode of Outer Range and the the first episode of Fall Out, also on Amazon. Fall Out is a post apocalyptic sci-fi series. It starts out with a rich kid’s birthday party with the world on the brink of nuclear war and as they are serving the birthday cake mushroom clouds start blossoming across the landscape, then jumps to 216 years later.

I have not worked out in the yard since Monday because we’ve been having high 90s temps and it is just too damn hot even in the morning, besides Tuesday was grocery shop day and my night to fix dinner. Plus I was still contemplating the next step, how I want to add the skeletal trees in the distance, thinking I may work on the overcast part of the sky a little first so that it’s not so stark white. And adding the trees will be something that I can’t really change or fudge a bit if I don’t like what I’ve done. I did work on the sky, adding some gray tones, though it’s very subtle, and lightly penciled in the trees. Jade was here Wednesday so I only got one or two of the trees done and today I added the rest. May add more after I get the big dead branch, the main focus of the painting, put in next. The colors come out a little darker in the picture than on the actual painting.

So about painting…in my late teens and early 20s I made an attempt to become a painter because that’s what artists did, right? I had oils and acrylics, stretched my own canvasses, but it never really grabbed me. I had never taken any instruction in oils or mixing colors or shading, I wasn’t inspired, I had no skills, and I wasn’t very good and eventually gave it up altogether. I only have three paintings from that period that I kept because I like them regardless of lack of skill.

In college I took drawing, color/shape/form, ceramics, sculpture, textile design, etc., but never a painting class. I liked to draw but then I got married and had to go to work and really stopped doing art at all. After my divorce and being unemployed at the time, my nude modeling phase, I stumbled on etched and carved glass which captivated me and launched my career as an artist. It allowed me to use my drawing skills, I didn’t have to worry with color, and I could translate my drawings into a large and light filled medium. I considered myself a sculptor even though the third dimension was very shallow and then years later when we started doing the pate de verre cast glass I was working fully in three dimensions and it also forced me to deal with color.

After we retired the etched/carved glass studio I had the opportunity to take two watercolor classes from a local woman so now, nearly 50 years after I stopped any attempt at painting here is where I find myself. Perhaps if I had been introduced to watercolor back then I might have become a traditional artist, or not, who knows. I find it kind of ironic really that here at the end I’m back to a medium I rejected so long ago, not oils or acrylics, but still painting.

 

cutting and stacking, watching, painting

I spend an hour or an hour and a half every day cutting and carting broken branches to the street. About four mounded very high cart loads a day. Saturday my four cart loads were the branches scattered on the back half of the big backyard behind the destroyed pecan trees as Marc was mowing back there. Yesterday I only did three, being Sunday and all thought I would give myself a break, working on the smaller end branches of the huge limbs hanging down. The task seems endless. 

After I came in Saturday and cooled off sitting directly under the ceiling fan on high, I worked on my painting putting in the foliage in the distance on the far side of the lake. It’s a little dark I think and I may lift some of the pigment later. We’ll see. Plus I need to fudge the horizon line of the lake so it’s not such a straight hard line but I’ll do that after I do the wash of the blue sky reflecting on the lake which is next. I smoothed out the sky a bit by using a wet brush over the blue of the sky moving from left to right and I like it better.

9” x 6”

Saturday afternoon and early evening we binge watched Outer Range. We had already seen the first episode of the second season and we watched all but the last episode. Unfortunately Amazon has not renewed it for a third season even though it rates pretty high, apparently because it’s budget exceeded it’s financial return, so I don’t expect the last episode will resolve anything which is unfortunate because I really like it. It’s sort of sci-fi about two feuding ranch families with an anomaly on one of the ranches, a big black hole that comes and goes involving time travel and a mysterious mineral, and how these individual interact not only in present time but also in the past. Hard to explain and a lot of the time hard to know exactly what’s going on. But the second season has been really good so I’m very disappointed that it hasn’t been renewed.

Sunday I worked on the painting some more, not only reflecting the blue part of the sky but the whole lake surface. I need to add a little more blue tones in the gray part under the foliage line but I’m pretty happy with it so far. I do think the green line is a too dark, which is kind of ironic because when I was taking the class I had a hard time getting the colors dark enough, but I’m not sure I can do much about it. I tried lifting some of the pigment but it doesn't seem any lighter. Next I’m going to work on the bare trees in the distance.

Well, another morning’s work outside awaits after breakfast.

back to normal life almost

Lantana blooming in the front, about the only thing that is beside a scattering of roses and the crepe myrtles. The orange cosmos also has a smattering of blooms as they get taller for when they go into full bloom in the fall. A few yellow rain lilies have sprung up.

Yesterday I was back at SHARE after missing the entire month of July, really only three weeks as it was closed on July 4th which fell on a Thursday. It was probably the slowest day since I have been volunteering there, only 15 requests for food. The first Thursday of the month is usually slow as people get their food assistance cards and also FEMA is in town and other organizations since the hurricane. But it enabled me to reorganize my station the way I like it. 

I had an appointment with my PCP Tuesday and filled her in on the last two months and my follow up with the surgeon, or rather the PA who attended me in the hospital, on Wednesday since I only saw the surgeon right before the surgery. The incision is healing nicely but still no yoga until it is completely healed, 3 more weeks he said. Ugh, I’m going to be so out of shape by then! I have to return in three months for another ultrasound to make sure all is well with my femoral artery. In the meantime I feel fine, feel normal, and am back to my usual routine sans yoga. The other thing the PA told me was not to wear underwear with the elastic crossing the incision until it is completely healed. No mention of that previously but whatev, so I went out and bought some boxers for women today. 

I’ve lost track of how many cart loads of hurricane tree debris I hauled to the street today, four or five. I’ve been out there with my baby battery operated chain saw cutting up the 4” or less in diameter branches that are still hanging down from the pecan trees but it is so hot and the mosquitoes are still just so fierce. Fortunately we’ve had almost a week without rain and the last three days have been clear blue skies. Good for drying things out but also bringing back the heat. I put the cart, for scale, in front of the pile on the street that I’ve accumulated over the last three weeks, 

really only two out of the last three since the one in the middle was cleaning out Pam’s house and then doctor appointments. I still have two piles in the yard and it doesn’t look like I’ve even made a dent in all those huge limbs hanging down in the back even though that’s what I worked on today.

I sat down and did my first wash for the sky on my painting today.

I’m not very good at washes and I probably overworked it so it’s pretty funky. Nevertheless I will persevere. It’s just a warm up anyway, I tell myself, and it’s been well over a year since I put brush to paper.