new acquisition, new growth, same ole pettiness

As a working artist all of my working life; well, I did have a series of jobs before I started my etched glass studio and you can read about those here if you are so inclined; I like to support artists and so I have a small art collection that I have been in the habit of adding to once a year more or less. Generally I buy a piece of art for my birthday or holiday gift but it’s been a couple of years I think since I bought the last piece which is a print of a drawing of a bumble bee. But this year I bought a new small sculpture. It’s the second piece I have bought from artist Jennifer Tetlow, a stone sculptor who lives in the UK. I follow her blog on which she posts pictures of her work. Awhile back she posted a picture of two small birds which she calls hedge birds which I loved. I waited a month or so before I contacted her if they were still available and if so how much. Of course, they had already sold but she offered to make more and in January I got an email with pictures of four little hedge birds. I selected two and they arrived Friday. Here are my little hedge birds, so called because they were inspired by the little birds that inhabit the hedges that line the countryside in the UK.

I consider my art collection to be one of my objects and I could easily fill a big chunk of ‘my life in 100 objects’ if each piece counted as one object so my dilemma has been is my entire collection one object, in which case I would post a selection of pictures or is each individual piece a separate object or maybe I’ll divide it into categories, each category being one object. Anyway, I’m due for another ‘object’ post.

Saturday was warm enough and dry enough to work out in the yard so I pruned back the four roses in front of Pam’s house, worked on the wild mass of stuff on the east end of the shop, and in my yard cut back the rock rose, the clump of fall aster by the driveway, and the bigger area of wild Mexican petunia. That leaves one small patch of the wild petunia, which I may do today (or not as it’s cold and windy out), and the banana trees and my yard will be done. Audra and the great grands were across the street visiting Robin while Mikey worked in the shop so I got some baby time.

Monday and Tuesday nights are going to be well below freezing…again, and so I will have to cover the ponytail palm and a few others and bring in those pots that I have moved outside. Covering the ponytail is a two person job and a pain in the butt. I had a welcome surprise earlier though. I used to have a nice bunch of toad lilies in the ground outside my back door that would bloom every fall but the last four years or so that we have been getting these arctic blasts fewer and fewer have returned in the spring after dying down for the winter so last fall I dug up the five or so struggling roots I had left and put them in a pot and brought them inside. All but one stem died down but I watered them regularly and the other day I saw that those roots have sprouted new growth.

I’m having to fill the bird feeder twice a day, granted it’s small, probably only holds half what my old one did. Cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, titmice, house finches, sparrows, white wing doves but the most abundant right now are the goldfinches tanking up for their flight north.

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Three items today out of the many, from the Department of Petty Vindictiveness:

Trump and Musk illegally retrieved $80M in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funds from New York state’s bank account because they don’t like what it was being used for.

The Missouri attorney general is suing Starbucks because he thinks too many women and people of color work there accusing them of racist and discriminatory hiring practices ie not enough white males. “Such practices force Missouri consumers to “pay higher prices and wait longer for goods and services,” he argued, because making hiring decisions “on non-merit considerations will skew the hiring pool towards people who are less qualified to perform their work.”” As Jeff Tiedrich puts it “here we go again with this inane fever-swamp insistence that women and people of color can’t possibly be qualified to do the jobs for which they’re being hired. it’s fucking Starbucks, you imbeciles. they’re pouring coffee into a cup and putting a lid on it.”

Trump’s border czar Tom Homan thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be arrested for informing undocumented immigrants of their legal rights.

In other news, the Finding Out part of FAFO is in full swing. Trump voters are surprised to learn that that leopard is an equal opportunity face eater. They are also losing jobs, benefits, relatives, and federal grants. "I didn't vote for this!" Yes, yes you did vote for this. We warned you but you wouldn't listen. You just thought it would only happen to the people you don't like.

miscellania and the way

I still have not started on the rest of the painting though now I have some direction on how to start. Maybe today. I’m feeling sort of in limbo, unmotivated, spending too much time watching streaming or playing games on my phone, not even reading the book I have more than about 30 minutes at a time when I’m not working outside. It’s all mindless. I go to the grocery store, I go to SHARE, I walk the dog, I feed the cats. Wednesday was another overcast wet day with a cold front blowing in so no working outside again. Thursday and today overcast and cold. Winter is back.

We finished watching all five seasons of Eureka on Prime. It’s really very good. The average IQ sheriff in a town of high IQ individuals pushing the limits of science and invention where things inevitably go haywire is the one it falls to to fix things and save the town. Jack always comes up with the idea or solution that the scientists then figure out how to implement. Running for five seasons you get invested in the characters and their relationships and the way they wrapped it up when it was canceled during season 5 was very satisfying.

Now we’re watching the new series Paradise on Hulu. Five of the 8 episodes are out with the remaining three of season 1 being released on Tuesdays. It’s a political murder thriller based in a time after a catastrophic event the 25,000 (previously chosen) survivors of which live in an underground city. The secret service agent in charge of protecting the president finds him murdered and conducts his own investigation when the true power lies about it. We’ve seen all five released episodes so far and it’s very good. It’s planned for three seasons but it remains to be seen if it gets renewed. Most recently we’ve watched 3 episodes of season 1 of Psych on Prime which has 8 seasons about a man trained by his cop father to be extremely observant who passes himself off as a psychic to help the police solve crimes and decides to open his own detective agency with his friend. It’s kind of dumb but entertaining. Cat sprawled across my leg Wednesday night while we watched tv.

My daughter who is the floor manager of Copy.com, a print shop in Houston has one of their people working on converting my selected colored pencil drawings into notecards and prints for framing. The drawings have been scanned, the files cleaned up, the card stock selected, and now we are working on getting the colors and values as close as possible to the originals. So slow progress but progress.

New neighbor update - after meeting them on January 5th, two guys were there working on the house every day for the next two weeks but I haven’t seen anyone over there since the Sunday before the snow, 3 1/2 weeks ago. The contents of the bathroom…vanity, sink, toilet, and bathtub are in the yard outside the back door which faces my house.

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My email inbox is overflowing with newsletters from the various independent media I follow, days worth, all mostly unread. Wednesday morning I just deleted it all, only skimming through a few of them. Politicians, well democrats and independents, and pundits are finally understanding that we are in a constitutional crises and no one seems to know what to do about it. Court orders are being ignored and there is no attempt at enforcement so far. Turns out democracy only works if all parties want it to work and abide by the rules and apparently republicans are content to let the Constitution be shredded despite their oaths to protect and defend. The unelected destructor and his minions thumbing their noses at us, lying to us. Musk slashing/freezing funding, not to end fraud, of which there is very little as these agencies go through regular audits, but to redirect the money into his pocket, hence his new nearly $39M contract to SpaceX granted this week and has either appointed himself in charge of the agency that oversees and places safety regulations on his companies or shut them down. Republicans released a draft budget cutting $2Trillion in social programs slashing healthcare, food assistance, education funding, and tax credits benefiting low income communities even though these programs are very popular, including with republicans, in order to extend the tax cuts for corporations and high income households which will still add trillions to the national debt.

Our only recourse is to just resist, to flood congress with phone calls even when it falls on deaf ears, to protest, to demonstrate, to refuse to obey. If the president and his administration think the law doesn’t apply to them then why should it apply to us? Civil disobedience. Support those groups doing defense in the courts and on the ground. Do not give up, do not give in regardless of how hopeless it seems right now. Groundswells take time to build but eventually they become tsunamis.

As one poster wrote on SM “I’m going to continue living my best life, to laugh, serve, learn, rest, travel, create art, pursue joy. I’m going to joyfully resist. I’ll practice hope. I won’t give the bastards power over my mental health...I’m not going to shut up. I’m going to encourage you to join me, to stand up and speak out…I’m going to agitate the hell out of anyone who tries to normalize this. It’s not normal. It’s not justifiable. It’s not ok.”

This is the way.

wedding pics, mini bouquets, bird skull report and other miscellania

Also the weekend Vickie was here we were going through some of the old photo albums Pam had that were still here for her to look through to see if she wanted any of the pictures. Everyone else had gone through them previously except for me and Vickie and much to my surprise there were a couple of pictures of me in my wedding dress from the first time I got married. There was also a picture of my first husband, a profile view, who my daughter had never seen a picture of. Is that him she asked me. I had a small photo album of pictures from my first wedding which I had kept because it had pictures of my friends from the year I lived in Chicago while going to the Chicago Art Institute and was living with my ex and who had all come down to Texas for our wedding. It disappeared at some point while my kids were growing up but not because I discarded it. 

Anyway, I’ve mentioned before that I made my dress. I had wanted shirred sleeves which have a line of gathers from the shoulder to the hem of the sleeve. I couldn’t find a pattern for that so I just sort of created my own. I also made the macrame choker and my ex made the pendant that hangs from it. I think the flowers were probably fake since this was the formal picture that was published in the paper so it was taken before the wedding. I don’t remember if the flowers were real at the wedding and I also had a wreath of flowers on my head instead of a veil. I don’t look happy because I wasn’t. I was only getting married to get out from under the thumb of my father, about the only way women could back then, and I already knew that I would divorce him one day since no fault divorce had recently been made legal. Marrying a guy I was already detaching from seemed infinitely better than remaining at home at the time. My divorce was final 3 and 1/2 years later but the last six months or so we were not living together. So here’s the picture.

And just to show the difference in my first fancy wedding and my second casual one five years later here’s my wedding picture from it, which I've posted before, the one that has lasted. We were already a little tipsy by the time his dad got around to taking pictures. That's beer in our champagne glasses.

Sunday, Audra, my grandson Mikey’s SO, came over with Paisleigh and Harrison while Mikey worked on a vehicle over at the shop so I didn’t get as much done as I planned, mostly just hauling Saturday’s debris over to the burn pile and then after they left, starting on the big pink rose bush and made it halfway through that. Paisleigh picked two little bouquets of henbit, oxalis, wild onion flowers, dandelions, and anemone and insisted on putting them in the ‘peacock’. She was happy with the little vases so I guess that’s what she meant.

The goldfinches arrived en masse this weekend. I had seen a few earlier in the week but now they are hogging the bird feeder. Last week I unearthed the white wing dove skull but what with all the cold weather the ants hadn’t made much progress. I couldn’t find it just digging around so I had to hose down the ant bed to find it. I let it lay on top of the ground as I was busy doing other stuff reminding myself to stick it back in another ant bed before I went in for the day and of course I forgot. The next morning I went out to look for it and could not find it, even hosing the area down again. Some creature got it during the night…a snake, possum, or raccoon; a snake or possum most likely. I’ve had that happen before so I was rightly pissed at myself. But then the next day I went out to look again and there it was in plain sight. It is now snugged in another fire ant mound.

I had a dermatologist appointment Monday morning about a half hour away, a place I’ve been going to since before covid. I got there on time and all five chairs in the tiny waiting room were filled. When I was checking in at the desk I asked how long the wait was. The conversation went like this:

me: how long is the wait?

her: can’t say.

me: an hour?

her: can’t say.

me: if it’s over an hour I’d rather reschedule.

her: your choice but it will be the same.

me: then why do you overbook?

her: we don’t overbook.

me: if it’s over an hour wait, you’re overbooking.

her: that’s your opinion.

me: I’ve been here many times and never had to wait more than about 15 minutes.

her: the person you see is on maternity leave and we have someone else.

I scheduled another appointment for next week but I’m going to call back in a few days and find out when their earliest appointment is and reschedule for that. I don’t care if I have to wait a month. I'll wait over an hour or longer for certain doctors, ones who perform surgeries that may have unavoidable delays for various reasons or emergencies, but I’m not waiting over an hour for a dermatology appointment especially when there is no place to sit. And really, why the fuck does having a fill-in dermatologist cause there to be a big back up??

After I got back I finished pruning the big pink rose bush in the back so now all that’s left in my yard is the rest of the wild petunias and the rock rose, both of which will be quick, and the banana trees which will be a major chore. And then, oh goodie, I get to start on Pam’s/shop yard…her roses, the morning glory bush, the pink trumpet flower, the rangoon creeper, the yellow bells, the hummingbird bush, the confederate rose, the white orchid tree/bush, the purple orchid tree/bush which has never bloomed because it freezes to the fucking ground every winter, and the banana trees.

But all that will have to wait as it’s raining today so maybe I’ll start on the zucchini on my painting which I’ve been avoiding because, yard work, but also because it sort of intimidates me. Getting started, putting that first stroke or wash down, is always the hardest part.

 

more yard work and still not through

Finally got a good picture of the 10 petal anemone which are popping up everywhere along with the dandelions. 

Last Saturday when my great niece was here getting the last of Pam’s things we got to talking about the things mothers save when their kids are growing up like every piece of ‘art’ scribbled on paper, locks of hair, report cards, special article of clothing, shoes, little mementos of achievements that get squirreled away in a chest or a desk or a storage tub. Eventually we forget about these stashes only to rediscover them decades later when the kids are grown, when we are going through old chests. My mother had stuff like that from me and when I traded my hope chest for hers, I got possession of all that because moms just don’t throw that stuff away. So it was when I was giving the hope chest to my daughter I sorted through all the stuff I had kept and gave her a box with all her little keepsakes and passed my son’s stuff to him as well. What am I supposed to do with this stuff she asked me. Whatever you want I told her. So Sarah was telling Vickie about me keeping all these things…locks of hair, drawings, old report cards, etc…and giving them to her, and what the hell mom, and that one day she was sorting through some storage tubs and found all those very same things she had kept of her own grown children. So what did she do with it all? Put it all back for her children to deal with in time. Because that’s what we moms do. Vickie admitted that she too was keeping a lock of hair from her son who is only about a year and a half. So it begins.

More pruning back of roses. I said I had 5 more roses to prune but that’s not really true. I had five more in the front which I cut back yesterday but there are four small and two big red ones along the fence of the little backyard and the big pink one in the day lily bed and the red and pink climbing roses intermingled with the crepe myrtle by the garage but I don’t prune those, just cut the dead canes out every year or at least the ones I can reach. I don’t know who the rose aficionado was who lived here previously. The only one I planted here is the heritage red rose that I brought cuttings of from the city house, the sister to the monster rose over in the shop yard. I don’t prune them back every year, usually just every other year, and some of them only every three or four years, like the big pink one in the daylily bed. Anyway, I did the last five in the front and worked on the monster in the shop yard and then worked on all the wild growth on the east end of the shop. This time instead of taking it all to the ground I’m trying to save the dewberry bushes for a crop later, just focusing on cutting the leafless virginia creeper and wild grape down to the ground and pulling that out. 

Earlier today I took out the rest of the cosmos, cut back the plumbago, the morning glory bush and the confederate roses (you can see I’d already started before I thought to take the picture and you can see the big pink rose bush on the right in the middle in the background), 

and then came in to cool off and rest. It’s already very warm and humid and besides, Jade and Autumn were here for the day so Mikey could finish working on Jade’s car and Paisleigh was here too. She and Autumn and Jade made good use of the sidewalk chalk with Paisleigh while I finished up and then we came in. 

I pulled out the box of costume jewelry that I no longer wear and Paisleigh wanted all the bracelets and necklaces on.  

Then she took this picture of me.

After everybody left I went over to the shop yard and finished pruning back the monster rose bush which is now basically just stumps, so no longer a monster, but it will be covered in new growth in a couple of weeks. 

highs and lows

My morning glory bush cutting surprised me with another flower this morning.

As it turned out I didn’t have to go visit baby boy Harrison on Sunday. Audra and her aunt were out doing some shopping and they stopped by on their way home. He’s really not as big as his birth picture made him seem, just a normal sized 8 pound newborn (that's dad in the background).

Yard work continues. So far I’ve cut back the lantana, the ginger, the shrimp plant, most the cosmos, the Mexican bird of paradise, the yellow bells, pruned five of the roses, some of the wild petunias, the philippine violets; hauling it over to the burn pile one garden cart full at a time. Still to go are the rest of the cosmos, five more roses, the confederate roses, the morning glory bush, and the banana trees and that's just in my yard. Ten petal anemones are starting to bloom (I took a picture but it's not in focus), the struggling little azalea I dug up and potted is putting out new growth. 

I had planned to wait until the end of February to take the plants back outside but I may go ahead and take the rest of the ones in the house out this weekend.

We had a little excitement yesterday. When we got up Tuesday there was a white sedan parked in the driveway of the shop yard blocking access. I just figured it belonged to one of Robin’s friends that come stay with her now and then though they usually pull all the way in. Didn’t think anything more about it until Mikey showed up after work to work on one of his cars and he couldn’t get in. Turned out not one of Robin’s friends and one of the rear windows had been busted out. So we figured stolen car dumped here during the previous night. He called the sheriff who showed up, checked with various databases and yep, stolen car reported earlier in the day in Houston. 

I got texts from two neighbors wanting to know what was up with all the police (three cars of sheriffs eventually showed up), some of the neighborhood kids came to see asking me if I was going to jail. No, sweetie, I’m not going to jail.

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Minnie this morning…is it safe?

No puppy, it is not safe. The destruction of our government and of what this country used to be is ongoing, a massive tidal wave of destruction and cold hearted cruelty not only to the undocumented residents but of our black and brown and female citizens who no matter how capable, talented, educated, deserving, or highly qualified, they no longer deserve their jobs or recognition for their work and accomplishments simply because they aren't white men. 

Much of what Trump and Musk and their republican enablers are doing is illegal but since they own both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court and the Department of Defense and are purging the Department of Justice and the FBI so only loyalists to Trump remain, the only recourse to stop them is the courts and that takes time. By the time the lawsuits make their way through the system it will be too late, the damage will already be done; agencies dismantled, departments shut down, employees let go, projects ended. 

Elon Musk and his hackers, unelected private citizens of an unofficial and not congressionally recognized ‘department’, have been given unfettered access to the Federal payment system, one of whom, I read, has been made an admin who can make whatever changes or deletions he wants. Even if it is 'read only' like they claim that does not stop them from downloading or copying any file they want. Musk seems to think that he and he alone has the authority to authorize payments regardless of what Congress appropriated the funds for. There was a huge protest going on last night and continued today in front of the Treasury building and the mainstream news isn’t covering it. 

Musk and his aides are illegally closing buildings and preventing access by employees. They have downloaded god only knows what documents they do not have clearance for. They have effectively shut down USAID stranding workers and cutting them off from secure communications in dangerous locales. They have access to our social security numbers and our private Medicare and Medicaid records. Trump's aides are drafting an executive order to shut down the Department of Education. When Democrats called to subpoena Musk today to question him about his actions, Republicans blocked it.

Trump has fired all the prosecutors that worked with Jack Smith and on the J6 cases and those involving Trump, they are asking for a list of all FBI agents who worked on those cases to be identified, they have sent letters to every CIA personnel encouraging them to resign; the same offer sent to every civil service employee offering 8 months pay if they do, however none of that money has been authorized and we all know Trump is notorious for not paying his debts and Musk made the same promises to employees of Twitter/X that were not kept. Word is our spy network is going to be shifted to focus on the West. 

Trump intends to send “dangerous” (ie anyone who opposes Trump) American citizens to detention camps in Guantanamo Bay away from the eyes of those who are concerned about their civil rights as stated in the Constitution and maybe even prisons in El Salvador. His new manifest destiny, ignoring established international law recognizing fixed borders, means Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Panama, and now Gaza are at risk of invasion. 

Our Constitution is just a quaint piece of paper now since the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court no longer uphold it and no law enforcement agency is stepping up to enforce it. There is no longer the Rule of Law in this country, the law only applies to those who oppose him now. Whatever the result of all this is and we hopefully get Congress back in the midterms, it will be almost impossible to reconstruct the government for the people by the people and it has only been two weeks. Things are going to get much much worse.

I know this is very doom and gloom but that’s kind of where we’re at right now.

 

putting winter to rest and new life

I’m behind on answering comments, sorry. It’s been a cold overcast, rainy, damp busy week. I limit my time (mostly) to check email, read, comment, research, write, answer comments, to the mornings between the time I get up, which varies, and the time I fix breakfast about 10. Monday was the TEE, Tuesday was brain fog from anesthesia, I think I did something but I can’t remember what. Wednesday researching and writing, Thursday SHARE, Friday and Saturday cutting back freeze damaged vegetation and hauling it to the already big burn pile.

Other stuff happened. My second great grandchild was born on Tuesday. Harrison Ford Russell. 8 lbs 1 oz. My grandson’s second child who was definitely not pleased about being brought so rudely into the light. 

They came home Thursday. Paisleigh is less than impressed. She thought she was getting a brother but he can’t talk to her or play with her. Audra’s mother and step-father were here and now her aunt is here for the next week. I plan to visit today.

Friday cleared up, warmed up and I got out there and cleared all the dead stuff from one of the flower beds, the one with my own monster rose bush which I pruned back to about 16” (after picture of course since it never occurs to me to take a before). 

I might have waited another week or two but it was impeding my progress especially since I didn’t prune it back last year and it exploded with growth after the hurricane. This area has the indigofera, white Philippine violet, invasive wild mexican petunia, and orange cosmos besides the heritage rose bush. It’s an impossible area to tame, believe me, I’ve tried. Everything in there reseeds and spreads readily so the plan now is to remove the remaining iris, amaryllis, and day lilies and just let it do what it wants to do and cut it all to the ground every winter.

I found more of the maroon Japanese iris that had been hidden by all the dense growth. I moved most of them last fall to a better spot. 

Saturday was a gorgeous warm blue sky day, low humidity. I worked on the long flower bed on the east side with the tall orange cosmos, rock rose (not a rose but part of the mallow family), and Mexican bird of paradise, among other things. Didn’t finish as you can see on the left. Two of the plumerias will go in there later.

Also on Saturday my great niece and her husband and their year and a half old baby, my great great nephew, came and got the last of Pam’s things that Vickie wanted. Since they live outside San Antonio this was probably the last time I will ever see them. We’ll stay in contact I hope but part of losing my sister is also losing a more immediate connection to her descendants, my nieces and their kids since they all live far and wide.

Speaking of my sister, I had another dream about her a while back. I don’t remember the specifics now though I did for a day or two after. What I remember now is a feeling of irritation from her. You may remember in my previous dreams she was basically ignoring me, had moved on to a happier life. This last one, she made me angry, angry that she had so totally dismissed me. Fine, I told her, I release you, I release you. That’s what I woke up thinking, I release you. Haven’t dreamed about her since.

I’ve made no progress on the rest of the painting or made any progress in the book I’m reading except for Monday when I took it with me and read during the recovery time and waiting to be discharged. 

So much destructive stuff is happening still re the new regime and it hasn’t even been two weeks yet but I need a small respite that is not about that so today is going to be about positive happy things…seeing the new baby, working in the yard, listening to the woodpecker rapping away for a mate, watching the birds…the male goldfinches are starting to get yellow…, loving on the outdoor cats. 

Plenty of time for doom later.