movie, summer, and mystery

Friday we went to see Guardians of the Galaxy 3 as the rest of my birthday celebration. We're big science fiction and Marvel Universe fans. It was a fine end to the 3 movie franchise with some surprises and we finally learned how Rocket came to be. First time we have been out to a movie in three years.

Friday was also the day we turned on the AC for the first time. Our cool weather is a memory, high in the low 90s, heat index above 100, and humidity. Same on Saturday. I worked outside for about 2 hours, did some watering, fertilized the azaleas, moved the pink angel trumpet to a spot where it gets less direct sun now that it's hot, mixed up some potting soil and compost to finish filling the tub for the two little velvet okra plants from my neighbor. Didn't get it in the tub though since I was already dripping sweat by then and came in wet and peeled my yard work shorts off. As soon as I cooled off a little and stopped sweating I ran to the library for a book I ordered through the interlibrary loan program. Well, I didn't actually run. I drove the car. Later I went back out and pruned out a lot of leaves from the four tomato plants. They're blooming well but not setting much fruit. Out of a cluster of five flowers, one would set so I figured it was just too dense in there, no air circulation and the flowers just weren't getting fertilized well. So we'll see.

long view of the west flower bed (the tomatoes are to the right out of the frame)

Working out in the little backyard, I noticed this hole in the ground. It's a burrow of some sort.

my toe for size reference

There's another one out in the big backyard. I have no idea what sort of creature had dug this hole, what lives down there but Cat is interested too. She was sticking her head down in there and then reached in with her paw.

Today, Sunday, it's supposed to rain all day. No rain yet but it's as dark out there as it can be and still be daylight. Some rumbling thunder though. Oh wait, it's starting to rain lightly now. It's going to be a sit on the couch and read day which is just as well as I have three books out from the library.

 

things seen, things found, things thought about

Things seen:

Landing pad for aliens?

One of Cat's intended victims has taken refuge between the window and screen. I tried to grab it to put it outside so it wouldn't starve but it stays up where I can't reach it. I needn't worry about it starving though, at least not yet. As long as the door is open during this temperate weather, plenty of flies are finding their way to this particular window.

Just chillin' out on top of the heron's head.

Disturbed a nest of walking sticks when I moved one of the brick piles the other day.

Looked up Saturday to see this. Not really that unusual. I do occasionally see someone on horseback in the neighborhood.

I looked up to see three little hairstreak butterflies fluttering in the corner of my window. Impossible to get a picture so I captured them one by one and let them loose outside.

Things found:

Marc walked out in the big backyard the other day and found this egg laying on the ground, about the size of a small chicken egg but it doesn't quite look like a chicken egg, the sheen is a little different. There are four neighbors who have chickens, three of them keep them in coops, the fourth is at the far end of the street and their chickens don't wander down this far. My neighbor thinks it's a whistling duck egg and they were in the yard, or rather in the tree in the yard, a few days previous. I did an image search and it's the right size but what the fuck duck. Just drop an egg and fly off?

Walked out into the little backyard the other morning to find this shed snake skin. Perhaps it's what got two of the three eggs in the abandoned cardinal nest.

How perfect with all the little scales.

Things thought about:

I thought I would get back into doing watercolors and got out the professional quality paints a friend of mine sent me recently since she no longer uses them. I haven't gotten any further than making a sample sheet of the colors. Does this count as a painting?

 

a lovely day, once again the haters have to ruin it for everyone, and sex is a many splendored thing

Sunday was a beautiful day. Cool in the shade, warm in the sun, blue sky day, no humidity. I finished the chore of 'mowing' the big backyard with the trimmer, walked the dog, and then spent the rest of the day on the deck reading. My sister brought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers from her garden.

And my daughter brought me three magnificent donuts from the Voodoo Donuts in the city. Sorry no pictures unless you want to see the inside of my stomach or go here to view.

Saturday night we went out to dinner to the family owned Italian restaurant here and it was very good. I ordered shrimp and lobster ravioli. I don't know what the filling in the ravioli was but it was served in an excellent shrimp and lobster cream sauce. We went Saturday night because they aren't open on Sunday. The other part of my birthday celebration is going to see a movie next Friday. We have to wait til then because that's when Guardians of the Galaxy 3 opens.

Monday I emptied the overflowing truck of dead and fallen limbs and branches onto the already really big burn pile and torched it discovering today that I inadvertently celebrated Beltane. Now if I was considerably younger I'd celebrate fertility with some outdoor fucking (referencing Ms Moon's post).

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Well, once again, a few people have ruined something perfectly delightful for everyone. A school in Houston had a field trip planned to go see James and the Giant Peach, a beloved children's classic, at Main Street Theater but the trip was canceled when a parent spoke before the school board equating the cross gender casting (men playing the parts of women and women playing the parts of men as has happened in theater since the inception of theater) with drag queens as inappropriate for elementary school aged children. Not content to just keep their children home they forced the school to cancel the trip. Here's a link to scarrymommy.com that wrote about it. 

Of course there are no drag queens in the production and what the actors are doing with their outsized costuming and make up is not drag which is a completely different art form but that doesn't stop these people who have their heads so far up their butts chasing their hatred/fear of the most victimized group of people in the country from ruining it for everybody, preventing other children, whose parents have no objection to the performance, from having a fun day out.

And now, of course, Texas is following suit of other ignorant republican states banning gender affirming care for people under 18 which will be applied across the board probably depriving cisgendered kids of puberty blockers and hormonal therapy for conditions that have nothing to do with trans and will no doubt have an impact on treatment of intersex children as well. The measure has already passed the state Senate.

And while I'm on the topic of human sexuality, there's a very interesting article in Scientific American (which was first published in 2015), Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplified. It's long but goes into how a developing embryo develops into one sex or the other and all the intersex variations that occur naturally, DNA, even the cellular level; how women can have a Y chromosome and men can have two Xes, and the gonadal effects on the body and ends surmising that since there is not one single parameter that trumps all the others to define your sex, the best way to determine someone's sex/sexual identity is just to ask them.

Unfortunately our society and culture is bogged down in a science rejecting religious structure that god made men men and women women and there is no in-between combined with their fear of what they don't understand so we have legislatures outlawing the existence of and care for all those who are 'in-between'.

 

another garden report

Too wet to do anything outside on Friday, and then it rained again that evening, though I did spread some fertilizer around in various pots and under the tomatoes and around the green beans, poked 10 more green bean seeds into the ground, and dug up some of the byzantium gladiolus and took them down to my neighbor. He sent me back with two handfuls of green beans, three carrots, and a zucchini from his garden.

Here's a picture of my little spring food garden. Four tomato plants across the back, a row of green beans, and one little bell pepper plant that I acquired Thursday. In front of all that in the empty space is where I poked the new beans into the ground.

My potatoes are in a tub farther away and one of them is already making flower buds and not even either of the two biggest plants. Too soon for that. I still have about 6 or 7 inches of dirt to add.

I have another big tub which I plan to put velvet okra in since the same neighbor is going to give me a couple of his small plants.

The three spots where I put the cone flower ginger roots that Ms Moon sent me did finally sprout and so did the purple orchid tree. However, none of my big red or pink amaryllis have bloomed though plenty of foliage, none of the bearded iris I got last spring at the garden club plant sale have bloomed, and none of the red crinum lilies have bloomed but it may still be too early for them.

The daylilies are sending up lots of bloom scapes though with a few flowers already opening.

This little trailing petunia that I planted at least three years ago is covered with flowers.

More little tomatoes.

The german verbena.

I did have one multi-petaled frilly poppy volunteer.

One blue love-in-a-mist.

An anole with an intact tail, a rarity in the yard this spring with Cat around.

The first easter lily opened. I'm not getting many flowers this year because of the arctic freeze, same as last year and the year before when I didn't get any.

This flower on the pink angel trumpet opened white! It did turn pink later in the day.

Today is cool and clear with low humidity but very windy. Mostly I'm just moving bricks around, either moving the scattered piles around the yard into the barn or lining them up along the sandstone slabs I laid down along the west side of the house. I have plans to start up the gas trimmer after lunch and tackle the yard since the riding mower is currently non-functional. I have a little electric push mower but stuff is too high for it right now.

Oh, and btw, tomorrow is my birthday. 73. I could barely comprehend being 50 when I was in high school.

birds and rain and more weird food

I saw a rose breasted grosbeak! It was sitting facing me in the photinia on the other side of the little backyard across from my window when I happened to look up. It was so striking with that white breast and the brilliant red collar with a black head and wings though I couldn't really see the body, facing me as it was. But I'm sure that's what it was being the right size and after doing a google picture search, it is the only bird that fits what I saw. I looked it up and sure enough, they migrate through here in April. I was hoping it would come to the bird feeder so I could get a better look but it didn't, just flew off. So that was my excitement for Wednesday morning.

image via https://www.animalspot.net/

I finally got mulch spread under the tomatoes Wednesday afternoon. Took me about 30 or 40 minutes. Wasn't particularly hot, upper 70s, partly cloudy sky so the the sun wasn't beating down relentlessly but it was so humid that by the time I finished sweat was dripping off my face. You'd have thought I had been standing out in the rain.

Wednesday night had a different excitement. A big storm with lightning and thunder, a couple of which flash and boom happened almost simultaneously, and bouts of hard rain came through about 3 AM and lasted til 7 AM just when I had to get up to have my coffee and breakfast and get to SHARE. Consequently I did not get any sleep between those hours because the neurotic little dog was in constant motion trembling and panting. This side, that side, on the bed, off the bed, up by my head, down by my feet, under the covers, not under the covers and mostly trying to lay on my pillow above my head which pulled my hair, panting in my face. I was not a happy camper. Tremble and pant, just be fucking STILL. Threw her off the bed several times, tossed her out of the room and closed the door for less than 3 minutes while she scratched at the other side in a panic. I'm sorry to say I yelled at her a lot. Poor little dog. I know she can't help it. Why do these storms always come through at night!

When I went out to check the rain gauge this morning which showed we had gotten 2 inches, I heard a strange chirping/whistling, looked up in the pecan tree and there were four whistling ducks.

Spent my morning at SHARE, very slow today, only 14 or so clients for food so a lot of standing around. One of the other volunteers bags up instant oatmeal packets and granola/snack bars three to a bag and she brought them around to me as that's one of the things I deal with. So here's another item from the Department of Ridiculous Food.

What, pray tell, is 'seasonal flavor'?

And because I just really like this view of the queen anne's lace with the clasping leaved coneflowers and the big old native pecan tree, here's another picture of it.

 

dragging the bastards out into the light

I guess all that physical activity of the past several weeks out in the yard have finally caught up with me. I'm sleeping late, never really feel energetic during the day, sleepy and ready for a nap in the afternoons, something I very rarely do. Walking the dog is my big effort for the day. I'm not just physically unmotivated but mentally as well. It's a good thing I've got just about everything done out there what with the rainy or overcast days and ennui. Still have some fertilizing and mulch spreading to do.

Since I have nothing witty or even mildly interesting to share, here's the list of some of the current republican attempts to subvert our constitution, our democracy, our rights, our protections, our public schools intent on controlling what we can read, learn, what medical care we can access, in their goal to turn this country into a far right authoritarian white male dominated christian theocracy that I've been compiling as I come across the stories...

The Republican senate in North Dakota voted down a bill to provide free school lunches to low income children and then turned around and passed a bill that increased their own lunch meal reimbursement to $45 per meal with one legislator remarking that hunger wasn't the state's problem. Apparently funding his extravagant lunches is.

A Texas far right republican anti-abortion judge appointed by Trump has revoked the FDA's approval of the widely used abortion medication mifepristone that has been used safely for two decades making it illegal to prescribe and provide giving the government one week to respond. The same day a federal judge in Spokane ruled protecting the availability of mifepristone so this will be headed to the Supreme Court. Fortunately continuing lawsuits have made the drug still available for now but with some restrictions.

It has been revealed that Republican Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginnie Thomas, who helped underwrite and support the attack on the Capitol, has been accepting expensive vacations and gifts from GOP billionaire Harlan Crow for decades without reporting it. His lame excuse is that 'they' told him he didn't have to. Meanwhile, Thomas has ruled in favor of every case before the Court related to Harlan Crow.

And now it has come to light that the head of a law firm purchased a home/property that had been on the market for 2 years from Justice Gorsuch shortly after Gorsuch was appointed to the SC and has had 22 cases before the Court from which Gorsuch did not recuse himself. Are there any republican justices that aren't ethically compromised?

Texas republican governor Greg Abbott intends to pardon a man just convicted of premeditated murder when he killed a BLM protester during a demonstration against police brutality and racial injustice, a man that a jury of his peers heard all the evidence, watched the video, and rejected his plea of self defense based on the 'stand your ground' law in Texas and convicted him. Apparently Abbott thinks that his conviction was an unfair use of our judicial system.

Conservative Llano county in Texas is considering shutting down it's libraries after a federal judge ordered it to return banned books to the library shelves. Meanwhile, the republican dominated Texas Senate voted to defund libraries that host drag queen story hour.

After screaming about drag queens being groomers of young children for months, once again it's a republican that gets caught. 2022 Republican candidate Joel M. Koskan of South Dakota has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to multiple counts of felony incest for raping a 13 year old family member.

Missouri House republicans have voted to defund the state's public libraries due to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU after Senate Bill 775 passed that resulted in over 300 books getting banned from school libraries, many of which include LGBTQ characters or racial justice themes.

The Texas House has voted to have the 10 commandments posted in every classroom and next on the agenda is replacing school counselors with 'chaplains'. I fail to see how a chaplain can advise a student on educational directions to support that student's interests and guide them into a profession or trade. That's what the counselors were for when I was in school, not psychological and/or emotional counseling. Even if that was their purpose, and it may be in this age of school mass murders, I'd much rather students have access to a professional therapist than someone whose purpose is to promote their religion and faith.

In the continuing corruption in the Texas legislature, the Texas House passed a bill to put armed officers in every school (as if having armed guards present has ever deterred or prevented a mass shooting at a school). Republican representative Tenderholt, who happens to be a senior partner at a private security company, inserted an amendment to allow contracts with private security companies.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, after two years of bitching and moaning about Biden's 'open border' and the millions of illegals flooding the country (neither of which is true) has now demanded a reduction in funding for Border Patrol as a prerequisite for raising the debt ceiling. He also wants to cut funding for veterans, the people he claims to respect and support.

Republicans in several states including Arkansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Georgia, and South Dakota have either passed laws or are introducing bills to weaken child labor laws allowing children as young as 14 to work to ease labor shortages in industries like meat packing though research shows those industries could attract adult workers if they raised pay and benefits. Instead they want to fill those positions with children and then pay them less than minimum wage.

Montana republicans refused to let state representative Zooey Zephyr, who happens to be transgender, speak on the House Floor for the third day in a row and then had the police arrest seven civil rights protesters who were demanding that she be allowed to represent her constituents.

...and your reminder not to get complacent and VOTE these fuckers out.

 

rain, gardening, and other miscellanea

We got a little over an inch of rain Thursday night which we needed so I didn't have to water. Of course the little dog was all freaky during the storm preventing me from sleeping and I finally just turned on the light and read until the storm passed and she settled down. Too wet to work outside Friday which was just as well because I was tired from no sleep and weeks of physical activity.

I spent yesterday morning catching up on blogs. I can either read, write, or hurry outside to take advantage of this still beautiful weather. After breakfast we went to the Saturday Farmer's Market which is mostly anything but produce this early in the growing season. Squash and banana peppers were the only thing I saw. Lots of baked goods, our local potter was set up and some other crafts I didn't pay much attention to. I went for honey from a local beekeeper and microgreens from one of the women in the Mennonite community here. And then I hurried out to the yard.

I got the last of the weeding done under the big pink rose bush in the west flower bed. I had to prune some of the bottom branches off so I could get under there and dig up the ground cover and dewberry vines that had taken up residence. Then after a late lunch I separated and replanted a big clump of surprise lilies that I dug up when I weeded the little garden by the fence. It surprised me (ha ha, see what I did there?) because I only get one or two flowers if that every fall and it turned out to be 22 bulbs tightly packed together. I moved them to three different spots where I hope they will bloom better. Then I cut off the lowest leaves on all four tomato plants with the intention of putting mulch underneath today but it's currently dark and lightly rainy out. Not supposed to last all day so maybe this afternoon I can do that.

And speaking of tomatoes...

My second scattering of zinnia seeds that I threw out where I usually have poppies this time of year are starting to sprout but I'm only seeing a very few of what I think are marigolds from those seeds and nothing yet from the nasturtiums.

Other miscellanea...

The pink angel trumpet is blooming. Yesterday it had 13 open flowers, this morning 15 in various stages of just open and declining.

From the Ridiculous Food Department: strawberry, cherry, and raspberry flavored cranberries. I don't get it. Just eat strawberries, cherries, and raspberries if that's the flavor you want.

I finally accumulated enough screws of the right length (what? go buy them?) and mounted the rest of my glass doorknob collection on the railing of the deck (the row on the left).

Found this little bird nest in the middle of the hanging basket of petunias that Autumn wanted replanted in the ground in front of the little hedgehog grave. It was so well hidden I didn't see it until after I had already pulled out half the petunias and didn't see the three little eggs spilled on the ground until I had planted all the petunias. So I put the eggs back in the nest, filled the hanging basket with leaves and nestled the nest in there and hung it back on the shepherd's crook it had been hanging on. I doubt the mother bird will return though as it's no longer well hidden. Best guess is cardinal eggs. Too big for wren eggs.

The love-in-a-mist are finally blooming

and the day lilies are starting up.

Well, the rain which was only supposed to last for an hour is showing no signs of retreating, still dark and windy and sprinkley drizzley hours later. Time for me to retreat to the couch and book.