§ Disaster Strikes..

...for me anyway! Not so much for anyone else. LOL

You see, while the crew was digging the holes in order for placing the piers under the foundation, the ground breaking and hitting the soil so close to the house made one of our pictures on the wall; fall to the floor. Okay, the placement of a chair, in front of the picture, for reading [our library] is in the corner and on an angle. Behind the chair, I thought, was a safe place to put my Halloween Witch Hat Clock. Out of harm's way where it wouldn't get broken...ever. Guess what? Yep, the heavy framed print fell right on the brim of the witch's hat!! Broke it. Shattered! I was going to throw it away and search Amazon for a new one just like it. Well, I found the exact clock! But...thing is, the price was jacked up nearly 500% of what I paid for it years ago. [the price tag was/is still on my broken one] No way was I gonna pay that price. I then decided to piece it all together...collecting the shards on the carpet. That was something I wouldn't wish for on my worst enemy...super glue, fingers, and small pieces don't work well together. I again was ready to throw it out. But then, I got an idea. A wonderful, awful, idea.....get some air dry clay and patch it up.

I cut a piece of screen and glued that to cover the large gap on the underside of the brim. Went inside and removed all the super glue on my fingers, and opened my clay I purchased at Michael's Crafts. Started to place the clay over the screen. So far, so good! There is still a lot of experimenting and sanding and matching paint, but I think it will suffice. The $10 clay and my time is less expensive than a used clock thru Amazon. And that is not figuring in shipping and handling!!! Keeping my fingers crossed this repair project works. My luck tho, once it is complete [thinking positive], the clock will no longer keep time [not so positive]. LOL

In the interim [72 hours for clay to dry sufficiently], I took a short walk along the Oso Bay Wetlands Park the other day. At the time I arrived, one of the ponds was nearly covered with open white water lilies. I went snap happy! They were all so pretty and delicate looking. The stillness of the morning enhanced the quiet solitude of the walk for me. I enjoyed the silence and birdsong too...

§ Lilies of the Field...

This area I walk often is part inlet water and chaparral...desert meets the bay! It was set aside as a nature park for the public; specifically for school-aged children with the learning center so that adolescents and pre-teens can have field trips and be taught about the diverse area of this state of Texas. You have sub-tropic, and low lying dry lands. Filled with wildlife. When I arrived and parked the car to begin my walk, I stopped at the playground/center first. There is a small lily pond. But, at that hour, the lilies were just beginning to open as you notice in the photo to the right. So, I snapped only one photo and moved on to the waterfall park section and then traversed the gravel trails up to the observation tower at the bay's inlet...seeing willets, stilts, egrets, herons, ducks, gulls, and one osprey. This tower is highly elevated [for us sea level dwellers] and there is always a cool breeze blowing through...shaded and a nice stopping place to enjoy the quietude and watch wildlife. There was a lady [named Carol ---she is a volunteer at the wetlands] I've talked with oftentimes. She told me that she had just seen a white-tailed deer and her two fawns.] Anyway, I digress. Since this post is about the water lilies.  After more traversing the many paths through mesquite, cactus, and palo verde trees in bloom, I once again took a side track back to the lily pond and they were now wide open...



As I left to head back to the car, through the butterfly garden, I stopped to photograph the palo verde blossoms [palo verde meaning green stick *the bark is green] and the turning of the mesquite leaves:

§ The Week That Was...

Lily Blossoms, a toy, books, and more today...

I don't know where to begin actually, so I'll just post the photos I have and write as I go along...

This week, I've been a bit hot under the collar!! Yep, Thursday South Texas reached 100 degrees by mid afternoon! Not here, but just a short hour's drive from home. Needless to say I've been either cooped up indoors; mostly reading. Or, outside in the early morning, taking care of things that are becoming parched. We need some rain to help with the drought. Typical. One month, flooding and the next month...dry, dry, dry!!

- - -BOOKS- - -

Shakespeare was one of my favorite subjects in English Literature in school. When I was perusing the table of "Summer Reads" in Barnes and Noble this book popped out for me!! In Julius Caesar [Shakespeare] -In Act 2 Scene 3, the soothsayer Artemidorus writes a letter to warn Caesar about the plot against him. “If thou read this, O Caesar, thou mayst live,..If not, the fates with traitors do contrive.” THE BOOK, Fates and Traitors is about a famous family in American History, -a family of stage performers who often did Shakespeare's plays, an historical novel...of the Booth family. They, of course, were well-known across the globe in their time...before the Civil War, and during the Civil War. Of course, the main character of the book is John Wilkes Booth, President Lincoln's assassin. But, this book is a bit different than any historical reads...it's about the women who loved him...his mother, his sister, his betrothed, his co-conspirator. IT WAS EXCELLENT for the most part. Some dry areas, but the book as a whole is a must read for those that enjoy reading novels based on fact. The author takes you through JWB's life, his family, his love for the South, even the author's view of how the once planned kidnapping of Lincoln turned into an assassination!! The ending chapters uniquely wraps it all up with how the women in his life lived, loved, and perished from a hanging, old age, and more!!

And, just the other day, after finishing Fates and Traitors, I began reading a non-fiction book, Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, on a true story of the first female U.S. District Attorney and a case of a missing girl that awed the nation back in 1917.  Once I finish the book, I'll most likely do a review.

-Lilies- 

Tho it's not Easter, my Easter lilies have been blooming this past week or so...

-Pomegranates- 

..and a few pomegranates are setting on our tree. I'm sure the birds will find 'em before they mature and ripen around November...




-Coupon from Hobby Lobby-
While Bud was at Half Price Books, I walked over to Hobby Lobby. And used the coupon from the store. I really don't need another stuffed animal, but it was so soft and irresistible. A three-toed sloth that I named Triple T  [no relation to Triple P on NCIS New Orleans] -- --


,,,did you know this> Sloths have extra neck vertebrae that allows them to turn their heads 270 degrees? It's a fact!!!


-Orioles and Dollar Store-


When I was working on balancing the bank accounts, from the dining room window I looked out to our bird feeding station just off the patio, and noticed a male Baltimore Oriole at the empty suet bowl! Well, that very day, I had to go to the Dollar Store for some cleaners and ended up buying three rag mops. What I did with the mops was simple...and much more 'cleaner' than hanging orange halves on the wooden fence. This is what I did...I tore off the rag strands of the mop and left the plastic 'cup' on the end of the handle. I then inverted the mop, stuck the metal handle into the ground, and with the cup upright, I set an orange half inside. Voila!!! An instant, no mess, Oriole feeder!! All for $1. each!!! By late in the afternoon, I had six more Orioles enjoying the oranges!!

§ Thursday...thru...Sunday

It was a busy weekend, but still nothing much got accomplished. There was some celebrating here and there, some driving around, a bit of yard work and all in all time flew all too quickly. Here is a small recap of what we did...

Thursday, our 49th anniversary, we went to Niko's Steakhouse...

...and Mother's Day was a day of quiet celebration!

"and I'm reading that book called "The Genius of Birds" that I blogged a little bit about -- it gives much of the same kind of information about birds -- you'd enjoy it..." Sallie at Full Time Life recently added in her comment to me that this would be an ideal book for me to read...I mentioned it to Bud and he found it at Barnes and Noble .  My mother's day gift from him....

Our lilies are in full bloom...they were gorgeous in the sunlight!!


...a perfect, balmy, day on Sunday.  A good day for a stroll through the park!

...along the boardwalk, a 56 second video I took with my phone:



If you're curious, the mama and chicks breed is Common Gallinule [aka Moorhen]



- - - -

...then, there was my all-time favorite baseball player. And he happens to be a retired NY Yankees shortstop! I read over my smartphone of a special tribute commercial composed by Budweiser. You know the old slogan they used long ago..."When You Say Bud-d-d-weiser, You've Said It All"...this commercial is the epitome of the slogan ---

Of course, if you're a fan of baseball [the game was Houston Astros vs. Yankees in a double header on Sunday], I had to wear my Jeter Shirt and we went to a sports bar to watch and celebrate his number being retired...it was a bitter-sweet ceremony. Now my own MLB official shirt will also be retired. Bud thinks I should find a frame for it. Maybe some day...

§ All dressed up and no place to go....

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Canna Lily
Mustang Island, Texas
Spring of 2011

§ ...You don't bring me flowers....anymore!

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Zooming in...Full view of flower below in my Monday Morsels. If you look closer, with the camera's macro setting, you can see the 'veins' in this flower...embiggen it!!











- - -<><><>- - -

MONDAY MORSELS

I was humming and singing the song by Barbra Streisand [see title], and Bud politely informed me that buying cut flowers is a waste of money when I have a flower haven in my very own yard [I agreed].......


Nothing exciting is happening around here these days. Bud and I are nearly done with the outdoor cleanup. One more flower box area in the front yard of weeding and we'll be done. The lawns have been trimmed and edged, and Bud put down "Weed and Feed". It's lookin' good!!! Now we're tackling inside. Hope you're sitting down .......he's tearing all the books down off the shelves in our library and dusting them. Yay!!! It truly is a week long project for him. And as much as he loves his books, he dreads the day I say "It's time to clean 'em". Just to let you know, when we relocated here from Tucson, the packers had packed 45 [you read that correctly!!] ..forty-five boxes of nothing but books!; and, there have been many more added since we've lived in Texas! Okay, so while he is working on that, I washed the windows and Venetian blinds, the curtains and then rehung them. I cleaned the small collection of mermaids and waxed and cleaned my desk...Pfft!!! That was like ---total tornado went through it....disaster area. Where's FEMA when you need 'em?!! Then, waxed and cleaned the doors and window sill...MY part is done!! LOL I'll move on to the master bedroom now, I think, 'cause the master bath was done last week. For me, the worst room to Spring Clean is the kitchen. Ewwww. Cupboards...inside and out. I don't know how those dust bunnies find their way through the cupboard doors and love living in the darkness like they do, but they do. "Out you go, you little rascals". And I do believe they breed just as their cousins do. They show up continually like there's a hot momma somewhere I never catch, and they bore new bunnies just hours after I clean 'em out. Somebody should patent a dust bunny birth control, they'd make a huge profit that would keep our country out of debt, being that the government wants to control profits these days. [Sorry, couldn't shut up on that one!] Are y'all still with me this fine Monday? I do gab on and on sometimes. So, to close this entry for the day, I thought I'd share some of the flowers that are in bloom in our back yard now that it's decent looking for my bloggin' buddies. The top image is a Chicago Peace Rose bud. And the fragrance? So wonderful...like a fresh clean scent of Springtime!! The middle photo is of a newly planted hibiscus. It's residing under our huge bird of paradise plant where it'll get the morning sun, and the dew from the BOP plant will filter down to feed it extra moisture. It's a favorite of Bud's...we had one in Tucson, and I finally found the exact species here over the weekend. And lastly, my white Calla Lily is in full bloom. I have it planted with the Spanish Bayonets in the corner under the overhang of the neighbor's Mountain Cherry Tree where the sun is filtered during the summer months when the temps soar to triple digits and it'll survive the heat of the season. As you can figure out, I love flowers of all kinds. It's a good thing I don't work in a nursery 'cause I'd never get a paycheck...my wages would be garnished for plants I continually take home with me.







POSTED: Monday, April 12th, 2010
3:00 A.M.