So, Thursday night and Friday I was all sick from something I ate. Fine.

But Saturday, I decided that there was some gardening that could no longer wait... despite the fact that it was 103 degrees and the are pollution levels were on a red alert. So, looking back, I probably shouldn't have done that... and I did pay for it most of today... but I guess I did at least achieve something... I managed to dig most of the suckers out of the agave, as they were pushing the bricks out of place and waving their thorny little tentacles in a threatening manner at the cars passing by...

And I moved the tumbling pots over towards the front cactus bed, as I wasn't happy with where it was.

And then I started potting up the pups from the agave... which really, aren't really pups anymore as much as they're pretty good sized agaves... and now I'm waiting for them to root good so that I can get them to the flea market and sell them...

Of course, I'm not terribly sure that all of this is worth the wheezing and coughing that I did for the rest of the night, but there we are.

vintage pics...

So, here's the deal...

Yesterday I ate something wrong, evidently, and I spent most of last night just flat out ill... so between just being wore out, and absolutely not willing or really able to deal with the heat out there today, I stayed home from work.

But, I didn't have any pics to post... so I decided that I would post some of these old pics of mine.

Sometimes, being a flea market dealer, I buy lots of stuff, and occasionally, there are these old pics in there... over the years, I've gathered up quite a collection. Unfortunately, I have no idea who most of these people are...

So, I scanned these pics is, and enhanced them... you should be able to click on them and get more detail...
I've always called that guy ^ 'the dude'

and this is obviously a pic of somebodies family farm...

And this old homestead is absolutely fascinating.

So, that's a few of my old pics. None of these pics are marked or dated in any way, so I have absolutely no idea who or where they are... but it's kind of fun making up stories to go with them.

Enjoy!

found some mushrooms growing today, in a vacant lot beside one of my deliveries. It was the only bright spot of the day!

Seriously, there's nothing to put me in a good mood like driving 200 lbs. of auto parts to a mechanic 60 miles away, only to have them refuse the order when I get there because they cancelled the order yesterday and the seller evidently forgot to type that info into the computer... so I have to drive it 60 miles back, only to have the origional warehouse guy try to wiggle out of taking it back, so I have to go into the office and explain everything to the customer service guys, who evidently don't believe me because they have to make 6 phone calls and eventually I was quite willing to tell them that they wanted their overpriced piece of crap, they could drag the river. All this before 10 AM.

Anyway... they took it eventually, and dispatch is making sure that they are being charged for the trip out, and the trip back, so it at least paid well, but dang...

Probably not going to have any pics tomorrow... Friday is really the busiest day. Our summer heat hit this week, so it's about 102 out there on the road... not a whole lot of fun...

Dang, I'm a bit of a downer, aren't I?

just a few pics from around...

This weekend, in direct result to family stress and work frusration, I turned off the cell phone and spent almost all day Saturday and Sunday mounting an all out assault the yard. The lawn was just sitting there, minding it's own business, doing nothing to deserve being attacked, but I'm sure that it'll get over it.

In between forays, I did pot this up... it's an old china plate, chipped to the point that it's not worth anything, stood up in a planter with some succulents... I'm not really thrilled with it, but I'll let it grow and see how it turns out.


and here's the Datura in the back yard...
and some wild sunflowers that I never have the heart to pull up...

when they go to seed it's fun to watch the local birds feed on the seed heads...

so this weekend, while not relaxing, was in a strange way revitalizing... I don't like to talk about it much, but I've always found that I can draw a certain amount of calmness and energy from the earth, soaking it up through my fingers.

But enough of that, I've verging on new age silliness... just dropping by to let everybody know that I'm surviving...

well, howdy strangers...

I'm afraid I haven't been a very good blogger lately.

The truck is back in the shop, and there's some family issues that I am most definitely not going to go into here, but I've been distracted to say the least.

Anyway, I decided that today I would take some personal time with my plants. Here's the Escobaria vivipara... bloomin like a darned fool. Some years it puts out blooms in masses of 15 to 20 at a time, and at other years, like this year, it puts out a few at a time every few days... I have no idea what triggers this behavior. Maybe it's got something to do with winter rain...

This is the Dallas Red crepe myrtle in the front yard...

This is the Notocactus leninghausii (Golden Ball) cactus in the back rock garden. The tag it came with said it was winter hardy to 20 degrees farenheight. I'm not too sure. What I'll probably do is get some clear plastic bowls to put over the top of the plants this winter if it looks like its going to get too cold...

And this is a Ferocactus latispinus ( Devil claw) cactus. Ditto on the 20 degrees on this one. I'm really not sure of this, because I can't find any online resources that say it's that hardy... again, clear plastic bowls may be put into service.

And this was marked as a Trichocereus grandifloris hybrid. Which means that its really an Echinopsis, since all the trichos were moved into that genus recently. Again, it's supposed to be hardy to 20, and again, I'm not sure...

This is a cholla. Not sure what species, but it's a 'start' from someone down the street, so I know it'll be fine.

And these are the napales in the tub, putting out new growth. They're definitely not winter hardy, so I'll have no qualms whatsoever about eating all the pads that come out... The varieagated grass is Stenotaphrum secundatum 'Variegatum' - in other words, common St. Augustine lawn grass except it's variegated. kind of cool... but not all St. Augustine grass varieties are winter hardy in Texas, so it's an experiment.

And that's about all for the moment.

Really, I just wanted to let everybody know that I'm still around. Haven't fell off the side of the planet yet.

later

Weekly update!

Well, it's been a rather adventurous week...

I started Friday by being totally infuriated at work before 8 AM. I went to a delivery address. It was a wrong address. Dispatch gave me the right address. I went there. It was the warehouse, and my delivery was supposed to go to the factory. 14 miles away. So dispatch told me to take it there, but I told them it wasn't going anywhere until I got the extra $$$ for double delivery. Anyway, I got the money and I didn't have to drop any very expensive machine parts into the nearest ditch...

We had huge storms Thursday night. Some parts around here got 6 inches of rain in the space of an hour... We got about that much total. The Trinity river was almost to the top of the levees...

These oleanders aren't mine. I don't really have the room to grow them here, but these are a friend of mines down the street... I helped her repair what an overzealous yard maintenance man called pruning the other day. His idea of pruning was cutting half the canes off at ground level, then leaving the rest of them to flop around. I've done some strategic staking, and I suspect that it's going to be an ongoing project for the rest of the summer...

I got a pic of the local stray cat, Spectre, who had found herself a nice shaded spot of cool concrete to take a nap. She's starting to tame up to me now. I can get within 3 feet without causing a feline fit...

On Friday, while I was off arguing with dispatchers... one of the transformers in the neighborhood blew. I still had power, but my neighbors and everybody north of me, did not. It finally came back on today. Evidently it took all these guys to fix it....

(note: My house is directly behind that red truck... you can see the very top of my corkscrew willow at the top of the pic) Actually, these weren't all here for one transformer. They were using our street as a centralized location to dispatch out for repairs.

They were here for about 4 hours. I looked into the front yard to see 2 or 3 of the drivers closely inspecting my cactus beds, then went outside and answered a few questions about whether or not they're winter hardy here or not, what kind of soil did I use for the rock gardens, do I have to feed them with special fertilizers , etc, etc, etc. Of course I'll talk about the cactus all day, so that cheered me up... or as cheerful as I could be in this heat... officially it got up to 96 today, but the thermometer in my backyard said 103. And with all the rain lately, the humidity is about 80%.

I did manage to get some of the alley cleaned up... one of the problems with the rock garden is that on the other side of the alley, (which is all rental property... not one actual homeowner lives on that street...) there is a lot of brush and weed trees growing along the fences. People naturally are swerving in my direction to avoid them... so I decided I'd build up a little good Karma and chop out some of the stuff. That took up some time... as in the heat I tend to go slower and not give myself heat stroke.

The new neighbor showed up, and I found out that he's a driver too... for a competing company.

Hmmmm.

And that's really my day.

no pics today.

bummer.

finally figured out what may be happening with the danged rock garden... The house next door was rental property, and they moved out last month. The For Rent sign went down, so we were waiting to see who would be moving in... finally met a guy today, and he's the new owner.

But it would appear that somebody has stolen the AC unit and the Water heater. The damage to the rock garden may be somebody loading up and making a quick, sloppy getaway. Of course, Monday is also trash day in this neighborhood, so anybody driving around with a truck would be mistaken for a dumpster diver picking up scrap metal... Now I wish I had put down tire spikes.

Anyway, it's a possibility.

wildflowers...

Saw this in my ambling around today, thought I'd show it to y'all

This field also had a for sale sign, so I decided I'd better take a pic before somebody bought it and built a 7-11 on it.

Oh, and I'll be getting myself to the library pretty soon over the next few days... There's been another tire in my back alley rock garden... not so bad this time, but dang... 2 Mondays in a row... If you are so hung-over on Monday morning that you're having a hard time staying on the pavement, you may not be hungover as much as you're still drunk... I used to work in bars, I know about these things...

I have to go to the library to make sure that there aren't any regulations or city codes about what I can put there... My neighbor used to have a brick pillar in front of her house, and once, during one of our heavy drought, the ground shifted and the thing fell over and broke in half. Both halves are still in her back yard, and she said I could have them... I'm thinking I can mount one on each side of my driveway, plant a cactus or something in the middle of them. They'll look good, and they'll keep idgits out of my landscaping... I'm pretty sure that I can put them right on the alley if I want to, The wooden fences are certainly planted right on the edge, but 6 inches or a foot back would look better I'm sure.

nothing particularly new...

Well, ever since last Monday, I haven't really seen anything worth taking a pic of in my wandering around... but I wanted to make a post anyway... so I took the camera out in the yard to see what there was to be seen... and here they are in no particular order... This is the street view of my cactus bed in the front yard. The purple coneflowers self seeded a few years ago, and I just left them. I have dug a few out for friends, as they were shading out the rock garden to the right in the pic...
and here's the view from the yard....

here's one of the Texas wildflowers that came up in the yard and I've been very carefully mowing around... I'm gonna take the seeds off of this and scatter them in a better location for next year. It's a Mexican Hat or Black eye'd susan, or prarie coneflower... I think it depends on who's telling you about them...

Next is a Pavonia hastata... AKA rock rose. This small flowered relative of the hibiscus is one of my faves... The bush is a little rampant, and the blooms are small... just shy of 2 inches across... not really that impressive... except the hotter it gets, the more it blooms... a very valuable trait. This bush, in the upcoming heat of August, will be covered with hundreds of these small white flowers when everything else is doing it's level best to crawl under a rock.

The crown of thorns, which I talked about in a previous post when someone abandoned it on my porch just knowing that the local cactus freak would love it... and the Pachypodium...

A little Mammilaria bloom... I forget which one of the top of my head...

And on a corner of the of the front rock garden, an old galvanized bucket that had sprung a leak now is home to a tiny variagated agave, right in the middle, and a Ghost plant (Graptopetalum paraguayense) & all the leaf cutting that fell off said ghost plant when I potted it...

And that's kinda what's going on in the yard right now. Nothing particularly new, but still kinda nice...

Later!

less than 24 hours later...

I just finished this garden strip yesterday, (actually, see yesterdays post all about it) and some dweeb runs off the alley and into my rock garden today! Seriously, there's over 15 feet of alley out there, if you are incapable of staying on it, you shouldn't be allowed to drive!


Look up there^


They cracked a fossil in half! It's been around for several tens of thousands of years, and this incompetent cracks it in half! Un-freaking believable!



I'm just venting, I've already rebuilt the damage, and I can only hope that nothing else happens anytime soon... Yes, it's annoying, but far worse things have happened on the planet. And as for them being an incompetent dweeb, I have no idea really... all I know is that it was fine when I left this morning and it was run over when I came home tonight.



Otherwise, it was actually a pretty good day.

There was this in the back of a warehouse I saw today... maybe it's that I've been doing too much rock gardening, but the first thing that went through my mind was... 'They need some prickly pears back there. And some agaves... maybe a few of those hardy ferocactus too... and an ocotillo...

And then, as I was sitting in my truck in a store parking lot, reading my book and waiting for my next call... I heard a little chirp and I looked up to see this guy less than 10 feet outside my drivers window... A scissortail flycatcher was sitting there waiting for me to take a pic, and getting a little impatient with me...
Then he showed off his profile...

before his wife showed up and reminded him that there were chicks to feed and he didn't have time to resume his career as a super model.
you can tell this is the female, because the tails shorter.

And that was my day...