still more snow...

The snow finally stopped around midnight last night. According to DFW airport, we officially had 11 inches. I'm further south, and I think around 9 is more like it... lost a few branches in the neighborhood, but the power stayed on. They lost it in some spots in Dallas though...

A view down the street...

The curly willow in the front yard:

A foul tempered cat named Phennig:

And the Agave so you can compare it to yesterdays pic...

I don't think I lost any plants, most of mine are known to be hardy thru zone 7 and I'm on the line of 7 & 8.

A little quick research tells me that the highest snowfall ever recorded in Dallas was 14 inches, in the winter of 1977 to 78. Which would have been hideous...imagine having to be cold AND the added humiliation of wearing bell bottoms...

I went out this morning and shoveled the snow off my sidewalk, then went down and got the walks of Miss D and Miss M... the elderly ladies that live down the street, and then I did Miss P's next door... I would have gotten a few more, but the snow had gotten into my boots... my charitable instinct would appear to end with wet socks.

cactus in the rain...

First, just so I won't be accused of Prickly Pear abuse, I would like to point out that the neglected Optunia humifusa from the previous post has been potted up in his own 5 inch clay pot, and will soon, no doubt, be happily growing along... the dead looking pad in the middle is typical of the species. Old pads die off as the new ones grow and root... the miniaturized pad that's lying on the soil surface already has new roots going into the ground at least an inch. The new pad that's growing up from the old roots will probably end up regular sized for the plant, what with new soil and the right amount of light, so it'll grow out at least 4 inches... we'll see.

It's been raining for 5 days straight! All my neighbors keep gushing about how we need it... I keep reminding them that I grow cactus, and I don't need it! The Pavonia keeps opening up it's blooms though, even if they do end up looking a little droopy from the water...

And Charcoal Briquette Kitty does not like this one little bit...

But the lower temps and extra water have prompted Hildy (Cereus hildmannianus) to put out some new buds. 15 that I've counted, although they're low on the plant and hard to find among the Prickly Pear pads that surround the pot. There may be more. And more buds may yet form higher on the plant... we'll see.

I will be picking up a new (used) truck tomorrow. Sorely needed, I assure you. My little Isuzu in about on it's last legs, but I'll probably keep it until I'm sure the new one isn't spending too much time in the shop.

I don't like spending money. I'm not particularly good at it, and it's kept me in a tempermental, worried fit over the last few days. Silly of me, but there we are. But I've bit the bullet... and now it's done.

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.

Random stuff...

I didn't have anything around to merit a real post, but I did have to let everybody know that I was still around, so here's some random pics that are in the camera... thought I'd go ahead and post them before I deleted them...

This is Spectre... (yep, another black cat. It's been a theme since I was a kid. Grandma said 'If there's a black cat within a mile of that boy, they'll find each other!' ) Spectre is a cat that wanders the neighborhood and has decided that sleeping on top of my shade-porch is a good thing... I have a love-hate relationship with random cats... On the one hand they can cause a certain amount of trouble. On the other hand, if there aren't any cats in the neighborhood, there are rats... given the choice of cats or rats... I'll take the cats... Spectre is nice enough, as long as you don't get in her face. She tends to watch me a lot as I work in the yard, but I can't get within 6 or 7 feet of her. She may tame up eventually though...
This is the Pereskia aculeata v. godseffiana that I saved from Home Depot. I had it in a previous post when I first got it... Pereskias are cactus, even though they have leaves, and aren't succulent. The godseffiana is the more colorful cultivar of the plain green standard species. Normally, the plants bloom in the spring, but there is sometimes a second blooming in the fall... since this didn't get to bloom in the spring, I'm hoping I'll get a couple of blooms about October or November. He was barely hanging on when I first got him... but now he's recovering from the chain store... It's almost enough to make you break out into a chorus of "We Shall Overcome"

These are a couple of Scissor-tail flycatchers that I snapped when they were perching on the fence at a warehouse I delivered to... These are the state bird of Oklahoma, but they're common through Texas too... This is probably a mated pair. They hunt by sitting still till they see a bug, then swoop down and attack, a process refered to as 'hawking,' so often when people see them, they think they're seeing some type of barn swallow. However, the scissor-tail can hover in place for short periods, about 5 seconds, which I've never seen a swallow do.

And here's Phennig, sitting in the yard. He seems to be giving me an opinion on what he thinks of this unmowed grass. Obviously, I'm going to have to get to work.

And that's about it for the moment.

This is Phennig... who has taken it upon himself to guard the garden hose. Pity the fool who tries to steal it. Or roll it up for that matter... I have the scars to prove it... I know he's just trying to play, but he hasn't quite got the art of playing down.

I share my life with two cantacerous black cats. Both are rescued alley cats, and they refuse to spend much time inside. They do, however, manage to keep the yard relatively rodent free, for which I'm grateful.

I had a productive day, at least... did manage to catch up on all the laundry... since it was so sunny and warm out, I hung a lot of it outside. Laundry actually dries quicker outside than it does in the drier here... and of course, I don't have to pay the electric bill. I've become very cheap since gas started going up...

just a quick post. No garden pics today...

Busy Sunday...

well, I've been off of work for a whole week, and today I was just gardening a lot, between naps. This last weeks "vacation" has left me far more exhausted than working, but I've come out of it with a new flea market booth, a new AC system in my car, a new (used) stereo in my car, and a couple of thinned out iris beds... no pics of the iris... new beds aren't that attractive.


sent fifty gazillion iris out to my sister so that she could do something with them.

here's a pic of charcoal briquette kitty... who didn't appreciate her nap being disturbed...

and here's a pic of the cactus again, the first bloom dying off and the second opening... (If I appear to be fixated on this cactus, it's because it's a fairly new and it's the first bloom I've had from it.)and here's a pic of the agave americana, yucca, rosemary and various other plants in a tiny little space in the front yard about 3 weeks ago, this little 4 x 4 bed seems to catch a lot of seedlings.... The white iris in there are one of the batches that I had to thin out. There were too many, they were threatening to crack the sidewalk, and that's really a small bed. Anyway, reduced it down to 2 plants, which will be a dozen by bloom time next spring/summer.

I guess I'll have to go to work to get any relaxation time... LOL.