Bad news, good news, bad news... etc...

Well, the last post I was kvetching about how I didn't have any time off.

This post, I'm gonna kvetchy about how I have too much time off...

The blasted truck blew a piston.

This has happened before. The last time I blew a piston, we had to replace the piston in the engine... which is really really not a good idea. The problem was that we couldn't find a replacement engine for the love of money. Replacing the piston is really a band-aid job, and it's so not a good thing to do for several reasons... but we had no choice.

So, when I blew a piston again, I figured it was the band-aid job that went... turned out it was a different piston. Fortunately, this time, we found a replacement engine, and a little heavier duty engine at that...

The good news is that Spring is arriving in Dallas-Ft.Worth. Soon I'll be out in the yard planting and digging and all that jazz... I'd be doing it right now, but the weather isn't allowing it. Rained all day yesterday, and it's started up again today... any digging in our clay soil when it's this wet results in a large mass of compacted, rock hard dirt clods.

So, I took pics in the rain.

Here's the neighbors ornamental pear tree blooming...
Soon, the tree will be covered with dark purple leaves.

Here's some jonquils blooming in my yard...

I've never really figured out what the official difference between a jonquil and a daffodil is... or a narcissus for that matter. But, these were labeled jonquil when I bought them, so I'll take their word for it.

Now, for more bad news... I'm sure my regular readers will remember the record breaking snow we had a few weeks ago. (Officially, it was 12 1/2 inches at DFW airport) Carports collapsed... roofs caved in, Live Oaks, which have branches that grow more or less horizontally and keep their leaves all winter, catch a lot of heavy snow, and were dropping branches all over the place. My carport made it, and I don't have any live oaks, but the Prickly Pear that I grow for jelly-making also has extremely large pads, which caught the snow and snapped branches.

The plant will survive, and I may be able to actually root some of those branches by standing them in the ground. The extensive, established root systems will send up a lot of new growth this year, although blooms, and therefore fruit, come off older growth, so I'm not too sure of the harvest I'm gonna get come presserve making time. But we'll see...

It looks like I've also lost my variagated agave... which was fine till it got buried under the snow and it just gave up. And there's a few more plants which I'm just not sure of. We'll see I suppose...

Yes... I'm still alive!

Sorry I haven't been posing for a while... the truth is that my life hasn't been all that fun lately...

You see, I've been working 6 day weeks. 4 days driving the dang truck and 2 days at the flea market... except it isn't really two days as much as it is 1 1/2 days, because I go to church on Sunday morning, and then go directly to the flea market... but what it all boils down to is that my only day off is Monday, and I have to do everything (ie: laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, etc.) on Monday, and, quite frankly, thsi schedule is not really working out all that well for me.

But, when I left the house this morning, I was bound and determined I was gonna find something to take a picture of...

Here's a house in Ft. Worth... (Yes, I'm taking pics of other peoples front yards. I justify this by telling myself I'm looking for gardening ideas.) These Agaves scattered over the front lawn look kinda cool... but I don't know that I want to do this in my yard... quite frankly, I can think of better ways to spend my time in the garden than weed-eating around agaves...

This is one of Ft Worths street trees... more specifically a Yucca aloifolia... you see a few of these in the area... but this is the only one I know planted by the city... and it had to have been planted quite a while ago, as it's now about 15 feet tall... quite possibly the largest one I've seen locally...

And this is just one of those rocks that you see by driveways in shopping centers. The purpose is to keep cars off the lawn. Of course, they also tend to turn minor roadway accidents into major ones, but that's a whole other arguement... the only reason I was really interested in this lump of sandstone is because if you look really-really close....

you'll see this...

I have no bloody idea how that echeveria got there.

The entire landscaping in this shopping center consists of small strips of grass and these huge rocks and this single, solitary clump of echeveria.

It's very puzzling.

Anyway... I hope everybody out in blogland is doing well... have a great day!

cactus babe update 2

well, the cactus are starting to get their little juvenile cactus spines... unfortunately, it's impossibe to take a pic of them. They're just too tiny...

so I came up with an artist impression of them...

really, they're cute as the dickens...

Juvenile spines on cactus aren't really spines, they're more like little hairs than anything else... some species will begin producing adult spination within a month, some will take years. I'm not sure about these escobaria off hand, but I believe it will be 3 to 6 months...

Not much happening here... I'm was working 7 days a week, but I'm taking Mondays off now... I just needed a day to do laundry and such... but I'm running too much to take pics right now, not that there's much to take pics of anyway. Texas in winter ain't purdy, unless it's snowing and (1) it doesn't really snow that much here and (2) after you've taken one pic of the cactus with snow on it, you've pretty much taken all of them...

Anyway, just a quick post before I head off to church, then to the flea market where I'll be a cashier/notary public for the afternoon...

later

stress for breakfast...

This day is almost ruined before it started...

1. I have to visit the mechanic today as a radiator hose busted on my way home from work last night... I'm 95% sure the radiator itself is fine, but I drive a few hundred miles a week, so I'd rather be positive. I really don't wanna be stuck somewhere like Nemo when I find out...

2. The insurance company has decided to raise my rates... which is strange because I haven't had so much as a ticket in over 2 years, so I gotta straighten that out or change insurance companies...

3. I'll be answering e-mails later today as I just un-friended a bunch of people on facebook... I would never ever consider telling someone what they may or may not think or say, but I also don't wish to read posts that are racist, homophobic, sexist, etc... usually I give a warning about such things, but I've come to the realization that when I have to point out to someone that they're being offensive, they tend to get defensive and we end up not friends anyway... I don't have a huge amount of room in my life for that particular brand of negativity...

4. Some bills are due... including one who says I didn't pay last month when my banker and I say I most definitely did...

5. I should probably get to work on the voodoo doll of the person who canceled my Valentines Day date...

6. I haven't been good and drunk in at least 2 weeks, so I should probably take care of that too...

No pics today...

Happy Valentines Day!

Daffodils and chilli

The sun finally came out about noon and we're getting a thaw... which means my yard is a giant mud-hole, but I'll deal with it...

and look at the intrepid little soul that popped up under the agave! It's a miniature daff... and extremely early blooming... but I did need something to cheer me up and this'll do it...

Made a big pot of home-made chilli today, and I did pretty darned good if I say so myself...

cactus babe update...

Well, they don't look much different except for one thing... there's 2 more of them. Within another couple of weeks, I should start seeing their "baby spines" Not really spines so much as little white fuzzy hairs... it'll probably be a couple of months more at lest before I get real spines.

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.

SNOW! Lots and lots of SNOW!

Yes, I know I posted earlier saying nothing much was happening... well, it was like 4 AM then, but then the sun came up and I saw this...

Snow! And it's still coming down... the weather started sayin 1 to 3 inches, but now they're talking 3 to 5... someone on my message boards said they heard on one station about 5 to 7...

That's my truck. Obviously, I'm not driving today... probably not tomorrow either. Because what thaws on the roads during the day will freeze solid tonight...

And that's the palm tree... poor thing...

and the agave...

Now, this is Texas... we're not supposed to have this problem here...

If this keeps up I'm gonna get as cold and foul tempered as a yankee...

I've got a big pot of beef & vegetable soup on, enough to walk down to Miss D down the street, and I may take some to a couple of others in the neighborhood...

Random pics and stuff...

well, I haven't posted lately, because, quite frankly, there wasn't anything worth posting about... nothing much has been happening here. But I keep taking pics and hoping something will pop... here's a few of them... This is the Geralds Creek Baptist Church, built in 1915 and still used today.

Geralds Creek is near Nemo TX. Nemo isn't officially a town. Niether is Geralds Creek... Gerald Barnard settled in the area in the area in the late 1800's, and a trading post and loose community gathered. Jimmie Johnson settled nearby, and when the 40 or so residents applied for a post office under the name of Johnson Station, the Postmaster wrote back suggesting a shorter name... one of the residents took offense saying that if Johnsons name wasn't good enough then no ones was, so they used the name of Nemo... which is latin for no one.

Nemo never had more than 60 residents, and now is just a loose collection of farms... I only know about it because I've had to deliver machine parts to the sand pits... it seems that when the glaciers went through here during the ice age, they dumped large amounts of sand in this area, and it's now being mined... mostly for cement I think...

This is an area down the road from the house... nothing to look at here really, just one of my crazy wierd ideas...

see, what happened is that the last time the grass was mowed by the highway, it was too tall and winter rains have clumped the dead clippings up... I find myself looking for patterns in the dead grass... somehow, I've convinced myself that these are letters of a strange language, and I keep thinking that if I stare at them long enough, I'll get a message... from whom? I dunno... aliens? God? Maybe Gnomes? Yeah, I know, I need to talk to someone about this, but I'm too busy trying to decifer the lawn to find a psychiatrist. Besides, if I actually do figure it out, I'm sure it'll be life changing.

and this is the pic of an Amaryllis that I bought on clearance after Christmas... he's blooming well enough. Come spring, I'll plant it outside with the dozen other ones I've collected.