I had a few drinks and I think I woke up in hell...

No, really...

Today the weather man was predicting 106, but the temp officially reacged 107 degrees, and the thermometer in my back yard read 113.  We're not even going to talk about the heat index.  Tomorrow... they're predicting 110.  Please God help us all...

Now, I know what some of you are thinking... you live in Texas... what are you griping about.  Trust me, these temps are record breaking.   The usual case is a few days hitting a hundred in July... we've now had aproximately 30 days solid of it... and there's no summer storms.   There hasn't even been a heavy dew.  There are big burned patches by all the highways.  Even the cactus are suffering, many look like half inflated balloons, and no amount of watering seems to be helping. 

Yesterday, I washed a pair of jeans, put them on a hanger, and hung them from the eaves of my house.  They were dry in 15 minutes and I'll swear to it in court on a stack of bibles. 

I'm pulling every trick I know to keep cool and hydrated, but I think I may be losing the battle... 

Everyday, I pack a little cooler with frozen bottles of water and bottles of fruit juice.  Juice is better for you than those sports aides which are full of corn syrup.  And they taste better.  (Quite frankly, I can't choke Gatorade down.)  And if you buy the fruit juice in big bottles or in frozen concentrates, then refill bottles at home, it's much cheaper, and you're saving the landfills from all those hideous single serving bottles.

I also take frest fruit of somekind.  A banana is good... most fruit juices don't have the potasium that you need when you're that hot, and a banana can replenish you.  Sometimes, I take cherry tomatoes... I can eat them like grapes and they're a great potasium source too. 

I also take peppermints.  Those little startlight mints actually make you feel a bit cooler.  Of course, Altoids can give you a cold jolt!  Some people almost find it painful! 

I also pack a plastic bag with 3 or 4 wet bandanas in there... if you get too hot you wrap a wet bandana around your neck and you feel much better.  Lately, I've been putting a capful of rubbing alcohol in the bag with them... it helps.  I also keep hand sanitizer in the truck... it's rubbing alcohol too... NowI know... they say putting rubbing alcohol on your skin will dry it out.  Listen, I'm sweating faster than I can drink sometimes, my skin is consequently extremely oily.  If it was 70 degrees... I'd worry about drying my skin out.  It's bloody 106 already! 

Every day when I come home, I take a special cool bath... now, this is gonna sound strange, but I'll explain it... Three or four inches of cool water with two capfuls of mouthwash in it.

here's the thing... the blue mouthwashes, like Scope, (although I tend to buy the store brands that are identical but cheaper) contain Eucalyptol, Menthol, Methyl salicylate and Thymol, in addition to alcohol.  Eucalyptol and Menthol are both great for cooling down the skin, and these ingredients are all stong antiseptics.  What most of us smell like when we're skanky sweaty isn't our sweat, but the bacteria growing on our bodies and feeding on the sweat... now, I don't claim to smell like a rose, but I don't smell as bad as I used to.  No, you're not going to sanitize yourself, everything is diluted in all that water,  and it probably isn't advisable to sanitize yourself, but you will seriously keep it under control, and when you're sweating buckets, that's neccesary. 

Then I do a quick rinse, again cool water...  quite frankly when it's this hot outside, the water that comes out of the tap marked cold.... ain't cold... but again, hot showers actually promote bacteria growth, and quite frankly you're sweating when you go in and with a hot shower, you're sweating when you get out. 

And... a cool shower actually feels good.  I know, there's all sorts of jokes about cold showers, but it ain't any colder than jumping in a swimming pool. 

And now... that's more information than any of you needed to know about my grooming habits.  LOL

a random post about nothing at all...

you ever had one of those days when living in a cardboard box under the highway actually sounded like it might be a good idea? 

I mean, I always assumed that the homeless were under the overpass because they had no other options... It's starting to dawn on me that at least a few of them may be under there because they needed to get away from this batshit crazy world we live in.  

Well, I had that feeling today.  For a few minutes at least.  Then it dawned on me... I couldn't live in a cardboard box.  I'd have to have plywood.  Which entails finding some plywood, some 2 by 4's and some nails... and then it all started to look like an actual project, and I have to many projects already, so there we are.

we're on the 28th day straight of over 100 degrees outside, with absolutely no rain, and that's probably got a lot to do with my grumpiness.  Because, somehow, even with no rain, we're still getting high humidity.  Don't know where it's coming from.  There is a tropical disturbance on the coast, that might give us some relief when it makes landfall... the church guys are praying for it.  I don't quite know how I feel about praying up a tropical storm over Corpus Christi... but on the other hand the beach bums should be prepared for hurricanes so they're on their own. 

Now, this is a blog about gardening, right? 

Got nothing. 

How about a cut rate decorating tip... go to your local thrift store and get cheap florist vases that are either colored or painted glass... gather them in a group in the middle of a table, put a tea light in each, and they suddenly turn into really cool 'lanterns'   They're deep enough to protect the flame if you put them outside for garden parties too... not that there's any garden parties happening in this heat

sunflowers in the morning....

So... I know it's not the prettiest pic around, but I've found, as I've gotten older that pretty doesn't always matter to me anymore.  I really really like these wild sunflowers... 

I don't know for sure how they origionally seeded in my yard, but these are the wild variety of sunflower that grows in fields throughout Texas... not so much in cow pastures, as cattle seem to delight in the seedlings in the spring. 

Usually, In the spring, I have hundreds of these seedlings along a wooden fence and I fastidiously clean them out to one or two plants.  This year, I got delayed, and they were 3 to 4 feet tall before I got to them.  A few got crowded out naturally, but the rest came up and were blooming before I even had a chance to think about thinning them, and the flowers were so cheerful perched above the velvety green leaves

 that I left them thinking they weren't doing any harm. 

Now they're going to seed, the leaves are browning, and they're decidedly ugly, weedy looking things anywhere from 4 to 8 feet tall... and I would definitely be out there with machete in hand if it weren't for one thing...

Every morning, I sit and watch cardinals, song sparrows, purple finches (they call them purple, the males have a raspberry red head and a decent little chirping song) and the mourning doves come and have their breakfast.  I've even seen house wrens and mockingbirds come down and search out insects, and particularly the ants that seem to colonize the stems.  It's really quite fascinating to watch them. 

I used to put out bird seed.  But the Grackles and English Sparrows would attack the feeders.  These two species don't seem to be bothering my sunflowers. 

So yes, the sunflowers, at this particular stage of their life, look ugly and weedy.  But I'm leaving them.  I enjoy them too much...

Cactus flowers...

finally... something plant related!

and a cactus plant at that... although, it is one of my old faves... and by checking my stats... I can also see that it's one of the most popular posts I' ve ever made too....

Hildy... aka Cereus hidmannianus... will be opening her blooms tonight... 

and I still haven't got a camera.  will have to see what we can do with a porch light, a flashlight and a cell phone... but we're gonna give it the ole college try...

WORE OUT

I swear, there are times when I go to work just to get some relaxation! 

Of course, as soon as I swore to myself that I was going to get back to blogging more, and had even gone so far as to make a separate blog for my devotionals... (see last post)  the blasted modem on my computer decided to develop schizophrenia.  It would connect, then it would disconnect, then it would connect again... basically flipping on and off like a demented strobe.  Quite maddening. 

I was really looking forward to the July 4th weekend... I had been invited to a party for the fourth that promised to be fun, and it's traditionally a good weekend at the flea market... I dared to hope for a little fun. 

Then a friends father passed away. 

The funeral would be on Sunday... they had the choice of Sunday or Independence Day... if they wanted anybody to show up, it had to be Sunday.  It was also in a small town in east Texas, about a hundred miles away. 

Now, this particular friend, his wife and his daughters had been a huge support for me when my Mother passed, and there was no way in hell that I was not gonna be there for them.

It was not the most pleasant experience, well, it WAS a funeral, but it was definitely an interesting one in a kind of lugubrious way, and I'm actually working on writing it up into a short story, so I'm not going to go into great detail now... but I will say this.

I have mourned among the rednecks.  And then, I ate catfish...

The Saturday before was pretty standard at the flea market... only a few minor squabbles.

The party with the church guys was more fun than most people would probably think... I mean... for most of us, myself included, a room full of Christians is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think party, but we're a fun group.  And when one of said Christians if trying to figure out the best way to make mojitos, it helps.  We couldn't let his various experiments go to waste, now could we?

But... I'm tired.  Way too tired.  I need some sleep...   

The devotionals...

I had mentioned before that I was writing some devotionals for my church... a few of you asked if you could see them. 

I wasn't entirely happy with the idea of posting them here tho... so I've made another blog so you can look at them if you're interested in such things...

Haven't quite finished with the design of it... very much a work in progress... and there's only one on there so far... but HERE IT IS

flea market stuff...

Well just one flea market stuff...

Got a wonderful vintage TV lamp... from the 50's... perfect condition.

bad pic... the boat is actually brighter yellow... and there's a place in the top for a plant... most of these I saw growing up had a plastic ivy in them... the light, which shines from inside, is red...

Can't find the maker, but it's in perfect condition, and I've priced it at 45 bucks.


Anyway... hadn't posted for a while, so I had to post SOMETHING and there we are.

Well, here's a surprise...

Last year, out of the kindness of her heart, Julie, that wonderful lady over at A Succulent Life, sent me a Gloriosa Lily...

I am ashamed to say that I thought I killed it. I neglected to dig it up in the winter as I'm supposed to in this zone. I'm a bad plant parent. I am a bad plant recipient. I should be taken out and beaten soundly. But, I thought to myself, there's a very thick layer of straw mulch over that tuber... maybe by some miracle it survived our record breaking cold weather this winter.

This spring, nothing.

But, evidently, the thick layer of mulch was enough. Imagine my surprise when this morning I walked out and saw this dangling over my head in the carport...


There's still not a shoot showing by the ground though. What happened, is that evidently, the lily sprouted and sent it's shoot up inside the hollow metal pole that holds up the carport... and after it reached the top, it grew out and began blooming...

Determined little thing, ain't it?

a bright shiney morning...

Don't get all excited... I don't have a new camera yet... can't justify the expense because of other stuff going on in my life. This is a really crappy cell phone pic.

yep... the peanut cactus, 'rose quartz' is blooming it's fool head off after the HUGE storms last night... here in my part of Texas, we just caught the tag end of the things... through the midwest... well parts of Oklahoma came might near to being scraped off the map as far as I could

tell.

But these cheered me up a little this morning, and quite frankly I needed it... not gonna go into details at the moment, but let me say this...

My Grandmother, who was a very wise woman, always said... "The good Lord don't give you any burden you can't carry. But there are times when I've wished He didn't have such faith in me." Let's just say... I know what the hell she was talking about and leave it at that, OK?