Wednesday, September 11, 2013

With Help Like This...

...it's a wonder I ever get anything done.  This cat can be so obstinate when he decides he wants to share space with me!


Doesn't the poor doll look as though she's crying for help?

But Cosmo does love to recline upon things.  Like this:

That sweet potato vine looks like one of those "The Monster That Devoured..." movies.  Until moving here, I always thought they just artfully trailed from pretty planters.  Who knew you could use it as a ground cover?

And that's after trimming it back significantly.  Next year I plan to mix the colors and do this in several more places.

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Morning Coffee


So... this morning I slept late (for me).  It was after 6:00 when I finally got out of bed, partly because Oldtimer had the alarm set for 4:30, loud, so he wouldn't miss golf this morning, and I fell back to sleep and had a LOT of weird dreams.  When I got out of bed, I was trying to decide if I had time for my routine cup of coffee on the patio before my morning walk with Molly the Dog.  (Thanks to Miley Cyrus, I now think I have to qualify that every time I say it.  Molly the Dog is her new name.)  I thought I should at least have a quick cup, and sort my brain a bit, because the dream I'd had, just before waking, was really weird.  It had something to do with being at an art retreat, learning to work with metal, and I was riding with my friend Gingah, who was driving a big white tuna boat of a station wagon, through an artist village where we were taking classes.  I was very excited to see a pair of Asian women hammering beautiful strips of metal to a block wall, but Gingah explained to me that even though we were hammering things in our class, they were going to be much smaller, and our work would be dainty and feminine.  I should have expected that, she said, because the metal pieces we were hammering were government issued.

Anyway, I wanted to contemplate that dream, because it also included glitter on the walls, but not with the government issued metal pieces, but I only got one sip of coffee when I realized there was another doggone Couch's Spadefoot in the swimming pool, and as much as he flailed at the surface, he wasn't getting back out.  I wanted him out before the pool filter turns on at 6:30, because I just hate fishing them out of the basket, especially when they are floating belly up.  I went to the side of the house to get the small net, but when I turned around, he'd dived to the bottom of the pool, frightened, because Molly the Dog was running and leaping at the block wall, and scratching up the rocks and carrying on something awful.  She probably saw a gecko.

I laid down on the cool deck, in my nightgown, and tried to help him off the bottom of the pool, but he wasn't having it.  I was a little worried about not being to move quickly, lying in my nightgown and all, should someone like the pool guy come into the back yard, so I got back up for another sip of coffee.  The Spadefoot floated back to the surface and possibly thumbed his nose at me.  I ran over, scooped, and he leaped back out of the net into the pool.  I scooped again and got him.  I was trying to decide which neighbor's yard to drop him into, thinking if I dropped him over the back fence, he might hop out into traffic, which might defeat the whole purpose of fishing him out of the pool.  He leaped out of the net, onto the gravel, and into the waiting arms of Cosmo Kramer Cat.  A Couch's Spadefoot doesn't move very quickly on gravel, and sometimes they flip belly up on the rocks due to their instability.  I don't move nearly as quickly on the gravel as Cosmo, but I did manage to put the net over the Spadefoot to protect him.  Then Molly the Dog bumped me and I lost my balance, and the Spadefoot was unprotected again.  The Spadefoot hopped under an Oleander bush, Cosmo chased him, I put down the net, caught Cosmo, put Cosmo and Molly the Dog into the house and sat down with my cup of COLD coffee. 

But I did see a finch at the finch feeder for the first time as I savored my cold coffee. I guess I'll analyze the weird dream on my walk with Molly the Dog.

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

And we wind down August...

With clean windows:

Dragonflies:

Wading birds in the desert:

Hummingbirds:

And favorite artwork finally finding a home: