Alchemy

Spring is coming to the Hill Country after a hard (for us) winter ...

and so, as I am wont to do, I walked the land. Then returned to find this post

https://itscrowtime.wordpress.com/2018/02/27/martis-pennant-for-the-dream-is-on-its-way/

over at Mo's blog. Marti's pennant of cloth dyed from the land and her words invoking alchemy.

Coincidentally, before I walked, I had begun my own dye-play using windfall galls from the live oaks, their previous inhabitants long since gone. I wrapped the galls in thrifted linen, tying them off with a variegated thread that I hope will bleed. Then dipped the whole in warm black tea and hung the results in the Texas persimmon ...

Note: this was spectacularly unsuccessful!

After which I walked, surveying our latest prickly pear cactus whacking ...

the end product of which will be more berms ...

within which the alchemy of sun and rain will disintegrate the grass-topped mounds into the black gold of compost ..

Likewise, the mistletoe-choked cedar elm has been safely downed and chipped by arborists, soon to line the trails that meander through our land ...

Walking down the east trail I came to the cactus corral ...

Once a bare patch clotted with cactus, it is now full of grasses and the bright green promise of thimble flowers.

The burn pit is also full of brush cut back to make way for more prairie grasses ...

Beyond it, the floodplain is beginning to bloom ...

As my eye scanned the land seeking the first golden eye, it caught instead on an intriguing spiral of stone ...

Nearby, the last remnants of a much-needed rain ...

A flicker of color led me to the corner of the property where surveyor's tape fluttered ...

marking the edge of the land now owned by our someday next door neighbors, our bid having been too little to secure the acreage for ourselves.

But we have more than enough here and always there is something ...

Picking up the empty shell, I wondered at its one-time inhabitant. Had it perished on the droughted floodplain? How ironic those two words are. But water is the key to our land of flood and drought. 

Which is why the avian font (Barry's term, much more appealing than "bird bath") is drunk dry by the deer as often as not ...

Filling it ...

I noted yet another flutter from the corner of my eye ...

a black butterfly with iridescent blue spots above ...

and an orange/red spot below, just visible as it flew away. I will have to look it up.

But for now, I am sitting beside Don's newest garden ...

waiting for the almost-full moon to rise in the east and hoping to hear the call of Sandhill cranes as my Remember 2016 cloth reminds me 

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016_02_26_archive.html

they come at the end of February ...

as surely as spring follows winter.

Imagine that ...

Senator Cornyn is actually considering the possibility of a ban on bump stocks (insane contraptions that turn semi-automatic weapons into virtual machine guns), which we have all learned about as a result of the Las Vegas mass shooting rampage. It took over sixty tries to get through to his office today ... I have no doubt the NRA was flooding the phone lines. All the more reason to keep trying (by comparison, it took but one call to get through to Senator Cruz's office).

This arrived, the coolest envelope ever, from Fiona ...

another call from Australia and response from Texas ...

although I confess Don claimed one for the hearth ...

where my daily shreds are beginning to accumulate on Mo's satin pennon ...

Certainly you have to love this earthbound orb...

a moon in a mushroom ...

or so it seemed to me, glowing in the early morning light.

Finally, imagine this: Don and I met on a blind date 43 years ago today, first commemorated in this 2009 post:

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2009/10/dancing-bear-love-song-in-two-parts.html

We'll celebrate with hamburgers on the grill followed by leftover cake with our after-dinner decaf.

I'm sure we'll count our blessings ...

Life changing?

Whatever else I might think of Marie Kondo's book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I would not recommend it to anyone without the caution that some of the sentiments are cringe-worthy.

That being said, I do think her ideas about folding clothes for storage are well worth considering. So much so that I applied the technique to organizing my cloth stash with happy results ...

which isn't surprising considering much of my cloth is thrifted linen clothing. Now the question is, can I follow Hunter's good example and use what I have rather than looking for more? The jury's gonna be out for a while on that one.

Meanwhile, Spring has sprung in the Hill Country, complete with a mega-dose of pollen ...

That's a black (not a green) truck, in case you were wondering. Aka "the little black truck," which ably picks up various gardening necessities ...

Don got a half-yard of soil to prepare new homes for some of the plants that self-propagate throughout the property. Here's his work in progress, with a wheelbarrow to show scale ...

I confess that transplanting is not my gift, although I did transport some of the rocks shown above. I simply don't have the patience to prepare the soil, water in the plants, and then look after them the way Don does. And never would I have thought to put buckets on the west side of each transplant to block the afternoon sun, which has been warming things up into the high 80s this week ...

No, my fortes are more along the lines of cactus whacking, pruning, weeding, and other "destructive" activities. Still, I have my constructive moments, as with this series of "baffles" ...

strategically placed to slow the flow of flood waters that barrel through our yard during heavy rains. Composed of the aforementioned whacked cactus and topped with dried grasses ...

these rows of debris will eventually decompose, at which time the newly created compost/soil will be carried through the yard by future rains. Fortunately, the aesthetic in our neighborhood allows the time necessary for said decomposition.

Finally, here's a follow-up on the nascent bud of mealy blue sage I photographed a week or so ago ...

Now I'm waiting on the thimble flowers ...

which are looking like they'll make quite a show this year.

- Blue (agave) Christmas

Patch #354 Texas Christmas cactus

It's cold. The weather app said 22 ...

but Wimberley is down in the valley. We're about 300' higher and our thermometer had a slightly lower reading ...

But the ultimate indicator is the frost weed and it was in fine form, close ...

closer ...

closest ...

Last winter we didn't get a frost weed freeze until the end of January, which means it made it on to the Remember cloth ...

You'll notice it's just to the left of a sunny day patch ... and two more patches to the right is the memory of an 80 degree day at the end of January.

So yeah, don't feel too sorry for us. Here's our forecast for the next five days ...

Gotta love Texas. Which is why we decorate this way ...

The neighbors really appreciate it, too ...

I managed to finish a trio of retro patches today ...

If you look at the original post on November 28

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016_11_28_archive.html

you'll notice there's no mention of an expected grandchild. But that was the day we received the news, so the secret is finally out ...

And knowing Meg would be getting the news on the 28th, we held off shopping for her birthday until November 29

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/11/one-more.html

Also knowing Meg to prefer more subtle colors, we were on the hunt for corals, peaches, or raspberries rather than the stereotypical pinky pink. This is what we got ... 

Hence the patch Pretty in not-quite pink ...

And so we made it to Meg's birthday on November 30 without spoiling the surprise

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/11/big-reveal.html

Process note: I was especially pleased when the bleach discharge on gray (Meg's favorite "color" long before it became trendy), turned a pale pink, because a little bit couldn't hurt.