Yes, I know. It's been almost 3 months since I posted. What can I say. Sometimes life interferes. I've been traveling a bunch for my professional association, and that's not going to get any better. Still, I'll make an attempt not to go three months between posts.So much has happened. Let's see. Where to start. As you can see, my little old lady cat, Addy, is still hanging in there at 19 and a half years old. She likes warm spots and occasional forays outside. She also likes attention and gets increasingly demanding, especially when I've been traveling. I'm glad to have her still and try to spend as much time as I can giving her that attention.
Things around the house are doing well. No house issues! Yay! I feel like maybe I should knock on wood when I say that. My growing things are doing better than I have any right to expect. The Russian sage nearly drowned in May when we had that 30 days of rain, and I thought it was a goner. It's made a nice comeback though and is currently blooming, although not as vigorously as the ones I saw on my vacation trip to Colorado. I have no idea if that's because they don't do as well in the Texas heat, or because I tried to drown it a few months ago.
I tried AGAIN to kill the poor little pine tree. I really thought it was gone this time. After being out in all the rain we had, I simply forgot to water it once the rain stopped. It went completely brown and lost every one of it's needles. I had my pet sitter water it anyway while I was out of town on one of my trips, and I know she thought I was crazy for having her water a dead mini-tree. But the silly thing has come back. I told myself I'd bring it in the house if it showed signs of reviving yet again, so I did when I began to see tiny green buds. That tree will now live in the house in the summer and outside in the winter. I would have saved the poor thing lots of trouble if I had stopped long enough to figure out that it happens to be a deciduous tree, called a dawn redwood. It's supposed to drop all it's needles in the winter. If I hadn't tried so hard to keep it green when I was first growing it, it probably would have done better. It amazes me that it's still trying to survive and coming back again.
The peaches are thriving also. The one that was struggling is happy as a clam this year since I had the big live oak in my back yard trimmed up and that peach now gets lots of sun. The smallest one originally is now the largest and it absolutely overgrows every year now. I wonder if it will blossom next year and have some peaches. Those peach trees are four years old now, although they've only been planted in the ground about 2 years.I haven't seen the hummingbirds around lately, but the level in the feeder keeps dropping so they must still be around. It's so hot still (hitting 90s) that it's hard to remember that it's almost October. Nothing is showing any signs of Fall yet. No leaves turning colors or looking brown, no lawns going dormant. It'll probably be another two months before it begins to look Fall-like here. When I was in Colorado early in September the aspens were already showing signs of turning.
My hoard of sparrows is definitely still around, eating me out of house and home. Some of them stay over winter, but most of them move on to wherever they go to winter. Interestingly, I don't go through anywhere near the volume of birdseed in the winter that I do in the summer.Since the last time I posted, I've had trips to Atlanta, GA, Philadelphia, PA and Washington DC. Plus I took a vacation with my sister, hiking, camping and playing in Utah and Colorado. I'll post on that trip separately. It was a blast.
Anyway, that's pretty much caught up on the day to day stuff. Things are going well, so hopefully that'll continue. Next post will be about the vacation trip.
