by 
More rain, almost a repeat of Memorial Day weekend. And with more rain we’re getting mosquitoes and mowing. Now, the mowing I don’t mind. Rather like it. I would rather straddle the John Deere than move water hose around. We had begun to water the tender plants after the heat and sunshine of the past couple of weeks, but thunderstorms rumbling through in the wee hours of Friday morning took care of that. We were rousted out of our comfy beds about 1:00 AM by the weather alarm radio and the civil defense sirens. I thought the sirens meant a tornado had been sighted but none had, although later in the night the weather weenies said one might have been sighted. We called Barbara to see if she wanted to go below with us but she decided to ride out the storm at home. We wound up not going down either since it was raining pretty hard and there was no immediate threat of a tornado. It did hail a little and we really held our breaths when it did, last year being fresh in our minds. The hail wasn’t heavy enough nor large enough to damage anything but a few leaves here and there. We are grateful.
Friday evening a repeat was predicted so Barbara came over and after dinner we, including Tino, went below and watched a movie. I stumbled across Into the White, a foreign film set during WWII. Everyone found it interesting, especially since it was based on a true story. I recommend it. Anyway, we had a movie night safe and snug below decks but the storms turned out to be benign and all we got was more rain. Saturday evening’s round was even gentler. That’s not to say that some parts of the Panhandle didn’t get hammered. They did. Just not good old SA. As of Sunday evening we’ve totaled 2.25 inches of rain to give us over six inches in less than three weeks. That’s what we got all of 2011 and half what we got in 2012 and 2013.
One morning this week I was raking the strip on the outside of the fence along the street. I had the 2005 gate open and Li’l r wearing boxing gloves rode her bike out. She usually starts her biking early and she asked if she could ride in the street. I can remember as a kid how pleasant it was to get to ride on pavement. The 2005 driveway and the grass on the rest of SA offer a lot of resistance and riding on pavement is much nicer. When I was Rebecca’s age Belaire was just caliche and not much fun to ride on. I had to go to Goliad to find any pavement. So I told Li’l r she could ride in the street only if she promised not to get mashed by a car. She promised she would, unless God was ready for her, in which case all bets were off, I guess.
Our neighbors went off for the weekend and left me with a sick dog to take care of. Tino got a scratch on his eye and he was rubbing it on the sofa for relief. That earned him the cone of shame and eye drops three or four times a day. We’ve been messing with that since they left Thursday morning and he’s pretty sick of me, the cone and the drops, probably in that order. Both of us will be glad when they get back Monday evening.