Rain forest


Grady's flower
Grady’s flower

Friday morning I braved the mist to mount an assault on weeds threatening to take over.  We got over an inch of rain Tuesday and the ground was in prime condition for pulling weeds.  It is also in prime condition for growing weeds.  And grass. About lunch time the clouds thickened and lightening caused me to skedadle for the house.  Over lunch we got another half inch.  Then Saturday morning about 5 o’clock a squall dumped another inch on us.  Such is life here in the SA rain forest.

Joyce’s brother Max spent the weekend with us.  His daughter Sherry brought him to Amarillo Friday and he spent most of Friday galavanting around with Janice.  The rest of the weekend he spent with us.

Saturday morning I did an extra tour of duty at Wildcat Bluff.  It was volunteer day and five people from Southwest Airlines were supposed to show up and lend a hand.  Someone needed to be around to point them in the right direction and that someone turned out to be me.   They didn’t show up though.  After waiting around for a couple of hours we got an email from saying they weren’t coming because they thought it would be too muddy.  It wasn’t but that’s what happens when you depend on the kindess of strangers.

After leaving the Bluff I went by the nursery and bought a yellow water lily.  After replacing one of the three white lilies with a pink one last year I wanted to replace one of the two remaining white ones with a yellow one.  A&R pitched in and helped me get they pond cleaned and the yellow lily installed.  It took us most of the afternoon  but thanks to their help we got it done.  Next year we will divide the remaining white lily, which is badly overgrown, and maybe then we can keep all of them divided each year so they won’t get overgrown and  it won’t be such a big job to clean the pond.

We got over a dozen antelope horn milkweeds planted this week.  We cut the bottoms out of some plastic pots plants came in and put over the frail little sprouts.  The rain we’ve gotten will surely help them get established.  Seems kind of funny to spend so much time either pulling weeds or planting them.  Maybe idiotic would be a better way to put it.

Tuesday I saw the first Western Kingbird of the season and Friday I saw the first Mississippi Kite.  Must be nearly summertime.

Looks like me and Big John D. have a busy week ahead of us.  It’s satisfying to mow when I can tell where I’ve already mowed and that shouldn’t be a problem in the coming week.  Only in the past week to 10 days has the grass evened up.  Where before there were patches of mowing length the grass is uniformly long enough to need mowing.