Purpose

The day Dolly died, I woke up that morning when the alarm went off way too early, and I promise you this is true.  My first thought was, "I woke up this morning!  I have a purpose!"  But then, if you've read my blog for any length of time, you'll know I figured out my purpose long ago.  

Lots of folks think that if they're not called to preach or be a missionary, God has no use for them, or if we don't have a global stage like Dolly did, we won't have an impact.  That is so far from true.  For most of us, it's the small, simple acts of kindness in His name -- like a warm hat to wear -- that shines His light in this world.  

So let your light so shine, no matter how small you think it is.  Somebody somewhere is going to see it. 

Speaking of light, were you able to see the eclipse last night?  This was my view for most of the time. 

I'd go out and would be able to see a little of it, then the clouds would move in.  I'd check every 15 minutes or so, and despite the cloud cover, I was able to see a good bit of it.  Fortunately, there was a break in the clouds during peak totality, so I was able to see that.  I didn't wait to see the moon uncover, though.  I'd still gotten up at 4:30 that morning, and I was tuckered, so I took a quick shower and went to bed. 

This morning, amazingly enough, the cat let me sleep until 6:00 AM.  After a leisurely cup of coffee, the plan was to start cleaning up this mess in my shed.  

I've tried to clean it up before, but would take one look, then get overwhelmed and walk right back out.  This time is different, though, since I don't have to figure out what to do with all the junk in there.  I'll just pile it up and once I'm ready, I'll call the clean up man to come get it all.  I made a good start, then had to take a break when it got too hot.  I'll probably be able to get more done once it cools off a bit -- like mid-September.  For now, I have to keep reminding myself that I don't have to get it all done in one day.  

The other thing I did before it got too hot was to pick up all of these twigs and branches that the recent winds had knocked down. 

I put them here to dry, so I can use them to start fires once winter gets here -- or when they lift the burn ban and I can sit out by the fire pit.  By the way, we actually got a bit of rain this week.  Not much -- just enough to raise our monthly total to 1".  We're still in drought conditions, and my water bill is reflecting it.  From watering my garden, that is.  Oh well, it will all be worth it when I'm enjoying a nice bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich on a cold winter day.  

Speaking of, I splurged a bit yesterday and bought some of the fancy soup from the deli section at Walmart, only it's so hot right now, I don't want to eat it.  

On a similar note, The Millennial Gardener says that the end of August is a good time to remove your shade cloth from your gardens, so I did that yesterday evening.   

I noticed that these tomato plants seemed a bit more leggy than the ones I'd planted in the spring, so maybe I shouldn't have put the shade cloth on them in the first place.  They got so leggy, I had to add an additional stake to the two smallest ones, because they were flopping over.  I'll give them a few more days until they get big enough that the cage will support them, then remove those stakes.  Or maybe I won't.  They're not hurting anything, so might as well leave them. 

Next year, I don't think I'll plant tomatoes in succession, because knowing me, I'll still have tomato soup in the freezer from this year.  I do want to plant one round and maybe look into making homemade salsa.  I'll have to research recipes over the winter.  I also want to look into planting a Fall garden, so I'm going to research that, too.  

On a brighter note, my zinnias are blooming again, and the pollinators are very happy about that.  

Not to mention, they look much healthier than they did before.  Next year, I'll know better than to plant so many in the same bed. 

By the way, they say the best way to make sure you don't have tomato hornworms is to look for them at night with a black light.  Apparently, they glow in the dark.  I'd bought a black light years ago, but I have no idea where it is.  I found the battery holder thingy, but not the light itself.  Eh, they're not that expensive, so I ordered another one.  

It would seem I have indeed gotten all of the hornworms off my tomatoes.  I checked while I was waiting for the eclipse to start.  

Since I was ordering anyway, I tossed in this collection of Autumn themed washi tape that I'd been eyeing for quite some time now. 

I'm not sure why, because I only have one pen pal left -- the one from Australia.  Everyone else has stopped writing, but what with a stamp costing nearly $1 now, I can't say's I blame them.  Or else, I'm just boring. 

Here's a fun fact, the black light I'd bought years ago was so I could send letters to one of my pen pals in invisible ink.  But that's neither here nor there. 

The only thing I didn't like about that washi tape was the box it came in. 

The only way to find the tape you want is to dump all of the rolls out of the box.  Naturally, I did what any red blooded American would do.  I repurposed this little lunch box I got when I helped Cody and Brennan clean out their house.  They were going to throw it away, but I figured I would be able to make use of it somehow.  Now it is the happy home to my washi tape. 

And look, it's even got cute little handles to carry it around with.  

In work news, they've started taking down the wall between the front and the back of the plant.  They actually started yesterday while we were all there, and I wondered how safe it was for them to be pulling all of that fiberglass insulation down with a plant full of employees.  

Oh, and do you want to see a visual definition of the word irony?  Look at this:

This is just a small section of a much larger pile of junk that was in the break area...right next to the "Report Unsafe Conditions" code...

I guess that's about it for today.  If you'll excuse me, I need to go write a letter to my Australian pen pal so I can use my new washi tape.

Laters...

Dear Coworker

 Why? 

Why do you have to keep ripping the soap dispensers off the walls?  Why?  

They are motion sensor at that, so there is no reason at all to even touch them, so why are you ripping them off the walls?  Do you realize this was the last one left?  What do you think will happen now?  

Get used to rinsing your hands, because there won't be any soap in there for you to use. 

While we're on the subject, why get all these seat covers just to hang them on the stall door?  

If you aren't going to use them, why even get them out of the box?  Leave them for someone else. 

Thank you.

That is all. 

Bear With Me

Y'all going to have to bear with me.  The flood is getting just a bit whelming at the moment. 

Regular blogging will resume...whenever I can ...deal with all of this.  

Dolly

January 19, 1946 - August 25, 2026

We will always love you. 

Bad News

Today is the day.  What day, you ask?  Why today starts the last week of August!  It even feels like the end of August.  How?  It only got up to 90° today!  And it's supposed to be in the low 90s all week, which is a heap sight better than the low 100s.  Still no rain, though…

You know, I almost feel sorry for August.  Nobody likes it.  It's hot, there are no holidays in August, and the kids don't like it because they have to go back to school.  It seems like the best thing about August is when it ends.  

Before we get to the bad news, here's a bit of good news.  A couple came by yesterday afternoon and picked up all of that scrap wood I had stacked up, even the bits that were partially rotten.  I'd told them to look through and take what they wanted, and the man replied, "Oh, I'm going to take it all!''  And they did.  So that's a little bit less I have to pay someone to haul off.  They also asked if I had any scrap iron, and I showed them all the leftover tin that the previous owners had left behind the fence.  I told the man, "If there is anything there you can use, you're welcome to take it."  He said they'd come back and get it later, after they'd emptied their trailer. 

I wasn't really going to do anything with all of that, because it wasn't my stuff and it's not on my land, but if they want to clean it up, they're more than welcome to.  If anything, they can probably sell it for scrap metal.  

Now for the bad news, I lost another pepper plant.  

It was just like the others, fine yesterday morning, and dead by evening.  I did a bit of research, and watched a video by The Pepper Geek, and from what I can figure, I've got a virus or fungus.  Since it's a brand new bed, I believe it was introduced by the banana peppers I bought at Walmart.   Looking back after the fact, I do remember that I had one little plant that I thought was going to die, but it eventually perked up and grew.  I wonder if that was the one that brought the disease into the bed.  I guess we'll never know for sure. 

But a fungal infection is also consistent with that mold looking stuff I'd been seeing at the bases of the dead plants, so I'm pretty sure that's what is infecting my bed.  According to Calvin -- a.k.a. The Pepper Geek -- these types of infections are incurable and the best thing to do is pull the plant up and burn it.  Not only that, the disease is in the soil, and can stay there for years.  It will eventually kill every plant in that bed.  

I think it's also infected the cayenne plants that I've got planted in that same bed.

You can see how much more healthy the ones I've got planted in the other beds look, even though they're droopy from the afternoon heat right now. 

Their color is much better, and the peppers look like normal peppers, not the short stubby things the sickly plants are putting out. 

With that in mind, I made the difficult decision to just pull them all up and put them into the hot compost instead of trying to overwinter them.  I was going to do that when I got home from work this afternoon, but I changed my mind.  We're getting close to the end of the growing season anyway, so I decided to let the plants be until they died--whether from the fungus or the frost, whichever comes first.  

Then I'll cover the bed with some black landscape fabric to absorb the heat, and top that with a sheet of Visqueen, which will help contain the heat in that soil.  Hopefully, that will raise the temp enough to kill off any remaining spores in the soil.  I may even leave that bed fallow next year, just to make sure.  I don't know.  I doubt I'll grow more banana peppers for a while, because I've already got more than I can use as it is.  

And just to brighten your day, I was finally able to see one of this year's fawns. 

 The adult deer were nibbling on corn in the back, and this little guy had the zoomies behind them.  It was so cute.  

Not A Drop

We didn’t get a drop of rain out of all those storms yesterday. Not one drop.  Even in the second round that came through after I'd gone to bed, it was all wind, and a little thunder, but no rain.  I've got lots of small twigs and things down, and my potted plants on the back porch got tumped over, but still...not a drop of rain out of all of that. 

Well, at least the electricity didn’t go out, though it flashed quite a bit, so that’s a good thing.  I'd gotten my new emergency radio/light/power bank thing out just in case, but didn't need it in the end.  

Quite a few people around the state and in Memphis did lose power, so I feel fortunate in that.  Still, we desperately need rain.  I checked my Raindrop app, and according to them, we've only gotten .08" this month.  

With that in mind, one thing I did this morning was to raise my water bottle drippers up a bit.  

I'd heard to put them deep into the soil to encourage the plant's roots to grown downward, but I think I'd gotten them too deep.    My smaller tomatoes were struggling a bit, so hopefully this will help.  They are still a good 4 or 5" into the ground, so we'll see.  

While I was out there, I dug around under the mulch in my pepper bed and pulled out all of the garden staples I'd used to hold the cardboard in place.  At least, I think I got them all.  As I suspected, they are all covered in rust.  I'm going to try the baking soda trick to see if I can get it off, but even if that doesn't work, I've got plenty more.  

The last thing I did was to move all these chunks of concrete up beside the shed to be ready for the cleanup man. 

The previous owners had a huge fire pit out behind the fence.  I'm sure it must have been nice at one time, but somewhere along the way, they started burning garbage in it.  A few years ago, I decided I was tired of mowing around it, so I started cleaning it out.  It was full of junk like broken glass, coke cans, and miscellaneous trash. 

I cleaned all of that out, and stacked the concrete pieces beside the fence to be dealt with later.  Today was later.  It only took a few trips with my wheelbarrow to get it all moved, and I was done in time to take a shower before church. 

In doing all of that digging around these last few days, I found this gem. 

Figuratively speaking of course.  It's just a rock.  A good sized rock -- twelvish inches or so.  I think I might find a place for it in my toad garden.  

Oh, and I should probably mentioned that I finally finished my Hillsdale College course on American paintings. It should have been such a fascinating course, but ...I don't like throwing shade, but the lectures were delivered in such a dry, monotonous voice that they were hard to sit through.  I often joked that if they'd edited out all of them ums and uhs, the lessons would have only been half the length.  

Anyway, I finished and signed up for another course, this time on C.S. Lewis And Christianity.  I haven't started it yes, but I will soon. 

Hopefully, it'll be more interesting than the last one. 

Next

And now for the next project on the docket-- getting all of this cleaned out so I can start using this space.  

Most of this is landscape timbers and 4 x 4s my former next door neighbor gave me shortly after I moved into this house. She, for some reason, seemed to think I was going to turn my back yard into some sort of botanical garden or something, even though I kept telling her I wasn't.  

"You're going to have it so bee-you--tee--full!" she'd exclaim, clapping her hands like a little girl.  "No, I'm noooot," I'd reply, but she never seemed to listen and insisted I take the stuff.  

I don't know why people seem to think it's OK to give me stuff I don't want or need.  I have a cousin who will remain nameless on this blog who did it all the time.  He seemed to think I was his own personal garbage dump.  Unfortunately, if I told him I didn't want or need something he'd offered me, he'd get all offended. 

"FINE!  Be that way!" he'd snap.  

One time he sent Cody home with a computer monitor.  Not the whole computer, mind you.  Just the monitor.  I told Cody to take it back, only the cousin wouldn't take it back.  I called him and told him we didn't need an extra monitor, and he replied, "Well, I don't have room for it in my house."  I just said, "OK", and hung up, but I'm thinking, 'And you think I do?  Your house is 3x the size of mine!'  

Another time he brought over a super old fashioned carpet shampooer -- the kind where you have to hook the hose up to your sink and drag the water tank around behind you.  I didn't want it or need it, because by that time, I had a Bissell of my own.  

But as I said, I didn't dare refuse for risk of him getting all bent out of shape over it. After a while, I learned to just take whatever it was, then throw it into the garbage when he wasn't looking.   Same with all of that wood.  I'd just stuck it into that empty bay beside my chicken coops and left it there. 

Here lately, I'd been thinking I really needed to clean it all out so I could use that space, and that became today's project.  Even with numerous breaks to cool off, it didn't take long to get all of that junk moved out of here, and now I can use it to store my wheelbarrow in. 

I stacked all of the stuff beside my shed and advertised the wood in the local freebies group, just in case someone might want some. 

Even if nobody does, it'll all be right there when I call the clean up man -- which won't be until after this heat breaks, because I'm going to get him to help me clean out that shed, too.  You know, the one I've been saying for years I'm going to clean out, but then I take one look and get overwhelmed so I don't...Yeah, that shed. 

In other news, look what popped up in my memories this morning. 

If you guessed I didn't get up and go this morning, you would be right. I thought about it, but didn't really want to, and not just because I wanted to piddle in my own garden.  I just didn't want to.  I decided there was nothing there I really needed, even though I was tempted by the muscadines. 

It's been ages since I've had any muscadines...

By the way, after the fiasco with my last cayenne peppers and the mold, I tried something different this time.  Before I hung them up to dry, I cut both the stems and the blossom ends off.  

Hopefully, that'll allow the insides to dry out better and we can avoid any more unpleasantries. 

And finally, my power just flashed, so I'd better finish this and get it published before the lights go out.  Hopefully, they won't, but that wind is pretty strong out there.   

I finished my latest sailor hat. 

Yarn:  Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn

Colorway:  Dakota

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5mm

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go hunker down and pray that we get some rain out of all this noise.  My poor yard desperately needs it!

Laters.  

Stuff

I said I wasn't going to sit around on my day off watching TV all day.  I said I was going to get stuff done.  And I did get stuff done.  Some stuff, that is.  The first stuff I got done was to take the Incarnation of Evil in to the vet for her shots and stuff.  

She did not like that, and she let everyone in that vet's office know just how much she didn't like it.  I almost felt sorry for the poor vet when the cat started hissing at her.  I told the vet that it was the cat's previous owner who'd named her Cutie, and I'd taken her in after he had died.  I left her name the same on her vet records, because I figured it'd be easier like that.  The vet said, "I've found that these animals named things like Cutie, Precious, Sweetie and the like are absolute monsters.  It's the ones named Killer and stuff that are the real sweethearts."  

Anyway, the cat is updated for the next year, and the vet escaped any bodily injury.  Me, on the other hand, I got bitten while trying to stuff the aforementioned Incarnation of Evil back into the cat carrier.  By the cat, not the vet.  Just wanted to make that clear.

I thought about going out to the lake and walking after I took the cat home, but by then, it was already starting to get hot, so I just piddled around the house and yard a bit.  I had a bit of a disappointment when I discovered another of my banana pepper plants had died. 

I don't get it.  It was fine yesterday, and this morning it was suddenly dead.  I went ahead and harvested all the peppers from it, and got a good deal of them. 

Then I pulled the whole plant up, just in case there is any disease it might be spreading.  My first thought was root knot nematodes, but I didn't see any sign of that.  The root ball looked perfectly healthy.  The only thing I saw on the entire plant was a bit of what looked like mold right at the base of the stem where it meets the soil.  I'd seen the same thing on that first one which had died, too, but at the time I didn't think anything of it.  After seeing it on this second plant, maybe there is something to it after all. 

My second thought was that there was something on the cardboard I'd used to mulch, but they were all Amazon boxes.  They are printed with soy based ink, and even the tape is all natural and 100% recyclable, so they should be fine to use in the garden in that aspect.  The only other thing I could think was that maybe some of the cardboard had shifted over time --I'd made sure that they weren't touching the stems when I put them down, but maybe they'd moved and were trapping moisture at the base of the stem causing mold to grow and somehow damage the plant.  I don't know, but I went back out and made sure there was plenty of space around the remaining plants in that bed. 

For good measure, I also checked the plants in the newest bed and pulled all the mulch away from those stems, too. 

I hope that helps.  I'd planned on trying to overwinter my pepper plants, but if they keep on dying, I won't be able to.  I do know one thing, though, next year I definitely need to rig up some sort of shade cloth for my garden area.  Also, I had a clever idea for my drip system -- not the soaker hose, but the bottles.  I'd been using 1 liter water bottles, like the one in the photo above.  This morning, I emptied out one of my coffee creamer bottles and thought, "Hmmm, these have a flip top.  That would make them so much easier to fill than having to unscrew that top."  So I washed the first one out, and will save those from here on out.  

Now that the pumpkin spice creamer is out, I ought to have plenty of them.  😊

It looks like I'll need them, because all of these storms that have rolled through have completely missed my part of the county.  State.  Country.  It's so dry, my grass is brown and crunchy and even the weeds are dying.  If we don't get some rain soon, I'm going to run out of the rain water I've collected for my Venus Fly Trap.  Speaking of, I do want to eventually get some gutters installed with a couple of rain barrel collection systems.  That ought to help a bit with my water bill. 

Let's wrap this segment up with a bit of good news, I haven't found any more hornworms in the last two days, so maybe I got them all.  

In other news, you would be proud of me.  Why?  I made another phone call!  Yep, I called the eye doctor and made an appointment.   She said the first available appointment is Friday, October 9, which works out perfectly because I already have that day off.  Better yet, I was able to finally mark something off of my list. 

Alas, I had to add calling the electrician, so I'm still at 8, but I'm counting it as progress. 

Better yet, I might finally be able to see again.  

And finally, a bit of humor to top off this Friday. 

IYKYK

I Forgot

I forgot to mention yesterday that when I was doing my deep dive into my deep freeze, I found nearly an entire sweet potato pie that I'd cut up and frozen right after Thanksgiving last year.  I'd put it into the bottom of the deep freeze before the ice storm and completely forgot it was even there. 

I'd been doing so well with my blood sugar here lately, I decided to thaw a slice and eat.  It was a tiny bit freezer burned on the crust, but the filling tasted fine.  Also, when you put a pie into the freezer, the crust tends to turn soggy.  Honestly, I'd intended to have it eaten up within a few weeks, until the ice storm threw my entire life out of whack.  Well, I suppose I should blame my memory for forgetting what all I had put into the aforementioned deep freeze.  And the ice storm didn't quite throw my entire life out of whack, but that's more exciting than to say it mildly inconvenienced me for a few days. 

Now for a bit of good news, they're saying we may get a break from this heat by next week, and by "break from this heat"  I mean they're predicting the lower 90s instead of the lower 100s.  My air conditioner will be glad of that! 

So will my electric bill.  By the way, the power stayed on all day at work.  Bummer.  I heard someone at work say that the reason the power went out is because someone hit a light pole, which is highly plausible.  People were saying that there was a large part of town that was without power, not just the plant.  I don't know about that, because it was the Tallahatchie Valley EPA, and I'm on Entergy.  

I know a lot of folks complain about Entergy, but back during that ice storm I keep bringing up, they had all of their customers' power back on long before either Tallahatchie Valley or Delta Electric did.  I've never had any complaints about them, me.  

By the way, they're saying this winter could be even worse than last winter thanks to the so called Super El Niño.  I guess that's why the ice storm has been so much on my mind here lately.  And I guess I really ought to get an electrician out here to check that breaker and replace it if necessary, just in case I need to use the generator again.   Oh, and last winter was actually pretty mild except for that whole ice...storm...thing...

Cold and sleet I can deal with.  Just not ice.  I'd have said snow, but we so seldom get it here.  Everywhere around us could be getting snow, and all we get is sleet.  I'm telling you one thing, you can not make snow ice cream out of sleet.  It won't work.  Trust me on this one. 

Be that as it may, except for that pesky breaker, I'm all ready for a cold and snowy -- or sleety, rather-- winter.  I've got plenty of firewood, plenty of power banks, and this year, I have a woobie.  

A good woobie will solve a world of problems. 

That Was Exciting

There I was at work, just a working away shortly after lunch.  I'd just completed an order and had put it over where we put our completed work, and the lights went out.  The machines turned off, and everything suddenly got dark and silent.  

Naturally, I did what any red blooded person living in the 21st century would do.  I pulled out my phone, turned the flashlight on, and made my way safely back to my brazing stand.   Shortly after that, Group Leader Shark called, "Everyone come over here!" indicating the area where we have our morning meetings.  Before we even all got there, she came back and said, "Everyone go to the front break room!"  

I'm thinking, "Why?  It's dark in there, too."  But who am I to question the wisdom of management decision?  So we all tromped up to the main breakroom and sat in the dark for about 5 minutes.  By and by, I heard someone say a transformer had blown, and shortly afterwards, I heard Cuz come across the radio and say, "Let's ease everyone on out of here."  

Everyone started leaving, only some of us had to go back to our work areas to get our stuff.  As I was walking down the aisle, I heard the assembly line production manager say, "I told them to bring their stuff!"  Except that the component production manager didn't...so we had to go back and get it all.  Fortunately, since there isn't a second shift right now, all I had to do was grab my bag and my cooler, and could leave everything else set up. 

Knowing me, I'm going to forget and tomorrow morning I'll be like, "Who left my stand a mess?"  

But wait, there's more!  Once we got outside, because the power was out, they couldn't get the exit gate to the employee parking lot open, so everyone was having to go out of the entrance, which is only one lane wide.  They finally did, but it took a minute.  By then, most everyone had already left, so getting out was a breeze. 

On a completely unrelated note, I grabbed these screenshots off of Google Earth a few days ago.  Back in the day, the plant had a line of trees out front.  

I'm not completely sure what kind they were, but they've been there for as long as I can remember -- 

probably since the plant opened back in 1996.  Well, so many of them got badly damaged during the ice storm back in January that they decided to cut them all down.  The first morning I was driving to work after that I almost turned into the front office parking lot because I didn't know where I was.  Funny how we get so used to the little cues that when they are gone, we are thrown completely out of whack.  

Speaking of the ice storm, I was in my deep freeze Sunday looking for something I had put down in the very bottom, hoping it would stay frozen when the power went out.  It did, and I found it exactly where I had put it.  While I was in there, I also found some fish filets and said to myself, "Self, you're growing all of these herbs.  You need to start cooking with them!"  

Yesterday, I did just that.  I got two of those filets out and sauteed them in butter with some of my fresh lemon balm and French Tarragon to season it with.  It was pretty good.  I think next time, I'll add more Tarragon.  I hadn't planned on re-planting that, but now that I've tasted it, I'm changing those plans.  I didn't realize how good it tasted, because I'd never used it.  I'd just dried it and gave it to Cody and Brennan.  Like I said, I need to start cooking with my own herbs more.  

On a more disappointing note, I took down some of my dried cayenne peppers out to grind them into powder and found that most of them had molded on the inside.   I think out of the two strings I'd previously hung, I got maybe 6 or 7 good peppers.  I threw the rest into the compost, then took the two remaining strings and cut the stems off of the peppers so that air can get to the insides of them.  Maybe that will help.  

I'm really wanting to invest in a food dehydrator, though.  You can get a decent one for not too much money, and if my seemingly immortal snakes ever go to that great herpetarium in the sky, I plan on turning that room into a seed starting, herb processing,  all kinds of gardening stuff room.  What I really want to do is to get the shop re-built and more outlets added so I can start using it for more than just storage.  I suppose getting the roof replaced would be the first step.  I wonder how much that would cost...

More bad news, I've had an infestation of tomato hornworms, and they've just about cleaned out a couple of my plants.  Of leaves, I mean.  I should have had sense when I found that first one to look for more.  I've killed probably ten of the little buggers, but left all of the ones with the parasitic wasp larvae alone.  I didn't find any more hornworms this afternoon when I checked, so maybe I've gotten them all.  

Remember Supervisor Greenjeans who used to work out at the plant?  He always grows a huge garden every year.  His father still works out there and we got to chatting the other day.  Daddy Greenjeans told me that it's been so hot and dry this summer that Supervisor Greenjeans just plowed the whole garden under until next year.  

And finally, instead of coming home and being productive with my extra hour and a half off, I came home instead and watched another of my shark week shows that I hadn't gotten around to and knit a bit. 

Yarn:  Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn

Colorway:  Dakota

Pattern: Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5mm

It's too hot to do anything else.  But take heart fellow Southerners.  September is only 10 days away!  

It'll still be hot, but at least it won't be August any more. 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

Garden Journal

What good is it to have a day off when you wake up at 4:00 AM anyway?  Yep, bright and early was the word for me.  They say you're supposed to wake up at the same time every day anyway, even on your day off, and after some 25-ish years of this, it would seem I have no choice in the matter.  My body does what it wants to.  The bright side is, when I get a few days off in a row, I eventually shift to a more normal sleep schedule.  

The down side to that is, when I have to go back to work, it's so hard to go back to getting up as early as I have to.

Enough about that...and I won't tell you how hot it is outside...but I'm sure you already know.  It is August after all.  But we're halfway through and relief is on the horizon.  I spent the hot part of the day finishing my latest sailor hat. 

Yarn:  Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn

Colorway:  Songbird Stripe

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5mm

Then I cast on a new one.

Yarn:  Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn

Colorway:  Dakota

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5 mm

Before it got too hot, I decided it was time to put a second tier on my tomato cages, so that's just what I did. 

At first, I was only going to raise the cages on the two largest tomatoes, but then I said, "Since you have the stuff out here anyway, might as well do them all."  And that's just what I did.  These cages were a bit pricy, but I like that you can keep building them higher as you need to.  The older ones I had only go so high, and the taller tomatoes are drooping over.  

Another thing I did was to really whack my basil back pretty hard.  It has opened up that whole bed to much better air flow.  And look at this!  I found blooms on my new batch of tomatoes!   

Well, on one of the plants, at least.  Hopefully, the others will follow suit soon.  As soon as it cools down a bit -- like maybe late next month-- I'll be ready to make that tomato soup.  I boiled down a chicken carcass this morning to get some homemade broth.  Not stock.  Just broth.  

While I was out in my garden, I found this:

Ewww, what is that thing?  It is a tomato hornworm with parasitic wasp larvae feeding off of it.  When they have those on them, it's best to leave them there so the wasps can hatch, or mature, or whatever it's called when they move from larva to adults.  I believe the name of the wasp is the braconid wasp, but I've only ever heard them called parasitic wasps.  Either way, they're a good thing to have in your garden. 

Once I was done with all of that, I recorded another garden journal, which you can watch on YouTube if you're so inclined:  Garden Journal.  I've decided I need to come up with a catch phrase, like some of the other YouTubers have.  Like, Ben at GrowVeg says, "I'll catch you next time."  And Kevin at Epic Gardening says, "Keep on growing."  And The Millennial Gardener says, "What's growing on?"  Maybe I could just say, "Laters!"  like I do on my blog.  That's a British expression that I picked up watching so many BBC shows, by the way.  It's not original to me or anything.  Ah, well, I'll think of something. 

The last thing I did before retreating into the air conditioning was to take photos of my new bluebonnets that are coming up. 

I've got seedlings coming up all over, and they've got to be from last year's plants, because I haven't planted any yet this year.  I'll wait until the middle of next month, then plant some in the bare spots, once I know how many volunteers I'm going to have.  

I've got weeds in that bed, but I'm kind of afraid to pull them up right now, because I don't want to pull my bluebonnets up with them.  

Eh, maybe first frost will kill the weeds off.  

And finally, I'm sure you will all be pleased to know that my wasp stings are much better now. 

They still pop up with an itch from time to time, but nowhere near as bad as they were.  One silver lining of the August heat and drought is that I won't need to mow again for quite some time. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go grab a quick shower before the ball game comes on.  

Laters

 

A Great Upheaval

It was 100° when I got home this afternoon.  Actual temp.  In the shade.  I don't even want to know what the heat index was, or what it was in the bald sun.  I waited until around 6:30 to go out and water, and it was hot then, too.  It is now 7:30 as I type this and it is still 93° out there.  

Funny thing, I've seen videos from British people talking about Americans couldn't handle a UK heat wave -- you know, when it gets up to the unbearable temps of 85°.  In one video I watched, they were discussing how they deal with the heat, since they're too morally superior to buy air conditioners.  One lady was talking about how she slept under a wet sheet.  I don't care how hot it gets, there is no way I'm going to do that.   Ugh, how slimy that would feel!  She also said she paints her windows with yogurt. 

Seriously?  I thought it was a freak thing, but then I saw a video from Ben at GrowVeg mentioning the same thing.  Painting your windows with yogurt is apparently a real thing in the UK.  Why?  What is it going to do except sour and stink?  If you want to block the sunlight, put up some drapes or something.  

If you can stand a bit of salty language -- quite a bit, in fact -- The Fat Electrician recently did a video on the greatest invention of the 20th century, air conditioning.   

Now for a bit of good news, the little tomato that was nearly eaten to death has really picked up. 

It's still quite a bit smaller than the others, but at least it's growing again.  Aaaand, I've got a few volunteers coming up in my zinnia bed. 

Alas, one of them will need to be thinned, but I'm going to give them a couple more weeks before I do that.  

By the way, Walmart has their bags of bark mulch on clearance for $2.  I might just go up there tomorrow and get a few bags for next year. 

In work news, apparently there is going to be a great upheaval at the plant.  I'd been hearing whispers in the wind for quite some time now about how they want to put the plant back to the way it was before that one plant manager messed everything up.  

For those of you who don't work there, back around 7-8 years ago, they decided to split up the plant, and put the component area in the front, and move the assembly area to what was once the warehouse.  I won't go into the gory details, but things haven't been the same since.  There isn't any flow to production, and it's much harder to get our parts out.  They've been talking about putting it back ever since, and now it looks like they're actually going to get started doing that very thing. 

This morning at the meeting, Group Leader Shark told us to take everything out of our lockers, because they were going to get rid of them.  I'm not too happy about that.  Without lockers, we don't have a secure place to store our tools.  Right now it's not too much of an issue, but it will be once second shift starts back up -- whenever that happens to be.  Our options then will be to leave everything out and hope it doesn't get stolen, or lug our tools back and forth through the metal detectors every morning and evening.  

Then they're going to tear down the wall between the front and back part of the plant.  That's why they are doing those weeklong shutdowns instead of putting us on four day weeks.  Supposedly, they're going to move the brazers again, too, and bring two of the assembly lines back up to the front.  I mean, they're not going to do that all in one week, but that's the plan.  

For now at least, the brazers will still be in our own area, but one of the quality guys told me he wants to put us back on the assembly lines.  He said, "When y'all were on the line, you could braze 700-800 headers a day and still have time to walk around and help out on the line!"  And I said, "I want some of whatever it is you've been smoking!"  Then I sniffed him to see if he smelled like skunk...

Anyway, every brazer I've talked to says they do not want to go back onto the lines, because those group leaders treated us like we were nothing more than built in floaters.  My last assembly line group leader once told me she'd never allow both brazers to be on our stands at the same time because she "couldn't afford to pull two people off the line like that."  The one I had before that used to put me onto the line, then come yell at me on the line because they'd run out of headers.  Well, DUH.  What did you think would happen?  I think if they do try to put us back on the lines, I'm going to go ahead and retire from out there.  

And finally, I asked Grok to make me a meme of this quote by Sir Francis Bacon, and this is what he came up with.

Then I asked Gemini the same thing, and somehow he changed fear to fart and gave me this:

Not sure what he was thinking....