Freakwency

Ooof, I'm supposed to blogging more, and I haven't been. With the time shift, it seems so late all the time when I get home. I've been very busy babysitting, seeing MacBeth performed in the round (Bravo!), driving...

We did manage to visit Jonathan and Bev in South Padre Island, where we didn't get to spend enough time being beachy. The four of us spent a day in Mexico doing some paperwork for Charley, and having lunch with my Grandparents. We also had a day to spend just with my Grandparents, and we geeked out over postcards for most of the day and enjoyed all the delicious homestyle cooking at Chez Dittmer.

We're currently packing and preparing for a paddling trip down the Rio Guayalejo somwheres abouts Ciudad Mante and Valles, south of Ciudad Victoria at the tail end of Taumalipas (maybe even into San Louis Potosi, my favorite Mexican State?)We're travelling on Friday and I have a whole week off to enjoy life! There will be many pictures from that trip - hopefully even some butterflies! We won't be too far north of Gomez Farias, I think. I'm excited to put my fancy new PFD and gloves to use.

It has been dry here - as dry as it was wet this summer. The trees have dropped the majority of their leaves, with the pines and the live oaks the only hangers-on. The mesquites were slow to lose their greenery, too, but are mostly bare twiggy sculpures now. The grass that's allowed to grow is all waist-deep and golden, purple at the base. It waves and swishes around and adds to the warm feeling of desolate prairie I love so much. The landscape is stark and brown right now. There are a few flowers blooming in the yard - a small brown-eyed susan, a patch of some other yellow flower shaped similarly. Spiders abound - especially jumping spiders. There are still some grasshoppers, and on warmer, humid nights, a few gekos still gather on the screen. It's been weeks since we've seen toads, and no butterflies lately. I know a little rain would liven things up. We had a cold snap, and now, unseasonably warm temps - almost record setters. Mexico will be warmer during the day, and about the same as here at night. I'm curious to see what kind of vegetation is blooming and green down there, but they likely have had more rainfall recently, although we'll be dry all week. It's been pretty boring here at the casa, and we haven't worked on the house much - we only got the utility trenches as far along as we needed to hook up the internet in the house and set up the new computer!
Charley's headed to China about Christmas time - with the holidays and stuff, I'm not sure we'll get the hot water in the kitchen hooked up until spring! But we're comfortable and functional for now. The house is feeling much more lived in these days.

Lingering

Summer is lingering. It has been somewhat like high summer in Iowa here in Texas these last few days. The ground is drying out, even cracking in places. All of the weeds and prairie grasses are towering over my head. It is humid, warm, even hot in the middle of the day, and there's a drowsy buzzing that accompanies the sunset each night. The frogs start up their chorus and the fireflies flicker above all the greenness into the night. Now, I should mention that Texas doesn't really get fireflies. It's a new phenomenon, what with all the rain. It has warmed up a little again, and the humidity shrouds the rolling hills and leafy green trees each morning in a thick blanket of cottony fog. It gives the illusion that our house is an island, a secret Avalon, each morning as I walk Charley and his lunch cooler out to his truck to kiss him goodbye for the day. As he dissapears down the lane, I sometime imagine he's gone to the land of the humans!
I came home in the daylight today, a rare treat. I cooked a huge homey meal and we had John, our tenant, over for dinner. The guys were most excited about the warm fluffy biscuits, and I was most happy with the salad topped with a florette of cucumber and a crisp red pepper strip. Before they got home, while the potatoes were roasting, I walked around a little bit. My volunteer garden has gone kaput. There have been some really spectacular spider webs,by one Banana Spider I spotted, and some other plump, 25-cent-piece-sized arachnid, that have been put up in corners and across neglected paths. The Agalinis and the Parralena are still blooming, although the Agalinis is drooping. There are often little tiny sulfer butterflies at the base of the weeds. There is a 20% chance of rain tomorrow, and Autumn usually brings to us another rainy season. Who knows what it will bring us this year - it may continue to be unusual in weather patterns as the rain was to the height of summer.
We're headed to Connecticut on Friday, and I'm going to enjoy the 75 degree weather, although it is hard imagine right now what it will feel like to wear long sleeves. But if it is chilly, and I do get to wear long sleeves, you can bet I'll linger a bit longer than the others, outside in the Northeastern evening.