One man's weed...

Found growing in my yard.  We hesitated to cut it down although we knew it was a weed and it was prickly and almost in the way.  We rarely cut down plants until we know what they are and mostly wait until they bloom.  I went searching and found it's a Milk Thistle.  Not only is it used in bird food but it's been used medicinally for about 2000 years. Originally it was a Mediterranean plant, used for liver problems and based on current studies might actually help our poor abused livers. They are also now studying it as a cancer remedy for helping control liver damage form chemo especially in children. It's also good at protecting you from certain kinds of mushroom poisoning.   It's supposed to be edible but honestly it's so prickly I really didn't want to try it.   Ours isn't as tall as most of them - mainly because we walked over it, didn't water it and it was growing in fairly horrible soil.   I'm going to try to collect the seeds and share them with out resident birds and try to encourage the plant to grow in a regular bed.  
Volunteer plants are truly fun.  I've had a number of them in the back yard - not quite as deadly as the milk thistle.  I also, em, help volunteers by collecting seeds in the flower beds at work or near bus stops.  I always follow the gathering rule which is take a few and leave many.  I never strip a plant.  I like to think I encourage plants to reclaim parts of my back yard and of course the birds help. 

On Being Poor.

I am poor.  I admit it. But I don't live in poverty which is a vastly different feeling.  I have lived in poverty... I spent 9 months of my life when young living in the back of a 1967 Ford Mustang.  It was kinda olive green and had bucket front seats.  Michael and I would switch sleeping one night in the front and one night in the back.  During the day we tried to ear money and find food without going to the Salvation Army.  Looking back it was a thing one did in your youth..... we took a car to San Francisco and knew we were going to make it rich.  Landing in SF, we lived well for like a week in a tiny hotel near Chinatown  only to come down to the car one morning and found it broken into and almost everything stolen.  (they left one shoe which still puzzles me and a paint brush from my back pack full of art supplies).  After the hotel we drifted to car living.   We had two spots - in the parking lot of a police storage area and a roadstop in Pacifica.  After almost being killed at the one in Pacifica we realized we needed to come home. 

We couldn't find jobs.  We had no permanent addresses and at that time it was really a death knell to getting established.  (You have to understand that we were a few years after the Summer of Love and the Haight-Ashbury district was suffering from the remains of the whole phenomenon). And both of us we very private and shy people so panhandling, living at shelter and such was not even in the equation.   Michael found a very bad job delivering circulars door to door and I tried to find a job of some sort with no luck. We finally found work picking bell peppers in the farms closer to Santa Cruz which led into our experiences as migrant farm workers.
After that we raised enough money to come back to San Antonio and knowledge of how to get going again. 

As I grew older I always lived between the edge of poor and poverty.  i think that is where a vast number of students live.... You learn to make due on very little and all your friends do anyway so it's normal.  Plus you learn to share.   When I moved to Austin, one late night escaping all the shadows in San Antonio that i had created.... I got real jobs that paid for rents and food and extra - I became more spoiled.  A friend encouraged me to get a credit card and I rapidly fell into debt. It was so easy and I am so easily bequiled by thinking life is simple -- that little card that lets you get things for free.  (And eventually I realised it wasn't really free).  It took me awhile to clear off that debt and while I still have a credit card, it's severely limited and I rarely use it. So now heading to my 'golden years" (as someone once said although I can't imagine why) we (me and my SO) live much more simply. We live on our earnings as much as possible even though the SO thinks he could be the Big Lebowski and could get rich on a quick scheme or two.   I don't normally regret it except I never bought a house which I think I would like and I constantly am trying to figure out where I will be when I truly get old and feeble.

But I don't regret being poor and living simply. After Gene's mom died, we've become better at getting rid of things that clutter our physical house. (Both of us while not officially hoarders can be considered pack rats.) I truly think that as we declutter our house we are decluttering our inner selves as well.  I like that.

Road Trips

During Spring Break we went on one of my favorite things -- a road trip.  Texas is full of interesting nooks and crannies and Austin is right in the middle of a diverse geographical area.  Lots of small towns with odd histories and little facts.  Normally we head out into the Hill Country but this time we chose to wander east towards Shiner.  Shiner is where they make Shiner Bock and all it's relatives.  I'm not a big beer drinker but Shiner Bock is a pretty good dark "chewy" beer. 

I always bring my camera but I never just get around to taking photos.  This time I actually took some on the way home.  We meandered down a dirt road to the Sam Houston Oak. The oak tree is famous because in 1836, Sam Houston and his army camped out under it after they set fire to Gonzales (the then capital of the Region of Texas) .  They were in rebellion from Mexico and following the Fight at Goliad and the Battle of the Alamo, the Separatists (as the Texians were called) fled.  They first torched their capital Gonzales and fled to stay at their first camp under this tree.  Eventually they were cornered by Santa Ana and the resulting Battle of San Jacinto occured... establishing The Republic of Texas.  (apologies to the shortened form of history here.) 

The tree is atill alive.  It's a southern live oak, Quercus virginia,  and they tend to be long lived trees.  After live oaks get large enough their branches tend to drop and run along the ground.  They also keep their leaves during the winter making them what's considered an evergreen oak. 

   The oak is on the grounds of what used to be the Braches Plantation.  The two story house is still standing and is quite nice.  Since it's on private property and you were supposed to call ahead to see it we looked across the fence.  The home was built in the 1840's or '50's and was a cultural mecca in teas during that time.  It's actually the McClure-Braches House.  I told my friend Hal, who I consider my big historian and he said the house was also used for the filming of True Women, which was about Texas women. 

You can't help but learn about things when you go driving.  Our history bit bible, so to speak, is a guide book called Hill Country by Richard Zelade.  I've worn out two other earlier copies of it.  I have another book on order and am curious to see what they have in them.

  We saw a ton of buzzards, hawks and a wild turkey this trip. The wild turkey was a bonus. 

The Kitty Girls

I'm always impressed by my cats abilities to sleep in amazing places, especially the Girls, which is what we call Luna and Niobe.  They are a happy pair of sibs, found by Gene when he went for his regular haircut.  At first he was going to bring home just one but how could you separate such cute sisters.  My old cat, Minerva, had just gotten used to being an "only" cat. (Uther,my 18 year old Manx having died about 6 months before.) So she was not happy about the wild Kitty Girls who ran  crazily in the house, playing and generally getting into mischief.  She has reluctantly allowed them to live with her but there are rules.  Luna may lick her head but Niobe never can. We will still have the week-long -"we are not amused" hissing for some unknown (to us non felines) rule breakage or behaviorial issue but generally some sort of truce is maintained.

Oh the Kitty Girls are a wild bunch.  They managed to break out of every screen in the house and then hated the outside world hiding under the ancient and decrepit house, until we managed to lure them out with a cat of cat food.  They are extremely picky about what they eat (not a bit like Minerva who will happily eat anything including cobwebs).  They wake up us almost everyday and Luna, in particular, nags us about time.  She's a very linear thinking cat.  Niobe is much more polite but has the need to make everything a toy and absolutely loves to be stroked with the broom.  Luna just runs and hides for a bit. Still they enliven the house alot and are sweet and loving and I wouldn't trade the Girls for anything.  Niobe tends to like being with us for her naps and doesn't mind sharing the space with work or clutter.  It's more fun that way to her. 

Minerva, as befits her more elderly and hefty size, tends to find more comfortable places though she prefers spots that are sometimes hard for us to understand.  A week was spent napping in the middle of the path to the kitchen and occasionally she will take to sleeping under the table, glowering at anyone who comes near.  Her recent favorite is to come between us and sleep on the sofa.  She manages to drive one or both of us away as she has a terrible snore.  Some nights I can hear her from the bedroom.  I was just informed she has found a box to sleep in - it's about a quarter of her size but she seems to have squeezed herself into it..

Update:  The kitty girls managed to push out another screen (we now have a nice hole) and made the Great Escape.  Niobe tired quickly but Luna went under the house and wouldn't come back.  She ignored food, the food clicker, and the laser mouse.  She finally decided Under the House was boring and came out after a frustrating (for us) wait of 2 hours. 

The sun in hiding.

Hide and Go Seek

The Departure of Trees

Monday night when the storm hit our area one of our trees came crashing down at 4:00 in the morning. It wasn't our first tree to have fallen or to be removed.  We had two taken down because of disease but they were bordering a neighbors yard and we knew they would have damaged property.  The ones in the back yard were old ash trees and slowly were dying, becoming  home to families of woodpeckers, squirrels and we think a small owl.  So when some random large branch fell we would try to leave them to decay naturally and give a home or favorite play area to something. 

   The neighbor behind us told me how he and his wife liked to watch the squirrels playing on the one enormous dead branch now totally devoid of bark. It arches over the far back part where we don't water.  It has been taken over by the bindweed and the wild grape that manages to hold on between Kay's yard and ours (Kay is our wonderful next-door neighbor).  I secretly call it the "Arch" and think about encouraging the grape vine as well as the weedy little bindweed growing wild every year into covering it  a bit more.  In reality I know it will have to go away soon as the remaining part of it looks more and more like it will fall on our storage shed of dubious quality.  I check on it regularly and had checked on both trees early Sunday morning, when I became fearful of the quality of the root system of the now fallen ash. 

 On Thursday night we had snow so Friday the University was closed, allowing me an extra day off to do something - ideally work on sleeves for a costume, work on art or generally straighten the house.  Instead I prowled out in the back yard and looked at my fallen friend.  I hadn't realized how hollow it was.  From the ground up to slightly below where it broke was a tunnel.  I'm curious if it got used by anyone - the random squirrel, the wayward opossum, a group of trooping fairies going through the neighborhood  When I was young I would have been sure and left offerings to the tiny spirits that lived in it.   I will miss it - not for the shade but for the inhabitants and visitors that would use its branches to share the back area of our house.  I will miss my friend, he greatly enriched my life.

The Kindle!

I admit I'm a luddite or at the very least I should be a Luddite.  I find technology is first somewhat daunting and second sometimes unnecessary. I have a cell phone but rarely use it and often let it get discharged.  I use my computer but honestly still don't know what RAM means, what the difference between a worm and a virus (and don't care).  Still I'm not such a complete Luddite that I don't recognize the value of modern technology... rather I think people over use it.

So I'm not certain why I became enamored with Amazon's Kindle.  The idea of being able to take a book in my already over weighted bag that serves as book bag, lunch box and purse, without adding extra poundage is very appealing.  So after considerable thought and encouragement from my Significant Other, I bought one.

I have to say I'm enjoying it very much.  Currently I'm plowing through the free books you can find.  I'm reading (for the first time) The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling and plan on several other books I seemed to have missed.  Who knows where it will lead to (not that I don't read alot anyway.)