A highlight this summer was having Raine, Paige, and Paige’s friend Sarah come visit over July 4 weekend. We really felt validated about our choice to stay in this location (we considered moving), as we could enjoy our large yard/pool, but the kids took time to explore the city which is still easily accessible.
Raine brought me an amazing gift featuring a fabric tarantula! Lots of leisure time was had including some art time! I introduced Sarah to gelli printing and hardcover books, and we all played around with jewelry making with some long-lost supplies from the garage and a plant we grew this year in the garden.. Job’s Tears! They are like natural beads with a hole in the middle! Rob made me earrings with them, Paige made a necklace, and I’m hoping to make a bunch of bracelets to sell. I only have a handful of bracelets so far, so not sure if I’ll get more out of the plant now that the August scorching season has begun.
We tried out a splash pad this summer. I was hoping one of the various animals would like to play in it. Well, after a bunch of treat offerings, Woody eventually did go in and maybe kind of was OK with it. Stoney still won’t venture in though.
The challenge with the garden is now that true summer has hit, everything is like Fire-Blasted with Heat every day. I did get a couple of shade cloths which are draped over my favorite things, the Job’s Tears and the Sour Gherkins.
We didn’t plant the Sour Gherkins this year, they just self-seeded from last year. Same with the Chili Petin plant in the front. The melon plant has actually been generating amazing melons which we are eating! And weirdly we’ve harvested a couple of cucumbers but I’m not clear what plant is making them because we didn’t plant any cucumbers.
And I’m still obsessed with edible flowers. The blue bachelor buttons are amazing, but also we have Turk’s Cap (a native), and endless Petunias. I have a cookbook which features edible flowers and just plants in general, and I tried making a beet terrine which came out OK but not that great. It was basically layers of sliced beets with goat cheese and edible flowers on top.
Out of nowhere, Zsa Zsa dropped dead in July. No apparent reason, just dead in the middle of the yard. Poor Zsa Zsa always had it rough being the lowest in the pecking order. And Rock Star suffered an injury to her foot which prevented her from walking almost at all for a couple of days. I tried to watch out for her (I fed her “poultry cell” with oats) and eventually we realized she was improving. It’s been weeks now and she mostly seems fine, but I do think the incident took away her general fearlessness.
To attend Rachel’s surprise engagement party in Minneapolis, we asked Nicole, a young gal we met through Raine, to house and pet sit for us overnight. This was a huge step for all of us! Nicole did awesome, even though Stoney, in particular, made it difficult. He refused to come in the house! So in the evening, Nicole cleverly setup the privacy wall outside her bedroom so that Stoney couldn’t actually see her- this totally worked and she soon saw that he was resting in his kennel!
The trip to Minneapolis is kind of a story unto itself, as it was during the Crowdstrike software crisis, and we were flying Delta, so…ya, Rob was unable to fly out as planned for the first leg. So he was unable to kickoff Rachel’s surprise scavenger hunt :( However, we both were able to fly out the following day (which was when I was originally planning to go). We made it just in time for the party! And we sure got lucky to be able to actually fly home the following day! I could go into more detail about the trip itself, but this blog is about our goings on in Austin so I’ll just include a pic or two:)
Pangea had a checkup and she’s mostly doing great. The vet said that even the flowers I like to feed her from the plants outside should be reserved as “treats” and she really needs to just have grass and hay. We also need to start target training (which is a time we should use “treats”).
For the Art League this summer I’ve been doing the monthly newsletter because the gal that normally does it is out of the country. So that’s been fun as I like doing that kind of stuff. Also there are going to be workshops at the library in town with teens after school this fall so I’ve metup with the coordinator there and so far we’re planing zine-making and gelli-printing. I made some sample zines for this. They’re pretty basic but I feel like that’s a good place to start, as we can always work toward more complicated things. And I can bring in samples of other stuff I’ve collected as inspiration/future workshop ideas.
One day coming back from a jog I noticed a free tricycle at the base of someone’s driveway. The front tire was flat, but otherwise it looked pretty fun, and adult-sized (or at least big enough for me). So I brought it home and Rob fixed the tire, and now I ride it to the mailbox everyday instead of Jenny, my longboard, because it’s safer and actually it’s even more fun to ride!! I’ve named it Billy Bob.
As far as my art goes, I made some more of those sketchbooks and I finally put those crumpled gelli prints together onto a trellis I got from Hope Depot! Is it great? Um, maybe not, but it’s DONE! I’m thinking I may submit it to a future “call for art” in public spaces through the art league. Perhaps someone will find it interesting.
Free garlic from a neighbor- the cloves are as big an entire bulb!!
Rob has a new stand mixer which is super cool and can do lots of different things. So far, he’s made empanadas which were amazing!
More pics below.
