I think I know what you mean, Carrie. It is hard to keep up with the necessary adaptations when you have a chronic illness or are going through a normal life transition. Nevertheless, when both things hit at once. I’m still learning how to handle a normal body temperature. Before I started thyroid replacement, I was always cold and working in heat wasn’t a problem. It felt good, in fact. I have to re-learn the symptoms of heat illness. Not sweating much is a sign you are always told to watch for when high summer arrives. It is a sure give-away that heat illness is on your horizon. But, not sweating much is normal for hypo-thyroidism. I have inner ear problems so dizziness and poor balance are routine things I just deal with. It isn’t easy to determine if it is day-to-day stuff or a sign I’m too hot. When you start experiencing mental confusion, it is dangerously late in the game. I have to learn to listen to more subtle and individual signals.
It actually starts cooling noticeably there by the beginning of Sept.? Sept. as a part of Autumn is one of those academic things you learned in school that didn’t quite jive with reality. Like the snowy scenes on Christmas cards. Most of Sept. feels like part of summer here. It might start becoming cool at night in mid-Oct. All bets are off this year, however. This is normally our dry season. Don’t know how all the Mediterranean plants I’ve introduced are going to cope with the rainy high summer. They aren’t designed for that. k*
Still Laughing For Joy #7
Oh, that's another thing, I never used to sweat, except on my face. Seriously. Now I am a sweaty pig all over and have to, like, WASH! But you can smell it in the air already, fall is on the way.
Yep, same here. That's my tradeoff. Hormone replacement means less fatigue, but more perspiration. It might be time for a reality check. Sweating like a pig does describe it better. lol. I think it's better for your skin this way though. That was a rude surprise of aging. I never imagined there would be a need for acne cream in the medicine cabinet once you got passed 60. It just isn't needed quite so often and is joined by the bottle of Oil of Olay. :-)
Nadi is giving each of the gardens its own animal logo. A skunk for the Fragrance Garden, a rabbit for my kitchen garden and so forth. Anyone have an opinion on an emblematic animal logo for the w/c and standing garden? Nadi wants it to be an animal associated with tenacity and stubbornness. Being Scottish, a spider fits the bill in her mind. There is some old highland story about William Wallace being inspired by a spider when he was almost ready to give up the fight. k*
Actually, the story is of Good King Robert (Robert Bruce) and the Spider. Not William Wallace. It could be a story like George Washington and the cherry tree. It is strange to think the fate of a country might have been decided by the efforts of a spider.
http://www.longlongtimeago.com/llta_history_bruce_page02.html
Scottish terrier? Are there such a thing? I know terriers are terribly tenacious.
YES! Kay, on the acne and dry skin at the same time! My MD says acne in adults is only caused by stress--and true, I can often notice pimples after DD#1 visits--but also if I don't wash my hair well enough or other oily-causing things like that.
It starts cooling noticeably in the middle of August. Pleasantly cool, but not sunburn or sweat or water park weather any more.
I got married twice in the end of Aug and once in the beginning of June. Weather was pretty much the same all three days. Not too hot for me to wear panty-hose, perfectly comfortable. Outdoor receptions twice, perfect weather.
Somewhere I saw garden statues of dogs of all different breeds. I think there was a Scottie among them. I'll see if I can find that site again. I like that better than a spider. k*
scotties became especially popular last year when Sadie, a Scottish Terrier won Best in Show at Westminster . i donate to this rescue group when i can.
http://www.scottiekingdom.com/
Talk of dogs got us playing, "If ______ were a dog, what kind of dog would ______ be?" It has been decided I would be an English mastiff, Kay a Great Dane and Nadine a Bassett hound. What kind of dog would YOU be? lol. Or, maybe, there are some cat people hanging here? (Jim)
Bernese Mountain Dog
I would be a black witch cat.M-E-O-W-SPIT-HISS-HISS!
lol
I would be a fish, maybe, or a bird.
Glad to hear that, Carrie. You'll see why when your package arrives. ;-)
MK and PJ say "No more dogs" after Tate and Fenny have crossed the rainbow bridge and only a strictly outside cat. I've set my heart on a black cat. PJ isn't much into cats, but he had a silly black cat called Gypsy he really liked.
I’ve only known one Burmese Mountain Dog. He was called Bernie and he was like my best friend when I was little. He was the most AWESOME dog ever. He was rescued from the river after a flood and no one ever claimed him so he was sort of passed around between 3 families. (No one family could afford his food and vet bills.) I remember he would pull me around in my wagon and I would lie in the field reading using him as a pillow. lol. Miss Helen’s old mama cat, Patches, would sleep snuggled up against him. Her kittens would climb all over him. But, he would transform into something more akin to Cujo if someone he didn’t like came too close to the kid’s Bernie considered his responsibility or if another dog bothered Patches or her kittens. He would let Miss Helen’s little Japanese Chin, Pixie, play alpha dog. He was at least 10X Pixie’s size, but she would grab a mouthful of his ruff and growl deep in her throat. Bernie would fall on his side and lay perfectly still until Pixie let him go. It was hilarious to watch. The big guy wasn’t meant to live in humid low country though and he was plagued by a terrible skin condition in the summer. The vet finally found a home for him in the mountains of TN where the weather didn’t injure his health.
I think I will use a dog motif in the w/c and standing Garden. I’ve met some great service dogs so that seems appropriate. No animal can be as stubborn as a dog that’s made up its mind about something. ~Nadine~
Fish bowl? Bird cage? Bird seed? Fish food? Fish that birds like to eat? Flowers that fish like to eat?
Thank you for the things which I can't remember the name of right now. They made lovely foliage again, but no flowers again. Dang, there must be a plaque right on top of the word! Not canna or calla but in that same area.
Neat posts
Here's my buddies:
Isn't it neat how 2 species can get along so well?
that photo is so coooool. :-)
Did those guys grow up together? I would like another cat, but I'm a little afraid of how Fenny will react. She grew up with a cat, but with Fenny and Catherine it was more like they had fun terrorizing one another. Cat gave as good as she got. She was the Grand Mistress of Sneak Attacks. Fenny wouldn't know how to act with a more timid cat.
Lots and lots of flutterbyes around today. I'll see if they will pose for the camera tomorrow. MK lets the butterflys have the passionvines after mid-August. They will be eaten down to nothing by mid-Sept., but the butterflies are like flying flowers so I guess it is worth it.
The catalpaworms are devouring the catalpa tree. I think I will go find out what catalpa worms become when they grow up. I'm assuming it is a little more dramatic than reallly big catalpa worms. :-). ~N~
Please let us know what they turn into.
Vort, That pic is priceless. Your cat looks like two of mine,except they have black feet instead of white. My cats and dogs work hard at ignoring each other.
Catalba worms turn into wonderful fishbait before they turn into whatever.LOL
You don't suppose Nadi put some Caltalpa worms in Carrie's package, do you? ;-) I've heard Catalpa trees called "Fish Bait Trees." BTW: Vickie has the authenic spelling, it was named for the Catalba tribe. Botanist insist on keeping the misspelling for some weird reason only understood by botanist. k*
Naw, if Nadine were going to send Carrie a caterpillar, I’m sure it would be the caterpillar of a pretty moth or butterfly. Catalpa worms turn into brown sphinx moths. They are showier as caterpillars than adult moths. Only a bird or bat or something that dines on Sphinx moths would consider them attractive.
That is something I’ve never understood. Rats are repellent, but give them a fluffy tail and put them up in a tree and people call them squirrels and think they are cute. Even some of those “Ewww, a bug!!!” types, “ “Ooooo”and “Ahhhh” when a bug is given big, bright wings. It is one of the mysteries of life. :-) Even my pragmatic wife, who refers to squirrels as “tree rats”. Falls prey to the butterfly mystique. (Jim)
Photo: Catalpa “worms”
These are the only leaves left on the tree OY VEY.
The catalpa tree has to go. The catapillers can produce three or four generations in a growing season so it never has a chance to flower. I thought I had gotten rid of it. I cut it to the ground, but it was back up to 8' in a single growing season. I'm told they are a nice ornamental tree where the moths are limited to one generation a year. It recovers quickly and easily from defoliation, but that is just in time for the next generation of moths in our region. Do they flower and produce their "beans" in AR, Vickie?
Kay, the trees are just as persistant as the worms.They keep coming back.They do bloom and bare beans here. What you need to do is roll the worms in cornmeal and package them up and sell them to Northern fishermen thus making a fortune.Which reminds me Have you heard of Catfish Charlie(a catfish bait?)It stinks to high heaven and catfish love it.
You sent me a package of WORMS or CATERPILLARS?
Hi - This is to let you know my puter is dead. I'll be going to Ca. in early Sept and will get a new one then. Meanwhile, I'll be here through my internet cafe a couple of times week. Don't worry if you don't hear from me.
We had a big wind storm yesterday and some rain. Things are quiet here and I'm working some on the second bedroom - brown bagging the walls and sealing the conrete floor.
hugs, katie
I’m sure if she did, Carrie, she sent them already rolled in cornmeal and frozen. The package should arrive tomorrow so they shouldn’t be too squishy. After we sell them all to the fishermen for an exorbitant amount and have our own fortunes, I think we should visit poor, wormless Debra and Katie in our luxurious, customized travel trailers bearing lots of Catalpa tree seeds and a box of hibernating worms. (Jim)
Y'all are going to have Carrie afraid to open her package!!! ROFL. There are no catapillars inside...unless they snuck in while I wasn't looking. They feed exclusively on Catalpa. Tradescantia isn't part of their diet so nothing in the package would appeal to them. If one did peek in, I'm sure the fish scared it away. ;-) ~N~
Think I'd rather have the worm in a package. That fish might be a little ripe by the time it gets to MASS.roflo
Just wrap them in chocolate basil--prevents all spoilage.
rofl
Vort, I will trade you some catalpa seeds and "worms" for some chocolate basil. I'll even throw in some fish. ~N~
Oh dear, oh dear, I never said I wanted anything! It's my DH who wants more spiderwort to go between the daylilies on the days they aren't flowering.
I finished my Halloween Theme Garden article and managed to make it sound upbeat and amusing instead of dark and scary -- the scariest thing in there is mosquitoes, real ones. Now I want to do a Harry Potter theme garden, with all the leftover plants I found and didn't use for this article. The trick is getting around the copyright, because I'm sure the words "Harry Potter" were copyrighted long since. Maybe "Modern Day Witches -- what ingredients do they grow?" or "Witches, Past and Present" and then I could include Shakespeare's witches and the Salem "witches" and the J.K. Rowling witches. Who are GOOD not evil. Actually, the Salem witches were really sort of mass hysteria and lack of due process, and Shakespeare's witches are just atmosphere, they don't DO anything, that I remember. Then there are the Land of Oz's witches, which had two Wicked and two Good, kind of like the Supreme Court. Who can forget that line, "are you a good witch, or a bad witch?" More thinking definitely indicated.
I've never researched it, but someone told me once "witch" means "wise one" in some old European tongue. I stopped to listen to MK's latest Analog: Science Fiction & Fact magazine. Many of the fact articles are over my head, but there was a cool one this month. They think they've finally unraveled the mystery behind C.L. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia books. ("The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'.....) It has long been believed the seven books were some sort of allegory, but no one could agree on what they were an allegory for. Lewis was a student of medieval history. Based on a poem he wrote in the 30's, the new theory is each book represents the seven other celestial bodies known in Medieval times. Sun, Mercury, Venus, The Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, I assume. I want to read the Chronicles of Narnia again with the new insight.
You know some plants are said to "belong" to one or another of those seven celestial bodies. It's all tied up together in some ancient European healing practices. Like, The Moon has long been associated with women because it mirrors a woman's reproductive cycles so plants that "belong" to the Moon were used by midwives. But, then, for some reason, aloe vera and spearmint are considered "Moon plants". Not sure why. I'll ask MK. There might be a seed of an article idea there.
"Bubble, Bubble. Toil and trouble..." Was that from Shakespeare? I think a classic western European witchy garden would HAVE to contain mandrake. There is a very old article in one of my herb gardening magazines on the subject. I’ll ask Nadi to look at it. I can’t remember all the plants listed and it’s in print.
You can’t study herbs without running into the work of Nicholas Culpepper. He predates Linnaean taxonomy by about 100 years. Astrological association was the system of his time for understanding and classifying plants. You see it in all his books. An article about Culpepper would be appropriate leading up to Halloween, but the powers that be would probably say it is too serious a subject for your writing style, Carrie. There’s a lot of irony in the story of Nicolas Culpepper, but not much humor. .
He was the son of a clergyman and worked hard to provide medical care to the poor. That didn’t keep him from being accused of witchcraft. The accusation came from the guild of apothecaries. Well, duh. He was teaching people how to use plants growing in the woods and meadows to solve their health problems. Meaning, these people were not buying from the apothecaries. Culpepper’s cures probably worked as well as anything that came from the apothecary. If what he said in the introduction to one of his books is the way he truly approached things, probably better.
“I consulted with my two brothers, Dr. Reason and Dr. Experience, and took a voyage to visit my mother, Nature, by whose advice, together with the help of Dr. Diligence, I at last obtained my desire; and, being warned by Mr. Honesty, a stranger in our days, to publish it to the world, I have done it.”
More than 350 years later, you can still find Culpepper's books. For people interested in the history of herbs, they remain fascinating. k*
thanks kay. :-)
Never herd of Culpepper, but that quote is remarkable. especially for so long ago, although I guess that was the age of serious Allegory, like A Pligrims Progress, and Chaucer, whatever it was he wrote (feeling dumb or lazy).
You think the Powers would object to my writing a serious article? I wasn't the one who labeled me a "garden humorist!" I do have trouble taking things quite as seriously as others would like me to, but I am perfectly capable of doing a dull boring subject like "New Diascia Varieties" and doing a bang-up job!.
Go for it Carrie, If they don't want it Sell to someone else. I love your articles.
Isaac Asimof was my favorite science auther,and he never wrote solumn science stuff.but it was factual and fun. I never read any of his Science fiction.
I have some herbal books. My favorite is one by Charles Millspaugh-"American Medicinal Plants"
It has always amazed me that these doomsday planners never seem to allow for medicinal knowledge.
I would have been considered a witch.I have no doubt.
Another amazement is the things witchs were accused of but the accusers were never afraid of being effected by these socalled witches.Beleive me if i were a witch I'd turn my accusers into toadstools.
LOL, Vickie.
I have no doubt you could write a good serious article, Carrie.
Are you getting any of this cooling trend, Debra? (Jim)
noooooooo. sob..sob...sigh...hiccup...103 today. 100 or higher at least rest of week. Still no rain in sight. Most of Texas now in "Exceptional Drought." No higher designation on "their" rating scale. the burglary has had benefits. was taking vacation days last friday and tomorrow. changed them to be home whenever contractors are on-site. was/will be much too hot to work outside, which was the plan. muy better later.
Sounds hot, Debra!