Pretty and pink pretty much describes the current state of my gardens.

The nice thing about tile floors is they allow you quickly to stomp a scorpion when one makes it into the house.

It’s been a good summer for our pink turks caps. Actually, it’s been a good summer for everything.

And I wonder, if I only had one job to do in this life, that maybe planting one tree was a good thing to have accomplished. No one will write a story about me, but the world will know, or at least this part of it.

I use a turning fork when I work in the garden and the lawns. It’s better than a shovel or a spade.

Went time travelling yesterday. Visited the Chisos Mountains. Tried to imagine what it was like when that first hot vent opened up and out popped hot rock, lava.

Went for a ride yesterday across the bottom of the old inland sea they now call west Texas.

It feels like a good day in the neighborhood. I mowed a bit yesterday and pulled a few weeds, because khaki-weed is a real tenacious pest. I even worked up a sweat.

I stepped through the looking glass last Tuesday evening. Stepped out again yesterday, Friday, around noon. This is what happened.

A black and yellow garden spider has set up shop in the turks cap beneath the Mexican plum in the little garden at the west end of the south porch in the tifway yard.

Lost limb from the sumac to the storms the other day. Just stripped it right off.

I am on bended knee begging forgiveness. I have sullied the reputation of ground squirrels with my allegations of peach pilfering.

Here we go. Summer. The morning air is hot and heavy. With no rain, it will keep building like this, until one morning it will feel like I’m living in an oven.

On my drive home from Marble Falls yesterday, I saw the tail end of a large rainbow touching the ground. It was off toward the east where the rain was falling, created by the sun, low in the west.

I put on a long sleeve shirt and worked in the yard day Friday I needed the shirt because I was hauling brush. I have a deal with my arborist son. He trims; I haul.

Last year, I let some poke salat grow in my garden. The plant was enormous with lovely purple berries. At the end of the season, I cut it down, hauled it off, and decided it was a noble experiment, but I didn’t want to repeat it.

I never expected to be well into July and hoping for a dry day. But I am. I walked out to feed the cats this morning, and there it was, drizzle.

Yesterday we got rain in the morning, rain in the afternoon, and a sauna in between. For a brief moment it felt like the Gulf Coast.

It’s raining on the Fourth of July and I saw a frog on my porch this morning. The latter jumped into the lavender. The former is simply falling all around.

It’s an odd ritual, but before the lady comes to help clean my house, I clean my house.