Don't let them fool you

These cats can be dangerous. The one below is Miss Lily. She jumps on cats and other things, and although she seems peaceable enough here, she can get mighty fierce when you try to pick her up. She was found in Grand Chenier and flew back to Albuquerque with an unsuspecting human.

This mighty, mitty guy goes by Angus McMitts. He very nearly has opposable thumbs, and that almost automatically makes him a menace. He is on a diabetic diet, and so is always hungry.

Train graffiti

as seen on the way home yesterday afternoon. Good use of space and repetition of design. Its meaning, if any, escapes me.

coming in to Albuquerque

on the Railrunner this morn...

Wednesday wouldn't wait

More stuff, getting piled higher and deeper, with time running out on me again. Here's the moon over the Manzanos, again, as seen yesterday evening while finishing up the planting of the shrubs. Thanks and praise to Timeteo, for without his steadfast digging, it could not have been done.

Tuesday flying by

Fast and furious, getting ready for Friday. Here's a sunset from the back of Mama's house in Louisiana. The ending of the day, the dead and dying pines, all communicated loss to me then, but it's still a nice composition.

Sunday isn't the end of the week

just the end of the weekend. Timothy arrived Saturday, and we helped Jean put her plants in the ground, taking out the scruffy shrub in the backyard. Sunday we split up, Timothy went hiking and Jean and I went back to the State Fair for the final day, then met up again in the afternoon.

The moon, soon to be full, rising high over the Manzano Mountains, as seen from I-25 headed south on the Isleta reservation. Next up is a sphinx moth in the guara. They look a lot like hummingbirds but only come out at dusk. I used to see a lot of them in the jasmine by my grandmother's kitchen door in Grand Chenier.

And here's Timothy, doing his cat-wrangling wonders on Sammy, who loves attention almost as much as he loves catnip.

Some wonderful quilts

seen Sunday afternoon. Here's a real beauty for cat lovers.

And this was one a series of four (or maybe five) called Affairs of the Heart. Why, you wonder? The basic shape in every square is the heart, and every square is slightly different, no two alike. I loved the colors, too.

It would be like sleeping under a work of art, a quilt of dreams...

A busy day

that started out rainy, finishing up from yesterday and last night. I really wish I had gotten those trees in the ground Saturday like I was supposed to; they would have had a tremendous start. Below is a datura; it really does have a purple tinge around the edges of the petals. And they smell wonderful, especially first thing in the morning, just as the bees are arriving.

These are some of the hundreds of purple asters in the yard. I scattered seed last fall and some of them must have sprouted, because there are many more this year. I have yellow asters, too, but prefer the purple ones. When I was little, I found purple asters blooming in back of the chicken house, and picked all of them for Mama. She was very upset, because those were the ones she had planted.

So why aren't my pictures as good as Flannery's at this point? His always look better, and so do a lot of the photos I look at online. Seems like almost everybody does this as well or better than I do. Still, I recognize the value of documenting throughout life. You just can't trust your memory completely.

Hurricane Lilies

blooming in Grand Chenier, the day after Daddy's funeral. I've never seen this color before. They were all red (also called spider lilies).

Hope

is going to kill me yet.

I send a message out to my only one

Yet I've been locked out

and I know we're through

but I can't begin to face up to the truth

I wait so long for the walls to crack

but I know that I will one day have you back

(yes, I will)

And I work like bees in the honey

every night I circle like the moon

it's an act of simple devotion

but it can take forever when you've got something to prove

Actually I don't know that I will ever have anything or anyone back; that's just bravado that happens to rhyme.

Rodeo Clowns!

They arrived about mid-morning, and made everyone smile, even me.

Blooming

This morn I went out and spent a little too much time taking pictures of flowers in the yard. These are datura. I have two bushes, both blooming away.

These are guara, or butterfly grass. Jean's are even more prolific than these. They are so lovely with the sun behind them.

And these are sweet alyssum. They had gotten too dry during one of my stays in Louisiana, but have made a pretty good comeback. They were my annual of choice back in the spring.

Taking these pictures made me feel a little better, because I planned to share them and because I wanted to take the best picture I could. I hope I succeeded.

Daddy

My father, Lynn Pierre McCall, died a week ago today about 7:45 pm in Louisiana. He was 90 years old, and he wanted to go home, to return to Grand Chenier, more than almost anything.

This is a picture of Daddy on Gruela, the mustang he adopted and broke to ride, from before the storm.

Daddy loved life. He was indomitable in body and spirit. He was sharp-witted and could be very sharp-tongued, but he played fair and straight with everybody. He was tough, and he surprised us by leaving so quickly and relatively quietly.

He was born 26 February 1917 to Marie Delphine Portal and Thomas William McCall. He graduated from Grand Chenier High School in 11th grade. He joined the military in WWII. The recruiter told him that if he volunteered, he could pick which branch of service and he wanted to be in the Air Force with his brother Bob. The recruiter lied, of course, and he served in the Army. He studied hand to hand combat with the Aussies in New Zealand, and not only excelled, seemed to enjoy it, at least in the telling. He was in the third wave in the Phillipines, an Army MP and a First Sargent. While in the Army, he received a Dear John letter from his girl back home. After being honorably discharged, he went to Louisiana State University and graduated in 1948 with a BS in Animal Husbandry. He bucked the plans his father had for him to choose farming and working for the oil companies.

I'm in the process of writing this, so I will have to do a little research before this can be considered a done post.

Debris

Today was a better day. Whew. Not many could be worse than yesterday.

We're still communicating, though not as much, and maybe there's something to be salvaged here. I hope so. My scopes for this weekend call for forgiveness and humility. We'll see.

Real Heartbreak

I found this today while trying to clean out my archives, from someone who lost the one he loved, forever. This is terribly, terribly true. It's why I didn't stop after Xmas.
All That Is Worth It: "You do not give what you get, you give what you want to get. Even if someone doesn't deserve more, you give all you can."

looking for light

I have been exiled, cut off from his loop. I usually get six to twelve emails a day from him, and today I got exactly three, two forwards and one by my request. Ow, ow, ow.

So I'm looking for something positive -- not finding it, but looking anyway. It's not my fault. I didn't do or say anything to cause it. It's just that he wants someone else now. Not me.

Crushed

I had my doubts verified today, via email. I told him that it hurts, no matter how gently done. He didn't respond meaningfully, just spouted that pain was where my resistance emerged, and that was very yang.

So this is how I feel now, rather deconstructed and not at all flowing with the chi. He also said water overcomes all obstacles, even rock. Jean snorted when I told her that and said, "Water overcomes a lot of things." Recall that she lost her home and clinic in New Orleans to floodwaters, and we both lost our home in Grand Chenier to Hurricane Rita. Water cost us dearly. If I emulated water right now, it wouldn't be to yield. I would be the hurricane's daughter, and wash him away.

heartache

I spent Friday night in TrC, looking up info, not too stressful or surprising, really. Sometimes you just know when something's coming at you, but even that intuition can't help the hurt.

So it went Saturday night as I feared: exclusion, separation, distance, coolness to indifference. The funny part, if there is one, is that I was dreading having to say no more, then he beat me to the punch without saying anything at all.
photo courtesy john s flannery