Tag: houston

Wednesday’s tree was full of woe


I took this photo in July of 2022 to show the state of our grass after a summer drought. I’ve put a dotted line around the large tree that was about mid-point against the back fence so you can see how green and leafy it was last summer.


A second winter freeze and a second summer of drought left it looking like this.

And this, with a palm, also dead, in front of it.

Then the tree guys came, and the photos tell the story.

It always hurts to lose a tree (the dead palm is gone, too, but I’m not a big fan of palm trees as part of the Hall’s landscaping. We’ve actually had four removed, and another one died after one of our big freezes over the past few years). Several years ago, we let our next-door neighbor take down one of our trees because its roots were invading her water/sewage system. I remember that we did a major pruning of a tree at The Compound, and lost a tree there during a hurricane. But this Hall tree had been so healthy and weathered many storms, until two winter freezes and two summer droughts were more than it could take.

Losing it was sad. And it took so many tree guys and chain saws to cut it all up so it could be moved to the street and hauled away.

I’ll miss having it as part of the view. The birds will miss it, including the crows who I regularly try to engage in conversation. The dogs will miss the camouflage it provided when they explored the back fence area on the hunt for possums, squirrels, maybe a raccoon, and even the occasional cat.

More to come on the state of Houndstooth Hall’s grounds.

Trees at the Hall

I was worried about a tree at the Hall because it looked like this post-drought.

We constantly get business cards and flyers stuck through our front security fence. I save them for “in case of” times, and this seemed like one of those times. We picked the business that seemed to offer most of what we wanted now or might want in the future for the trees on our property.

Now I have dozens of pictures to show some of what was done, but I’m too tired to compare all the photos I’ve uploaded from my phone and camera. Maybe sometime next week, I can do a few posts that show why several men (and one woman) were here on Thursday and Friday to help us with our trees.

The dogs were not amused by any of these shenanigans.

More to come, but in the meantime, today I did some front porch cleaning that includes Aaron’s Garden. We lost only two small succulents that need to be replaced. In this case, at least, we triumphed over the drought.

Today…

It rained at our house. Houston has gone 47 days without rain. I guess we have to redefine “subtropical.”

We were very grateful. Houndstooth Hall has lost botanicals, despite watering, but the trees around the property are okay. A normal fall season would be welcome (I do NOT consider hurricanes normal).

Tiny Tuesday!

Today was a day of being close with friends when we said a hard goodbye. Not my place to share this publicly yet, but I wanted to mark the date.

Interestingly, a winged visitor joined us in the early evening as we sat outside (a rare opportunity this summer; shade and a breeze made it possible). I had hoped that distant cry heralded an arrival, and then a very large crow landed in the tallest tree just outside the back of our property. Some say crows are bad omens. Not to me. I think they bring a little magic and sometimes a message. I felt like he confirmed my choice to begin the next book with my “crow” character.

I want to do more thinking and reflecting–timely, as Mercury goes retrograde mid-afternoon tomorrow (thanks, Pat!). For me, Mercury retrograde provides an opportunity to pause. It also reminds me to make sure my actions are aligned with my intentions. Of course, any of us can do this any time. Mercury just makes me mindful of it.

Adding a couple of tiny reminders of a love that made me laugh.

A day of baseball

Photos from my Wednesday, when I was the guest, along with Lindsey and Rhonda, of Lindsey’s father at an Astros baseball game! (Tom went with them to a game a long time ago, and it was my turn this time.)

I’ll start with some souvenirs.


Another cup! Doesn’t say “Minute Maid Park,” but it does say Astros!


Lindsey bought a couple of these little hats that were then filled with ice cream. She and her dad shared one, and I took a couple of spoonfuls from Rhonda’s, and then she gave me her hat after she finished her ice cream. I took the second photo with an official league-sized baseball to show its scale.


Took this one of Astros number 30 player, right fielder Kyle Tucker, at bat.


Yesterday, every fan at the game received a free replica Kyle Tucker 2022 World Champions ring.


Back at RubinSmo Manor after the game, Pepper stopped playing for a few seconds to admire it.


While foster cat Tofu hung out next to me taking it all in.


This isn’t my ticket; our tickets were on Lindsey’s dad’s phone. It was likely the ticket of one of several guys sitting in our row. We were seated in front of the press box, and at the end of the seventh inning stretch, members of the media tossed bags of peanuts into our area. Rhonda just missed snagging a bag when a guy taller than us grabbed it. At the end of the game, he turned to me and said, “I feel like I stole these peanuts from y’all,” and gave me the bag, which I in turn gave to Rhonda, whereupon Lindsey’s dad said, “Give them to Tom since he couldn’t come to the game!” That’s exactly what Rhonda did when Tom came to pick me up at their place later. Thank you, stranger, for the peanuts and maybe the ticket. More good baseball vibes.


This little fan sat in front of us with her grandparents and mother and was SO good the entire game.

These are some photos Lindsey took of the day.

Going to what in the pandemic would be called a “super spreader event” was something I did because I was almost always masked, Lindsey and Rhonda were masked as well in highly trafficked areas and inside our Uber rides, and all my companions were considerate of my concerns and in helping me be comfortable. Lindsey and Rhonda invited me to join them at this game around the beginning of July. They knew I’d planned to go to a baseball game (albeit in Chicago to see the Cubs play) with Lynne in 2020 before the pandemic put an end to all travel plans.

Like people all over the world, I was bummed that all the things I intended to do in 2020 never came to be, plus I lost my job, and of course, since then, I’ve had to face the fact that chronic anxiety became part of the new pandemic/post-pandemic me. There are several reasons I’m not able to travel these days, only minimally related to my health, and my family and friends outside of Houston are understanding about that. The way friends like Lindsey, Rhonda, Lynne, and Amy, and family like Tom, Tim, and Debby, help me navigate and adjust to how to “do” life, going places and seeing people in ways that make that easier, gives me a quality of life I wouldn’t have without them.

Once again, as I described in yesterday’s post, baseball has come to have wonderful associations for me. I’ve woven my new respect for the game into the lives of a couple of my characters in the work in progress, and “Papa Smo,” as Lindsey and Rhonda call Lindsey’s dad, told me great baseball trivia during the game in the name of “research.” Lynne, who has been a huge baseball fan her whole life, is glad to have me come on board and like Lindsey, Rhonda, and Tom, is always happy to help me understand the game better.

These are great memories that will carry me through the coming days when I monitor my health for any signs of Covid exposure because while, as they say, “the pandemic is over,” the virus hasn’t gone away and is having a bit of a summer resurgence, though fortunately most people are not as sick, or not getting as sick (thanks to their immunity from either having had Covid or because of vaccinations) or being hospitalized as much. This, too, is just part of anxiety and something I work to manage. Such realities are one reason writing and creating and having interactions via this blog and my Instagram account are so helpful to me. Thank you for reading here and commenting or emailing about posts; you all lift my spirits.

New things…

Happy Hot August! Today, when Tom finished work, we ran some errands, including picking up my new glasses!


New computer glasses.


New bifocals.

Now my eyes get to go through more adjusting, but I hope this will help get rid of some of the eyestrain and headaches.

Then… I picked up new Ken fashion.

Kind of cool that most of this Ken-wear is made from recycled plastic.

That sporty jacket just lent itself to this shot.

“Hi, Ken!”
“Hi, Barbies!”

Nope, haven’t seen the movie yet, so no spoilers please. Baseball, not the movie, has been on my mind, so I hark back to my list of missing things that I blogged about in December ’22. I realized that I might have a photo of one of those missing items on a different website I used to curate a long time ago. I checked my Flickr album and there it was, shot in 2007.


I know we had this cup when we moved into this house in 2015, and I think I know how it went missing. At some point when several of us were going somewhere, maybe Christmas shopping, or maybe after going our separate ways after a big dinner, someone grabbed it from my cabinet to use as a “go” cup, and it never found its way back home. No big deal, except the cup has a little bit of history; it comes from the era when what is now Minute Maid Park, where the Astros play baseball, was then Enron Park, before the collapse of Enron and the scandal that ended in founder Ken Lay’s bankruptcy and trials before he died while awaiting sentencing in 2006. Ken Lay was a huge part of Houston’s history, and I know people who worked at Enron, including one who was developing something with Lay that would have been a massive success (I say this with confidence because when things fell apart, someone else unconnected to Lay or Enron had a similar idea and it resulted in a globally successful online business that launched in 2007).

The other reason this cup is part of my personal history is how and when I got it. After the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, you may recall that a whole lot of things shut down for a while, including large gatherings, for security reasons. A friend’s husband who works in the oil and gas industry often had tickets to events that he gave to clients, but since traveling and other activities were curtailed, he ended up with tickets to an Astros game and no clients in town to use them. So he and his wife invited Tom and me to attend an Astros game with them. Baseball wasn’t really my thing, but I was happy to go for their company, and I knew Tom would enjoy the game.

That game was the first time I’d really done anything after the attacks. I was doing contract editing at that time for a financial company, and the fallout to the financial markets put a stop to a lot of work, in my case, for several years. It felt SO GOOD to be out among people again. To be doing something that felt American and wholesome (as the old jingle says, “Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet!”) with my fellow citizens. It wasn’t that we forgot the national trauma we were experiencing, but we could remember that most of the world stood with us, supported us, and believed in us, reminding us to believe in the best of us. If I recall correctly, at the seventh-inning stretch, we saw a moving film tribute  to the first responders at the tragedies in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.

The cup is gone, but the memory remains, and it marked a turn in my attitude toward baseball (I have deeply unhappy memories connected to baseball from the 1980s). The change in me didn’t manifest immediately, but I was reminded again of baseball’s power to heal when the Astros won the World Series in 2017. Houston was reeling from the effects of the Harvey floods in late August. When the Astros took that title in October, it was the first time they’d won the series in the franchise’s history, and they were the first Texas team to win it. The impact on Houston’s mood, and my own (as we began to put our home and property back together after being flooded), was immeasurably positive. We had something to celebrate, something to feel good about, something good, not tragic, that brought us together as a community.

To be continued…