There's Another Spider In Here. Also The Private Parts Of A Crepe Myrtle

Here we have another one of my pictures of the sky taken blind from my walk. 

I felt so blue after Mr. Moon merrily took off this morning with his sunflower seeds and pistachio nuts and nectarines and so, so many cookies. He's driving to Texas to buy a boat! 
And of course the family he's buying it from has already invited him for dinner when he gets there and he is taking them some snapper he caught and some beans we grew and next thing I know, he'll have even more people to care about because that's the way he does things. 
It has become quite obvious to me that Glen had such good success in a career that required good people skills because he really does care about people. He'd come home and tell me about this single mama buying a car for a child going off to college, or that recently widowed woman trying to navigate a system which can seem so bewildering, or a lesbian couple who were sick of being treated like ignoramuses at dealerships, or a teen-aged boy who'd been working and saving to buy his first car.
I'm not saying he was as happy to help some folks as others. There were jerks, of course, who always thought they knew how to get around an asking price with all the tricks in the book which was akin to a four year-old trying to get away with eating the cookies when Mama can plainly see the chocolate crumbs covering the child's face. 

He heard it all. But he helped so many people and he's still getting calls from folks he helped years ago, hoping that maybe he can help them again, even though he's not really in business. He still has his license. He keeps that current. And sometimes he is able to help someone. If he knows he can't, he'll tell them and I've heard him give away so much free advice and judgement calls on cars that he has nothing to do with, simply because he wants to help. 
And dear god he knows a lot about cars.

This is not what I was going to write about. Yesterday was his birthday tribute, not today. 

But as I said, I've been blue today and so I decided to take a walk which can't be a bad thing, no matter what unless you get struck by lightening or a rogue vehicle, I guess. 
Which I did not. 

It was hot but not hotter-than-holy-hell hot, although humid of course, as it always is as the clouds begin to gather for the late afternoon showers we're almost sure to get. We've had a good soaker already this afternoon and as I told a friend it smells like Grateful Earth if I had to put a name to it. It's cooler now, but the humidity is still over 75% and it's just sticky. That's all there is to it. Sticky. 

I'm not sure why Mr. Moon's leaving today affected me more strongly than it usually does. He has been gone a lot but I'm still fairly certain he loves me and I don't really get lonely. I suppose the walk helped but not in such a way that everything just felt better afterwards. Well, except for the air conditioning and a fan. 
I had plans to trim the rest of the sagos out front and I was about to go do that when I remembered that I had been planning to make pickles but that's a rather time-consuming operation and I realized I needed to pick the garden, which I did, and that took almost an hour and then it was raining so I couldn't trim the sagos so it was mostly a fuck it day. 

Who cares? Not me.

Maurice and I worked on the jigsaw puzzle. 

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll make pickles. I swear. On Wednesday, Lily and I are going to pottery open studio and then to lunch with all the kidlings and then I'll be bringing Ms. Magnolia June Hartmann home with me to spend the night. 

Wish me luck, y'all.
Nah. She'll be good. She's always good for me. Nary a hissy fit will she throw, not because she knows better than to do that around me, but because she's probably not entirely sure how I'd handle it and she does not want to risk it. She's so much like her mother was when she was a kid, testing limits to the point of parental insanity and yet, I never once had a teacher tell me that Lily was anything but sweet and well-behaved in class which I was grateful for, but also mystified as to how that could possibly be true. 
And here she is now, one of the strongest, kindest, most loving women I know who would walk five miles before saying something that would hurt or offend another person. 

I've got another bloom about to open on the native hibiscus Ellen sent me. I just went out and got a picture of it, flicked a grasshopper, and realized that a golden orb weaver has used one of the leaves near the opening bloom to anchor her web. 

Can you see that gossamer and yet powerfully strong line pulling the leaf to the top right of the bud in an unnatural way? 

Here she is, about a foot and a half away from the plant. I wonder if there's a chance in the world that some of the grasshoppers will get caught in her web. 
Probably not. 
But she's serious about the location. She already has a diminutive gentleman caller trying to court her, although I doubt she's mature enough to be interested in any advances he may make. 

And two more pictures. 

This is just a very few of the blossoms on a crepe myrtle growing in the yard of the former Woman's Club of Lloyd. It's an exceedingly tall crepe myrtle and when I went to take those lacy flowers, I saw this. 

Those are the stamens and pistols of the plant and in all of my years living around crepe myrtles, I have never once noticed this feature. But now I know. 

There is SO much I do not know, not entirely out of ignorance, but out of sheer inability to see what's right in front of me. 

I'm going to go make something with a garden eggplant and some red sauce and tomatoes and mozzarella and basil that I saw on a stupid reel video on Facebook. Did I get an actual recipe? Oh hell no. 

We shall see how it goes. 

Love...Ms. Moon