Shelter from a Storm

I’ve been having a little war with a family/flock of barn swallows since I got here. They want to nest on the front porch, and I don’t want them there. I have a personal problem with swallows since when I was a teenager and a bunch of them dove at me and started pulling my hair as I walked home from work. For tonight I called off the war.

Something hit the window, I don’t know what, but it was about that time I started hearing the birds making a lot of noise. I also noticed the clouds. I checked the forecast and sure enough we were in for a bad storm. Those swallows and some sparrows were having a disagreement about which of them was going to take shelter here. The swallows had won a battle with a bat a few weeks earlier, so a few sparrows were not much more of a problem. The fledgling swallows were the first to take a place on the ledge under the roof. Their parents settled in soon after. The wind gusts were powerful, the thunder and lightning terrible, and the rain torrential, but that made no difference to the swallows. They sat on that ledge, apparently sleeping, during the entire storm.

Just before the rain actually ended I opened the door and took a picture of them. They didn’t even move then! A little later, I opened the door and just watched them, a couple of them watched me right back. I told them they could stay the night. They have to leave in the morning though, we don’t want them nesting there. I don’t think they believed me. We’ll see if I have to call the war with the swallows back on again tomorrow. But for tonight, they can have their shelter from the storm.

Long HOT Days

I doubt the heat would be getting to me as much as it is if it weren’t for the humidity here. The days start out no cooler than about 78 and go up to close to 100 with a “feels like 110” showing on the forecast most of the time. That’s not such a big deal, normally, but with the new meds I’m on and the humidity here, it is taking it’s toll. Right now I don’t know if it was the heat, or the new med or just a bad night but I woke up burning up. It felt like it was 90 in the room, and I have the AC set at 75! I had a killer bear of a headache and just wanted to SLEEP. Managed to down some Tylenol equivalent but found myself suddenly violently ill. Nothing I had for dinner was staying put. It was NOT a good night! I’m really hoping it was the heat not the new medicine! Finally found something that works on the Fibromyalgia for me!

This morning I got up a little earlier than usual. Tourmaline MUST go outside at 6:30 am. That’s all there is to it. Today that was a good thing, because I’m taking my son’s car in for an oil change at 9. I got a bath after taking care of the dogs and am sitting here with a bowl of instant oatmeal and a glass of Ovaltene. I’ll probably also grab a banana before leaving.

When I get home I’ll probably have to change to shorts and a tank top. I was outside a bit ago to take the trash to the street and noticed this short sleeved top and tan slacks were a bit warm for the day already. It wasn’t even 8 am yet! When I took the dogs out for the last time last night it was still 85 out there, at midnight. Thank goodness for a well functioning air conditioner! I don’t think I would survive long at all if it broke down!

At home in Washington, there are few nights when we can’t open the windows for a few hours in summer at night. I would open them when I go to bed, and close them again when I get up. I cannot do that here, because the heat from the day stays overnight. It definitely isn’t the same heat in Texas that I am used to on the desert side of Washington state.

I don’t know when or if I will be able to mow the lawn in the next few days. It is already too hot when I get up at 6:30 and doesn’t cool down in the evenings. When am I supposed to be able to mow? Maybe this evening, if I eat first and stop for water breaks a lot, I might be able to do the lawn, it desperately needs it! Thankfully there are fewer and fewer weeds every week because of TruGreen’s care for the lawn. But they don’t mow. They put down stuff to kill weeds and fertilizer to get that grass growing. Well that St Augustine grass is growing, and it is doing what it is supposed to do and starting to choke out some of the weeds. I’ll keep trying to get water to all of the lawn and hopefully, by the time my son gets home from Iraq, the lawn will look fantastic!

From what I understand, this weather normally lasts into October, maybe a few degrees cooler then, but not a lot. I guess that means more staying in the house as much as possible, sewing, cross-stitching, playing computer games, and doing crafts and stuff, and playing with the dogs. I only do the gardening when the evening breeze kicks up and the sun is going down. Too bad I end up spending a lot of time outside with the dogs because Tourmaline goes out on a leash most of the time. The last couple days she has voluntarily gone into the kennel with my son’s two big dogs. She was afraid to for a while because she kept getting stepped on. she hates the leash more than she hates being stepped on, I guess.

Long hot days of Summer, just something else I wasn’t as prepared for as I thought when I came here to house sit. I will certainly be glad to go home in a few months. They are having an extremely unnaturally COOL summer there!