Doing some yard work. And pond work.
I’ve emptied the saltwater tank and system in favor of a freshwater planted tank—which is developing very prettily. Mostly danios and tetras and angelfish—I’d forgotten what little hams and prima donnas angels are. They have NO fear—rush to your hand in the theory food might happen. Love them.
Otherwise Jane’s working on another Alliance book and I’m working on the next Bren book, after which we’ll switch, in due time. And switch again.
We’re in mild weather for August, while the rest of the country swelters. And poor Maui! But it’s nice to get out and work with the pond. I’m able to do some yard work now—found some clippers that work for me, and I’m hell on overgrowth. The place looked like a jungle after 3 years of neglect—and we’re at it with a vengeance.
We’re looking for a high of 103F today. At 42% humidity, which is high for us. Think I’ll stay indoors. Saw on Amazon where there’s a drop date on “Defiance.” I need to preorder.
So glad you and Jane are able to get out and work in the garden, just do mind the heat and try to stay hydrated. I have an indoor garden. People keep giving mom “grocery store” orchids, and when all the blooms fall off, I end up with them — I repot them in proper pots, give them adaptive equipment (containers of water for their roots to find — orchids are native to jungles. It’s semiarid here. They need way more water than they can get from the atmosphere here. ), etc. I’ve got three so far. Those and an antherium, an arrowhead plant and a Christmas cactus, all of which need repotting, are all the garden I can come up with. The one orchid I’ve had the longest started blooming in March and is still at it! (Of course, with your background in classical languages, you will know what “orchid” means in ancient Greek — which is why I call the white one “Mr. Ball.”)
I live in a “retirement community.” The community mgmt rents several really nice aquariums from a service and they are dotted about through the three buildings. (There’s a “condo” building for “retirees” which has larger “condo” apartments, an apartment building with smaller apartments for the independent folks –where I live, an assisted living section, and a skilled nursing facility/rehab building where mom lives, all on one campus.) The aquarium rental people come out and maintain them. They do a good job as near as I can tell.
The temperature have been down to around 100F lately! so much better than the upper one hundred teens.
Fall is a welcome site before us.
May I recommend NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center site for seasonal outlooks: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/90day/
Mind you this is climate, not weather; trends, not occurrences. Overall, it appears much of the country will be warm and dry, if anything.
And just to make life really interesting, southern California is in the path of a soon-to-be tropical storm (currently a Cat-4 hurricane). My area is expecting at least 2 inches of rain, just on Sunday, with some before and after, plus possible T-storms.
They’re closing Death Valley, which is going to get more than 4 inches. The storm is forecast to go pretty much straight north from San Diego into central Nevada.
The last time this happened was in 1939.
Good luck to all. May you get safely through the storm… and then may your desserts bloom.
ReadyGuy and I hope you two are safe from the fires burning in the Spokane Valley. Stay safe.
Has anybody heard from Chondrite? I believe she’s in Maui, her guy is an astronomer at the observatories at the top of Haleakala.
Thank you for the good thoughts, although DH is computer repair; the tame astrophysicist who works for the Institute for Astronomy is our friend and fellow gamer.
That said, we sorta dodged a bullet, although we are wondering if we are harbingers of doom: 48 hours after we left for our vacation in the national parks of Colorado and Utah, Maui caught on fire. Our [i]ohana[/i], our house and our respective businesses came through okay, but Lahaina, a major town with a lot of Hawaiian history, disappeared in a firestorm of Dresden-like proportions, where cars melted and only shells of buildings remain. Other fires broke out under the urging of 80 mph winds and torched large swaths upcountry, but luckily not much inhabited area. Many of DH’s Lahaina clients got burned out, both businesses and homes, and hundreds of people are missing. Because we were staying in National Parks, cell and wi-fi service were poor and the first we heard about the disaster was a text from our housesitter, asking if there was anything she should save in case of evacuation! We made it home just before Hilary closed airports from Mexico north to LA (PJ’s tropical storm), then came the 5.1 earthquake in Southern CA…
Maui is a mess, and probably will be for months if not years to come; I can’t adequately describe the chaos. We have looters and opportunistic vultures scavenging the remains. Although FEMA, the Red Cross, and other organizations are trying to help, there are mixed signals and confusion about how to support the suffering people and communities. There is a domino effect for people who have lost not only homes but livelihoods; DH worries about having a third of his clients gone (several of them are using his shop’s upstairs to set up remote work sites, and several people camped there for the first few days.) We can only hope for the resiliency to weather this.
Whew, glad to hear it, though it doesn’t sound so good that your house-sitter had to ask what to grab before running! I can see it’s going to take decades to recover, major undertakings just to get materials and construction workers on the island. Even then, one doesn’t build a proper city overnight. Hope they rebuild Lahaina in a memory of what it was.
Thank you for posting, Chondrite, I was worried with the awful news from Lahaina.
With how tremendously fast that fire came down I’m grateful so many people got out safely, but so many people didn’t, and the ones who did still lost so much, including irreplaceable history.
I’m very thankful you and your family and your home came through okay.
So glad to hear you’re ok…as ok as one can be under such circumstances. Hugs. Big hugs.