12 Oakdale

Saturday, we drove to Fort Lauderdale to see our friend Diane in  Crazy in Love , the musical production her adult theater student class put on. While she had a non-speaking part, the lead was played by Sam, a young man we knew at our old congregation. He loves to dance, sing and act, and has hopes of a career. Tough life plan. Orlando is full of those hopes, but I guess a few pan out. As a confirmed audience member, I enjoy our local theater groups having a large pool of talent to draw from. I get plenty of stage time through my EarlyBird Toastmasters group, with my (self-induced) commitment to speak and to tell a joke once a month. Frankly, telling a joke is harder for me than speaking.  But we’re there to learn and practice. The other weeks I’m happy to take whatever role is needed.  September 16th, the club is celebrating its 60th anniversary. We are invited to come as we were in 1963. Way too early for hippies: the Summer of Love wasn’t until 1967. I found an origina...

Ninety eight percent of the time I figure out the daily Wordle. I’ve only had a couple of misses, and they were when the word was like match/latch/catch/watch, and I ran out of tries before I ran through the list. Mostly I finish in 4 tries, frequently 3 or 5 tries. I don’t have a favorite beginning word. I start by thinking of a 5-letter word that represents the day. Beach or plant or sandy. Not “weedy”, because it repeats a letter, or “ homes”, because I rarely see plurals as an answer. Today, I got it in 1! First time ever. I’m not sure how or why I chose my word. What was it? “Quest”. Still wonder about it. I don’t use “qu” often.  In any case, an unexpected start for my day. Patten drove up from Fort Lauderdale, and at noon, we picked up Clara to go to the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey in Maitland. At the Orange Audubon fundraising auction, I’d won the bid for a training session with Uff-da, a black vulture who lives at the center. I’d bought it as a birthday present for Cl...

Dang, it’s hot. Yesterday, our thermometer sensor on the boathouse got to 99°. And not a cloud in the sky. I’ve restarted sprinkling every morning, but the plants don’t seem to notice. By 7:30-8:00, I’m out working in the yard and quit at 10:00. My clothes are soaked, not just sweated on. When I take off my shirt, it’s so wet, it seems like it just came out of the washing machine. Even my belt is wet.  I’ve given up on the vegetable garden. There are 2 eggplants left, and I don’t see any more forming. The okra gave up after producing a couple of pods. The one bright spot is my southern peas, which our resident marsh hare has been eating. A couple of days ago, Grant restrung the monofilament lines to create bunny-proof fencing. The peas are coming back, so perhaps it’s working. Or the rabbit doesn’t like that I’ve cleaned out the huge patch of Spanish needle (Bidens alba)  that was its cover right next to my garden. Question: why don’t marsh hares eat that? It’s a native, alway...