My big Desert Rose is in the lobby at Ivy Point Cypress. Latin name is Adenium obesum.  Here is a little history on it. I bought it from Claude Townsend in San Antonio about 2002 or perhaps a couple of years earlier. It was about 12 inches high at the time. It has lived in San Antonio, Kerrville, Boling and Cypress.  About six years ago it won Best of Show at the Wharton Garden Club annual plant show. About every two years I take it out of the pot, wash the roots and trim the limbs. After a couple of weeks, I plant it a little higher in the pot than last time to expose more of the caudex.

SHIRTS

 How many shirts does a guy need? A friend recently told me that when he retired he had over 200 shirts with collars. That amazed me greatly. Why should anyone need 200 shirts?  You could go over six months and never wear one twice or go six months without having to wash them. That would be quite a pile of laundry.

So I went to my closet and counted my shirts with collars.  SIXTY TWO.  Assuming that the shirts are equally divided between long sleeved and short sleeved, I could still go a month without wearing the same one twice. I decided to try it. But it was still late winter and early spring so I allowed myself to mix short sleeves with long sleeves. 

 

It has been fun. My shirts came from everywhere.  I might point out that I have never ironed a shirt. I have an iron and am afraid to throw it away, in case I direly need it someday. I have a couple of shirts that I have worn only once but when they came out of the washer and drier looking like crepe paper I hung them on the back hanger.

I have one from Neiman Marcus that I call my Birthday Shirt. It is not really from Neiman Marcus but that's what I tell everybody.  It is definitely one of my favorites and Only wear it once a year, party or not. Below is my Birthday Shirt.

Some of my nicest shirts came from Goodwill. There is undoubtedly a story associated with every one of them. How did this shirt get to Goodwill? Did the guy die a violent death?  Did his wife run him off and give away his shirts?  Was it a gift and he hated it?

Another problem is pockets. It is very common today for a shirt to not have pockets. I try to stay away from shirts that don't have pockets.  Where is a guy supposed to put his pen and stylus and notes and toothpicks and such. I have a few without pockets. Must were gifts. At least once I forgot to check for pockets and was surprised when I got home..  The lone exception is a shirt that  I liked so well that I bought it anyway.  It is a beautiful bright design and I decided I just had to have it. See it below. Ain't it purdy?

Well, I am on number 27 on my way to wearing a different shirt every day. I may even try for two months. But with only 62 shirts I may have to iron one. Thanks for reading. How many collared shirts do you have?
 

 

Clementine, Sir Winston's wife, was talking to a street sweeper for a while. "What did you talk about for so long?" asked Sir Winston.

She smiled, "Many years ago he was madly in love with me."

Churchill smiled ironically, "So you could have been the wife of a street sweeper today. "

′′Oh no, my love ", Clementine replied, "If I had married him, he would have been the prime minister today.

 Well, I guess I will need to change the name of this blog since I no longer live in Boling, Texas. I finally got to where the yard and garden were a little too much so I will consider this my second retirement.

Goodbye Boling. Goodbye to the place where  most everyone had a nick name. Goodbye  Booger Red, Hatchet, Hammerhead, Bones, Will Rogers, Nuts, Peckerwood, Fatty, Chick, Stogie, So So, Bunker, Bathead, Painter, Rusty, Ham, Bones, Cattle King, Boogie, Strawberry Roan, Pee Wee, Booth, Slim, Popeye, Butch, Hiney, Corky, Charlie Boy, Spider, Tubby, Coonrod, Kinky, Doc, Red, Cat, and Buckshot.  I knew them all.

My new home is a place called Ivy Point in Cypress, Texas.  

They let me fly the drone as long as I keep it out of the pool. The place sounded like a war zone on July 4.  Big city living with every store you ever heard of. A giant HEB and a giant Kroger almost within walking distance. Hundreds of restaurants to try.   

Me flying.

I am determined to update this blog more often than in the past. I will ramble on about whatever comes to mind.

JUST PLAIN NUTS

I have a little home garden where I grow tomatoes, peppers, carrots, squash, onions and a few other things including some sunflowers and zinnias.  There are plenty of weeds and bugs but nothing is worse than nut grass.

Nut grass is a sedge rather than a grass and is a huge problem here. Two years ago I declared war on nut grass.  It crowds out the vegetables and the literature says that it even gives off a growth inhibitor to inhibit growth of it competition. If you pull one up, cut it off, burn it or freeze it, it just grows more leaves from an underground nut. I had already tried that. So I conducted a few tests to try to kill it.

There are three commercial sedge killers available for home use. They are Bonide Sedge Ender, Image Nutsedge Killer and Sledgehammer sold by several suppliers. The active ingredient is different in each.  I bought a bottle of Bonide Sedge Ender.  

I picked an area with lots of nut grass and in a spot where I would not plant anything for a couple of years.  I isolated three little areas.  1. Treated with Sedge Ender.  2. Treated with Roundup.  3. Untreated control.

Results: Sedge Ender knocked them down in about three days.  Roundup did the same in about five days.  After 16 days new ones were coming up in the test area although the Roundup looked a little better. A second treatment knocked them down again but they eventually came back. FAILURE.

So I started digging them out with a shovel. By going deep I could get the nuts. I recently completed two years of digging nut grass. During that time I dug up 43,123 nut grasses.  My little round garden is about 90 feet across so that is about 6.8 nut grasses per square foot. It worked. The nut grass is well under control.  A few come up every week but I try to stay on top of them so they will not get out of hand again.  My garden this year looks better than it has ever looked. 

I don't know how high the stacks are in Newgulf. My intent was to look right into the top of one but I chickened out today. Thursday at home, I flew my Spark somewhere above 320feet and lost it in the sky. It became so tiny that after I looked away, I could not find it. I brought it down thinking I could spot it but never saw it. It landed in my field and I used GPS from an image to find it. No problem there.

With this success, I will try again. The camera took this beautiful picture.

Flying

High  with a DJI Spark