Cicadas and cough syrup

I was out in the garden/weed patch this afternoon, whacking the weeds away from the beans, when something rattled and buzzed LOUDLY underfoot. After I came down, I poked in that direction with the hoe, expecting a snake or something of that nature. Instead a large portly bug zoomed away, zigging and zagging as if drunk, buzzing loudly. Cicada! They just started calling yesterday, and I'd seen their exit cones in the cracks of the sidewalks at the post office. I laughed and moved on, only to startle up two more. It may be a very loud year.


Punkin has been struggling with a cough for several weeks--it finally started to break and we were trying to find her a cough syrup without all the tylenol in it, just an expectorent, which is hard. I remembered the brown bottle of my childhood. It sat on the shelf in my parents bedroom, and was only invoked for serious coughing. It had codeine in it, which sounded terribly nasty, and it lived up to our imagination and then some. It tasted horrible, smelt even worse, and burned your throat as went down. It was enough to scare you well again, and if you couldn't avoid it, you wished you would just die and be done. Seemed like that bottle never got empty over the years, and it finally occurred to me that my mother must have refilled it with whiskey as it got low. Parenting was certainly different when I was young!

Late afternoon beads

The cat smells like garlic

I think he must be nibbling on the tops---it's laid out everywhere downstairs to dry. He jumped in my lap, & I thought, boy he smells good.....WAIT A MINUTE!

Le buns are getting a new cage this week, their accomodations aren't exactly five star at the moment, though they don't seem to mind. As hot as it's been, we've been giving them the frozen water jug and they love it.
Gabe is exremely curious, he'll bow and carry on outside their run, and they of course loftily ignore him.

Con has been so sick, none of us have been sleeping well the last couple nights, she coughs so much. It's finally beginning be productive, and she's taking great pleasure in hacking and spitting.....I've been sleeping with one eye open, she's slightly sleep-deprived and that always leads to sleepwalking with her. Usually in search of the bathroom, and she generally wanders into our room and starts to sit down on the edge of our bed. Not a good thing.

Hot one

It's going to be a hot one today, for us anyway.
Supposed to be 101, according to Wunderground, and we're always slightly more extreme right here....their 20 below is our 30 below on the front porch.

There's a heat haze already, looking to the east, I can barely see the bluffs.
We watered everything last night, so this should be a day of growth. The cilantro is almost done blooming, with green seeds everywhere. I walked along the sidewalk and I could smell it, aromatic in the sun. After pacing it off, I discovered I have approximately a 3 x 30 ft patch of it. From one small row last year. I suspect it has potential to be invasive, but I'll take cilantro over dandelions and prickly lettuce any day!

Appreciate

Appreciate your servicemen and women today....and every day, not just the legal holiday. Take a moment to thank one if you can. As the saying goes, "Freedom isn't free" and their lives are the payment for our freedom, and our childrens. They've been killed and injured for our sakes, and if the war was unpopular, had public sentiment against them when they returned. No soldier gets to pick and choose, and if the war or the action was unpopular, it was never their choice.

July free beads

are up finally. Now no one has to worry about getting a free dog instead of beads!

If you were wondering, these are the bonus beads for any order of $50 or more on Etsy this month, also available separately.

Ahhh...

fresh garlic! I've been sneaking around the garlic patch, wondering if I could hear them growing under there or if they're all done.
Finally decided to dig one bulb of each, just to check progress, you understand. The Chesnok Red is truly impressive. The bulb I dug was large and beautiful, with lots of cloves, 8-10 of them. I chopped about half the cloves in fairly large pieces and spread them in a baking pan, laid chicken on top, sprinkled with Argyle St seasoning and baked til done. The garlic was soft and spreadable, so we spread it on the chicken as we ate.

Hubby, who does not like onions or garlic, was amazed at how good it was. Forget sharing the garlic this year, I think!


In bead news, I have a bunch of listings for the weekend over on Etsy. It's been a while since I really put a lot of stuff up at once, but we have a broken water line that needs fixed soonest, the water bill is steadily rising...