Another month flying by...

.... and July will be over in a heartbeat. Friends here have already begun to ask me if we're hosting a Halloween party this year, and I told them we would.  There's already been talk of costumes, and planning has begun for the costume contest. Such pressure.... to find a First Place costume prize worthy of such long-range planning.

Handyman R is still hard at work in the flowerbeds.... trimming and weeding and mulching, all in this blessed heat. It was 102 yesterday, and probably near or over that today, and as I type, he's out there working. One of the tea ladies told me yesterday that I'm spoiling the handymen who come here because I'm always bringing them cold water and iced tea.  (As if I should let them work outside in the heat without having cold water or tea?)  "Let them bring their own.... I'm not their mama," said G.  Well, I'm  not their mama either, but the thought of them falling face-down into the mulch is not what I want happening out there on our property. So if that's 'spoiling' them, I'm guilty as charged.

Plans are being made for a moving-away party for our friend across the road who has sold her house.... she's moving up near Austin, to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren.  By the time Labor Day rolls around, the new people will have moved into her house over there and we'll all get to meet them. I'll be inviting the wife to the Wednesday tea parties.... and both of them to the Halloween and Christmas parties.  We're all hoping that S can take time to drive down from Austin for some of the tea parties, and join us for the holiday parties. I'm sure the husbands here are hoping for the same.... S is the best baker around, so the dessert bar has been raised very high over these past years.

And there's a very small house down the road which has new people in it now, and I've just gone down there to say hello and invite that wife to the tea parties.  So we'll have a couple of new faces at the dining room table when our Waldorf Wednesdays resume in mid-August.  Hopefully, by then, the temperatures will have cooled down to the mid-90s instead of these 100+ days we've been having lately.