In the middle of the night...

Two o'clock in the morning as I type this and I'm wide awake because Savannah decided to bark for no reason that I can figure out. A trip outside to the grass only resulted in Savannah trying to catch June bugs attracted by my flash-light. That was the first time I came down the stairs. On the second trip down into the kitchen (after more barking) I discovered that Savannah had torn yet another hole in her bed so I got out the needle and thread and sewed it up.

As I'm typing now, Savannah is sound asleep but of course I'm wide awake and probably will be for the rest of the night. Fine. I've been trying to finish the latest book I've been reading anyway. Puppy time has drastically cut into reading time and I'm wondering just how many more months Savannah's schedule will over-take my own. I used to read one or two books every week and now I'm lucky to read two books a month.

Oh well. It is what it is.

So... what else is new....
I called my cousin in Arizona yesterday to wish him a happy birthday. When he picked up the phone, I heard his voice saying "This is Dave... I'm sorry but I cannot come to the phone right now because I'm just getting too old to talk to family..."  At that point, I burst out laughing because I knew that he was at the other end of the line, and we both had a good laugh. Then we realized that our generation of cousins are all older right now than our parents were decades ago when we were sitting at "the kids' table" in Grandma's kitchen. How did we get to be this 'old' so quickly?!

The flower seeds that friend C planted in our garden are just starting to come up... little green leaves have appeared, and wonder of wonders, they will be flowers, not weeds. With a little bit of luck, and a lot of C's help, we'll have zinnias and morning glories before too long, along with other plants that C will pick out and plant for us. She's waiting for the local stores to get some good annuals that won't wither and turn crispy as soon as the Texas sun re-sets itself from Spring-warm to Summer-broiling-hot.

My husband has put his tomato plants into the flower bed at the back side of the house... tomatoes surrounded by yellow marigolds. He had picked out those plants the week before Easter but then didn't put them into the ground because we had two nights when the temperature went into the mid-40s. The tomato plants were sheltered in the garage at night, then brought out into the sun during the day, then back into the garage at night. This went on for a week until he was sure that the weather had turned Spring-like and would stay there.

The wildflowers have been popping up along the side of the road and in the middle of the pastures here. Not as many bluebonnets as we've had in the past, but we think most of them are hiding in the tall grass. With all the rain that we've had this Spring, the grass grew tall very quickly and over-shadowed the bluebonnets. Still, there are brilliant patches of bluebonnets here and there, as well as the red Indian paintbrushes, and those little pink wildflowers that I believe are called Prairie Roses.

I recently looked through the pictures of our two trips to England.... to London the year before last, and a trip to The Cotswolds last year. I'd gladly go back to England again and again and never tire of the history of the city and the carefully tended beauty of the English countryside. This year, however, I've already told my husband that I don't want to travel anywhere across the Atlantic. Way too much going on over there to suit me, and all of the 'goings on' have been just hateful and pointless and sad, very sad. There are too many people in this world who have no sense of right and wrong, no standard of decency and kindness, and absolutely no regard for quality of life. The meek may indeed inherit the earth, but will that happen before or after the malevolent have destroyed it?