The Caregiver’s Tales: A Blog

Yesterday I went digging around in the archives of the Houston Chronicle, and there was my work from fifty-six years ago. The writings of a young man who knew nothing, but felt that he knew everything, or at least everything worth knowing. I was an older college student at least six years behind my contemporaries from high school who had graduated college well before I became serious about university life.

Frank Beard, the drummer for ZZ Top, passed away. And as often happens with memorials like this, it will be more about me than him because I only knew him personally for the briefest of moments in the early 70s. We were all young men when I interviewed Frank and his bandmates for a profile in the Houston Chronicle’s Zest Magazine. They were one album into their career.

There are times in my gardens when I just let the plants do what the plants want to do, and this includes those plants we might call weeds. For instance, in the front yard by the big oaks, I’ve let the bindweed bind, and it’s traveled up into some low hanging branches on one of the big oaks. I actually think it looks good, which is a nice excuse for not pulling it down.

When I was at Seminole Canyon State Park recently I saw an exhibit that featured the local people hunting. They were chasing a rabbit, barefoot, across the arid land that surrounds the park. Given the number of prickly plants in the park, I wouldn’t run through it with boots on and wearing long pants. But there they were, chasing dinner, barefoot.

One of these days I might spend some time cataloging the spiders who call my place home. I saw a new one this morning on the screen door. One I’d never seen before, a crab spider, of the genus Xysticus. According to the Wikipedia page about them, they’re ambush hunters, which means no webs to grab me in the dark. I have no idea what he thought he might find on the screen, but I’m guessing he was going somewhere else and merely stopped to rest.

Power washed the porches yesterday. That was a loud, noisy mess. But now everything looks spic and span. The next step is to get on a ladder and clean off the remnants of the old swallow nests. Of course I’m not supposed to do ladders. So, maybe I should try the high-pressure nozzle on the washer. Or maybe I can use a brush on an extension. Or maybe doing nothing is a good option. I like having choices.

I’m obsessed with knick-knacks these days. I’m at a stage in my life where I’m taking stock, so it’s one of the things I’m counting. We have lots of them. Little things that sit on shelves, counters, tabletops and dressers. Ornamentals. Dust catchers. Mementos. Whatever you want to call them we have them. Sometimes they even masquerade as collectibles, a thing of value.

The hot summer mornings are upon us. Luckily, they didn’t come until August. Of course, they might now stay through October, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take as if I had anything to do with it. I suppose it’s worth noting that I’m back in the Hill Country where the humidity is a tad bit higher than it was on top of the Marathon uplift. Being nearly a mile high helps to keep things cool at night.