BEAUTIFUL WEATHER

The heat has finally broken and we have been having pleasant temperatures of 60's in the morning and up to 90 in the evenings. Once the sun goes down, it cools off to about 75-78, and with a light breeze it is just right for sitting on the front deck and watching the birds fly through the sprinklers. The other day Andy and I saw two quail walk across the yard.

Andy has finished building both decks, one outside of the Texas room with a boardwalk to the back patio, and one outside of the Oklahoma room. I have to say that I am very impressed with his workmanship and design. And the placement of each gives a different view at different times of the day.

We had our first real paying guest -- the guitarist Edgar Cruz from Oklahoma City. Andy had arranged for him to come to Watonga to give a benefit concert for the Cheese Festival, and we offered one of the rooms for him to stay. He stayed in the Texas room, and was complimentary when he left. He especially loved the roadrunner mosaic in the shower. After the concert, in the evening, we all sat on the back patio and drank beer and ate homemade salsa from our garden, and the salsa met the approval of both Edgar and Drew, who came to town to meet and see Edgar perform. Drew stayed until Monday, so we had a nice long weekend visit. While Drew was here, we drove to the Ringwood Winery to show him another part of this area. That winery is 40 minutes away, a pleasant drive, and is very picturesque. It has a very large building where the wine vats are kept and a separate bed & breakfast inn.

The gardens are blooming. We finally have some black-eyed susan and shasta daisies getting established. A pink hibiscus and purple verbena brighten up the front. The summer phlox and canna lillies are also in bloom. Red Turk's cap is blooming, and I planted a new pink Turk's cap that is just now putting on some buds. The Hostas will be blooming in another week or so, as they have buds on them now. And the Rose of Sharon have lots of buds just about to pop open, but the marigold are in full bloom in the bed where the irises and daylillies have already played out. I even have a single BLUEBONNET blooming in theI guess the big blooming season here is August and September! I still have lots of areas to fill up with color. I had a "vision" of where to put in a new bed in the front of the property, so I'll start on that this fall.

We've just come through about ten days of hellish weather -- over 105, even up to 109! Even though the TV stations like to focus on weather in Oklahoma, it isn't the high or low temperatures that they focus on, so I didn't even notice if we set a record this summer. The TV stations really focus on rain and thunderstorms with the potential for high winds, hail or tornados or even just severe thunderstorms. They interrupt programming to report even the slightest presence of a thunderstorms anywhere in the state! Oh well, that's my pet peave complaint for today.

Andy has been working hot and heavy on building decks outside of the two bedrooms, and will finish up this week. We are very happy with the way they turned out. He is really getting to use his creative skills in addition to his building skills and is enjoying that. In the afternoons, the front deck is shaded and comfortable, even in the middle of summer.

I've begun unpacking boxes that have been stored in the living room for the past year. We've really needed to start finding some art and decorative items for the house. Some things will have to stay in storage for a while longer, but be moved to the garage. But I've even thrown some things away! Someone asked me if our house in Texas was that much bigger, that we have a household full of things unpacked already and still have the equivalent of two garages filled with boxes. That got me thinking, because this house is really about the same size as the house in Coppell. The problem is that we had an attic (which we don't have now), three bedrooms with big closets, and living room/dining room space there that we don't have the use of here, because we can't put all of our "stuff" in the three guest rooms! Even though we have a basement here, we don't want to clutter it up with stored boxes -- because we don't want to have to move them when we remodel and use the basement. So for now we'll continue to use the garage for storage and hopefully be able to unpack more boxes from there by the end of the year.

Once the decks are completed and the living room uncluttered, we will be able to "open".

It's early July and it has been hot, hot, hot. Temperatures have hit 100 regularly over the past two weeks. But over 4th of July weekend, we had a break in the heat and wonderful light breezes in the evening of the 3rd and the 4th, when fireworks were going off. Then it got hot again. The only good thing is that it isn't as humid here as it is in North Texas. And the temperatures cool down once the sun goes down. We can still sit on the front porch after 8:00 p.m. and enjoy the birds flying through the trees and the colorful sunset.