Notes from the Spring Creek Arts Guild

The day this newspaper comes out, June 21, will be summer solstice—the first day of summer and the longest day of the year with 14 hours and 11 minutes between sunrise and sunset. As you know, it has already been really hot and is supposed to be even hotter this week. I saw on the news a couple of days ago that the temperatures in South Texas are expected to hit 120 Fahrenheit. I am praying that this is a freaky week and not the trend for the rest of the summer. We here in Spring Creek have been very dry, having received only four and a half inches of rain so far this year. Others in the county have been far more blessed with rain.

I am already going out early in the morning and late in the evening to enjoy some outdoor time and to take care of any outside chores. The entire rest of daytime hours are spent hunkered down inside hoping the air conditioning holds out for the season….

The Agony and the Ecstasy

and thanking God that we have electricity and air conditioning.

The snakes that have been absent since the winter storm a year and half ago have reappeared. I have found two rat snakes in the henhouse, one hog-nosed snake snugged up against the front porch, a coachwhip in the corner of the office porch, and a rattlesnake between the air conditioner compressor and the side of the house. We are a family of wildlife biologists, so we relocate some snakes and only “dispatch” the venomous snakes that we find around the house area. The rat snakes get relocated far, far away as they love to eat eggs.

But I will be fair and balanced. I go out in the mornings and evenings to water my garden, pick some vegetables, and admire my flowers. I was able to get some giant sunflowers to grow this year, and every stage of their life has been beautiful, and they have not even bloomed yet. The backyard shower has been re-commissioned and is once again making a routine practice truly sublime. Summer also calls for lots of linen for me, and the hiding from the heat inside has meant that I have spent more time sewing. Finally my closet has more me-made clothes than bought clothes. I am still busy trying to dial in the fit on some basic patterns, hoping that I can use those as a basis for some creativity. As I type this, I look out the window and see our summer avian residents—hummingbirds, summer tanagers, painted buntings, scissortails, and many others.

Still, I saw an instagram post yesterday that made me want to go buy a lottery ticket—a small farm on a fjord in Norway—only $112,000 dollars. In reality I have had this all worked out in my head for years. I have a plan in place for when (ha!) I win the lottery (that I very seldom buy a ticket for)—I will rent a place somewhere cool, a different place every summer. That way there will be no maintenance and upkeep headaches. Ah, what a dream!