Summertime

This weekend was mostly spent getting household stuff done along with cleaning, shopping, and MrB doing yard work. Decided to take the plunge and replace our 13 year old mattress. It seemed OK to us, but I think all the mattress commercials we see have finally gotten to us - it was not so much the mentions of the dust mites but it was the dust mite feces grossout ads that gave us the willies and made us go shopping.

Also finally took down the last of 3 cat-ruined miniblinds in the bedroom and replaced it with another old-fashioned room-darkening vinyl shade (with sheers in front). I'll tell you what, those things have made a noticeable difference in reducing the heat levels in our poor unfortunate upstairs westward-facing windows.

You gotta either beat the heat, or embrace it. Here are some July scenes from this Central Texas backyard. I love love love the crape myrtle blossoms that are filling up the paths right now. Beauties.

This guy was flitting around everywhere. I don't know if he/she is alone. Best I can tell, it's a blue mud-dauber wasp (this one seems to be living in the ground in the garden path) of the type that likes to hunt spiders. Go for it girlfriend! What a beauty. I will give her a wide berth though, and plenty of room to stretch out.
This is a spiny fence lizard, the lizards are getting bigger around here now that there are fewer neighborhood cats.
And here's the sunflower harvester. Even after that many sunflowers are removed, it hardly makes a dent in them. I feel itchy just looking at him.