Almost No-Coffee Muse

Weekday coffee in this house is made by my wife as she is up and out the door most mornings before I roll out at 5:30. Yesterday's coffee was a little cool by the time I sat down with my first cup and when I checked the warming plate wasn't...So I figured it was time to replace a coffee maker. Since the drip side had worked ok I figured it was just the warming plate that had died. My hope was that the coffee would brew and I would just sit it on the stove to stay warm...I warned my wife last evening we would need to be replacing the c-maker today.

This morning we both slept in but I was the first to stir. So I stumbled into the kitchen to make the pot. I poured in the water, put the coffee in the filter, turned on the pot and waited...and waited...and waited. Now I am not the one in this household who has to have that first cup before my eyes can open, though that once would have described me well. So it was off to wally world to grab a new appliance. I didn't spend a lot of time comparing features or price or anything else for that matter, I knew I was on short minutes here. I found a basic brew machine that did not have a pot. Instead it dispenses with a push bar you push your cup against. I did check to make sure my travel cup would fit before I picked it up though...I managed to pay for the new "brewstation" and get home, wash it out and make the first pot before Sherry wandered in rubbing her eyes and heading for the pot...Thank you for small favors.

I can only hope not everyones morning started out quite as hectic...Have a great weekend.

First Friday of NCMD Y2

I stood out in the backyard last evening and watched the weather light show as the severe thunderstorms moved across Houston to the north of here. Lightning rolled through the clouds over two thirds of the sky as the mockingbirds sang in the background. We were far enough away that the thunder didn't really reach us...just the light. Oh, occasionally you'd hear a low rumble from off in the distance, but there nothing coming through to match the grandeur of the lights...Sometime later in the night we must have finally received some of the rain that was in the storms since the back porch is wet this morning, but our rain didn't come with a percussion section like the rains to the north.

With a chance of rain forecast for the entire day today the prognosticators seem to thing the temperatures here will manage to stay below those in Boone and Floyd. I stay amazed at this weather year. I went out on Wednesday evening and was amazed at the relative cool as I walked along the bayou behind the house. As I did the suburban grassy thing of riding in circles on a large lawn tractor last weekend I cut my trail along the bayou, so the walk isn't the obstacle course of reaching spiked canes of rose and dewberry. Also, since the grass is short for a double mower width, you don't have to pay quite as much attention watching out for snakes. I wil be the first to admit though that in the decade and a half we have been here I've only seen two or three snakes on my walks through the woods and fields here.

The one thing I did have on that walk was my first encounter with a "wild" hummingbird. By wild I mean not near a feeder or any other human sort of habitation. Since I didn't take my binoculars I am not sure of the species as the little thing stayed a good 30 feet or more away the whole time I observed it. It flitted around for a good five minutes checking out the tops of last years dead weed stems.



Bald Cypress in fog out in backyard this week.