Monday, November 12, 2012.
Colors. It's A Monday.
The line across America showing the peak of fall foliage colors is right over the Cool Water Ranch right now. Like most of the Gulf South, we don't often get a lot of color in the fall leaves. Too many magnolias, live oaks, pines, and other greenery that either stays green or goes straight to brown after the first freeze.
However, we do have a few participants in the program. A cluster of Chinese tallowtrees that I planted as seeds about fifteen years ago are the most colorful of the trees, with day-glo red right now and most of the leaves still hanging one. The sweetgums--just beginning to turn--are nearly as colorful at the top. The sweetbay magnolias, black tupelos and the red maples are dropping lots of leaves, but showing only spotty color. (The red maples live up to their name more in the spring than the fall.)
But, as always, the most brilliant colors of all come from the poison ivy. The irony of it!
I was home alone almost all day. Both of the Marys are off for full-day business. Mary Leigh is supposed to begin an actual job, the details of which I am not allowed to record. It's a standard employment for good-looking twenty-year-old women, let's just say that. She is not exactly happy about the prospect, but she's negative on almost every activity before it begins.
My eating regime is hardly worth writing about. For lunch, a slice of leftover pizza from yesterday's dinner at Rocketfire. For dinner, a sandwich of Chisesi ham on multi-grain toast with le sauce a la Mademoiselle Canard. You know her better as Mrs. Drake, whose sandwiches were in every convenience store in the 1960s and 1970s. The standard Mrs. Drake's sandwich spread was a one-to-ten mixture of mayonnaise and mustard. It's fine for a hunger day.
