The Blackburn Digest

Hehe, sorry about that - ‘fraid I couldn’t resist! In the face of record (and seemingly endless) rainfall here in San Antonio, with rushing cataracts within view beyond our fence and a veritable torrent flowing behind our daughter’s home, words from the safety drill aboard the good ship Mercury spring to mind!

I didn’t intend to post anything about the current weather mess here in south-central Texas. . . .it’s wet and monotonous , but both houses will remain above the flood waters, Thomas’ route to work & market seems to be remaining passable and we are far better off than many in Texas and Southern England. However, Katie Couric keeps mentioning the storms and showing photos of the flooding, making it necessary for me to post “O.K. so far!”

The notices arrived several days ago; this week is the scheduled semi-annual City Brush Pick-Up for our part of town. The piles of brush & tree limbs (some of them impressively high) have been appearing apace, attesting to our neighbors’ industry. Tom got busy this Saturday; with clippers and limb saw (and valuable assistance from our daughter and 3 1/2 month old grand-daughter), he gave our crepe myrtles and redbud trees a much needed grooming and constructed a rather impressive brush pile of our very own. Of course, here in Texas, “brush” is understood to be a very broad and flexible term - it seems to include any and all old, broken or replaced items one might ever find in or around a domicile. Broken fencing, rusty tricycles, defunct water heaters and the like have been joining the leaves and limbs in curbside piles. These nagging visual cues finally prompted me to suggest something rash & foolish, not to mention physically challenging; we should spend Sunday attempting the first in-depth clean-up our *two-car* garage has received in 20 + years!