Another day, another couple of dollars … well, actually considerably more than a dollar, since the escrow on the three acres of howling wilderness that I despaired of ever selling closed on Friday, the buyer loves the property madly – and the down payment will be wired to my account sometime today. So that’s one less worry off my mind, and a few steps closer to my longed-for Hill Country retreat. I have two books coming down the home stretch for the Tiny Publishing Bidness, another one to start on as soon as the client finishes tweaking his manuscript … personally; we’re on pretty solid ground this year, much better than last year or the year before. I’ve got my own next book to launch at this year’s Weihnachtsmarkt, and the next one to start – that’ll be the re-envisioned Lone Ranger, sans mask, silver bullets, white hat, and the William Tell Overture, but with the Indian pal and an exciting series of adventures to come.

This week – the new HVAC system. The electric bill the last two months was well north of $200, where heretofore the summer CPS bill was around $150. No, this will not go on, and the offered rebates will make it well worth a new system. It may have cooled off now, but there is always next simmer … or summer. Whatever.

Later on – new windows. Also with an eye to reducing the electric bill In a couple of months, the trees around the place are also going to get radically trimmed. When the CPS crew trimmed the big mulberry in the back yard a couple of years ago, they basically butchered it. The tree near as dammit came close to dying – and there are some dead branches, even though the rest of it has staggered back to some kind of arboreal health. Still – the main branches need to be cut back into a nice fan shape, so that next spring the tree will look like one big fat green lollipop of a tree. This, according to the friendly neighborhood tree guy, who is a full-time tree specialist for one of the school systems and has a nice little business on the side – will best be done after the leaves fall. The leaves haven’t fallen from the mulberry yet. Also, there are a couple of junk trees which need to go, and the red-tipped photina by the front door, which the original owner seems to have intended as a shrub, but is now a great messy, many-stemmed thing that sheds copious numbers of dead black leaves year round – that will go entirely. Whatever they need to do to kill the photina entirely is just jake with me.
I might not have my perfect patch of Hill Country paradise yet … but I can at least improve this little suburban patch. This is what it looked like last summer, by the way. Behold, the splendid hanging gardens of Spring Creek Forest!