BUGS ON A TOMATO BUSH

I found these bugs on one of my tomato plants a couple of days ago. I haven't looked them up to identify them yet, but I am certain they were up to no good. I went in and got the spray bottle of soapy water and doused them and all the surrounding leaves and branches. It seems to have done the trick.
Hopefully we'll be getting lots of rain from Hurricane Dolly in the next day or two. The garden is dry.

MORE GEOCACHING

The boys and I went to Beeville and did some more geocaching today. It was a fairly quick trip, though, because Zach had an awards banquet tonight in Refugio. We went after three of them, but because I ended up not looking at or printing out the GPS coordinates or clues for one of them, we only found two.

Our last geocache stop was at this cemetery, where Mathieu and I looked at some old family graves, while Zachary honed in on the geocache. I told Mat who they were and a family story or two about some of them.


Aunt Lela, my grand-mother's sister died when I was a baby. But she is still remembered today in so many family stories. She was very witty, with a really wonderful sense of humor and fun. She contributed many original sayings and jokes that continue on in the family to this day.


Jake, her only child, died when he was six years old.
Henry Ryan would be Mathieu's great-great-great-great-grandfather.
And a shot of the second found geocache of the day.

After that we drove by the park where the new walking trail is. I can't remember the name of the park at the moment, but they have been really developing it lately, and are still doing more to it. It looks pretty nice, and I hope we can go there in the late afternoon one day soon.

TEXAS SPINY LIZARD

This is what lay in our path as Lydia, Mary, Annie and I came back down the walkway from the far side of the classroom building. I looked it up, and it looks to be a Texas Spiny Lizard. He or She was about 10 or 11 inches long. I've been seeing more of these lately.
We all went to Papa's for a catfish lunch. After that, I came home, and since I had insomnia the night before, and got only, maybe 4 hrs. of sleep, I was really considering a nap, even though I hate naps. But then Stewart called me on my cell phone asking why I hadn't answered my other phone calls (house phone) and multiple texts. The connection was bad, but he said he was on some kind of transport to Dubai for a short vacation and needed me to wire money from his account to someplace there. I am not good with these kinds of things, but for whatever reason, it has to go through Western Union. So I drove to the next town, to the bank and then to HEB to send it. That is always a huge hassle. Fortunately today I did have someone who actually knew how to do it and amazingly could send the whole amount at once. Well, not the person who was waiting on me, but someone in the office who she could consult with constantly. Unfortunately, it took about an hour, with me standing there, filling out papers, them looking things up in their policy and instruction manuals, and then! me having to have a 25 minute interview over the phone with the most soft-spoken, long-winded foreign person, I have ever talked to. I could barely hear her, and only about half the time, over the supermarket noises. Finally, she got all the info she needed, and hung up to run it all through the database and see if it checked out. Which it did, so finally - with only having to fill out the forms 3 times, to correct them 3 different ways, the money was sent. At least I didnt get the run-around this time about only being able to wire a much smaller amount of money at one time, and with a 3 day wait between sends. So I guess it was worth it not to have to come hassle with them every few days to send more. By that time, Stewart's small vacation would be over anyway.
So I got a few groceries, and came home. As soon as I parked in the driveway, the earpiece from one side of my glasses came loose. The screw was nowhere to be found, and I am really, really blind without glasses. After carrying everything in, I got the glasses repair kit from the cabinet, and HOPED there was a screw left in there that would fit. Well, there is no way I can even see the screws, much less the holes without glasses, so I gave up and took the whole thing over to Reagan's and had him look at it. Unbelievably, there was a screw that would work! So I am very grateful to have my glasses together and be able to see again.
While in line at HEB, a geocacher I am acquainted with got in line behind me. We re-introduced ourselves and she encouraged me to do some caching there around town for some of her caches. So tomorrow, I think Zach, Mathieu and I will go look for two or three of them. She and I compared notes and laughed at our differences in preference of geocaching vs. letterboxing. She enjoys the mystery of the location and the search, using a GPS for guidance, while I prefer the art of the handcarved stamps, the keeping of an interesting logbook and word clues.

GEOCACHING

Zach had been asking about going letterboxing or geocaching recently, so when he asked earlier in the week, I remembered getting an email notice of four nearby caches. I much prefer letterboxes over geocaches, but there are few letterboxes in the area. Anyway, Zach loves using the GPS.
I took a photo of the boys next to the old calaboose on the Museum property. I really like that window. Note the GPS in Zach's hand. He didn't turn loose of it the whole time.
And here he is with a micro-geocache, before returning it to it's hiding place. We had a really good time.