May 09: Hudson Gardens (Part 1: Flowers)

I took enough pictures it was worth splitting it into two posts. :) This post is just for the flowers.

This was a bit too early for most things to be blooming (our usual frost-free date is Mother's Day, so annuals weren't planted yet, and things like lilacs seem to be a touch late this year.) But what there was was very nice!

They did have some pansies!

I should have taken a picture of the apparatus as a whole, but the planter has a pair of kaleidoscopes pointed at it. (It's very steampunk-looking.) You can look through the kaleidoscopes and turn them as well as the planter itself. It's very cool!

The pansies through the kaleidoscope.

There were many trees still blooming, many of which smelled wonderful! This was definitely the most intense and flower-laden.

Some nice irises over by the admin building.

This is a nostalgic flower for me - a huge section of our front garden had these grown wild. My mom took one with her when we moved, but it died a few winters ago. We always called them "blue lace", and I forget what their actual name is. They aren't forget-me-nots, though they look a little similar.

Their cafe was open, so we stopped and had some coffee (for Alex) and a smoothie (for me.) Very good, and a lovely day to get to sit outside for a while.

Another pink flowering tree.

Very ruffly pink flowers.

A waterfall along the stream and "mountain" section.

And a lovely purple iris.

Post two will have all the animals we saw - bees, fish, turtles, a frog. (Also lots of birds, but failed to get good pictures of them.)

It was a very nice walk, though unfortunately Alex was in a lot of pain from the disk issues in his neck, and I came away with a *really* bad sunburn. (Didn't think about the fact that the sunscreen was back at our apartment until we'd already gotten there. I need to start keeping it in the car. Ouch.)

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Looks lovely! It's neat that they had a kaleidoscope.

Too bad it didn't feel nice by the end.

It was a very nice walk, and it is a lovely place. The kaleidoscope is really cool. Last time we went, the planter was empty, so I was very glad it had flowers to play with this time.

Though the sunburn is... not fun. A couple tiny blisters today. And Alex's poor neck is just a fucking mess.

Such gorgeous flowers! I'm partial to the irises, but they are all so pretty.

Thank you! I do love irises. I hope my mom's come up soon at her house - she has lovely blue-purple ones that were her grandfather's, that she's moved to every new house she's lived in.

nice

Thank you!

They're all so beautiful! And the flowers+kaleidoscope thing is really neat.

Thank you! I love the kaleidoscope planter! It's a fun thing for them to have, and not the type of thing I think I've seen elsewhere.

So much color! Such pretty flowers! I love them. Other than the day I got the wildflower photos when I was out with my sister, I really have had no desire to take photos of anything in Texas anymore. If we go down to Corpus one more time before we move, we'll take a trip out to the beach, and I'll take photos there. But really. Ugh. I'm just so done with everything here, and now that we're getting into the hot parts of summer (already), nothing is interesting or pretty enough to take photos of.

It was so pretty! Thank you! I'm sorry TX is so... uninspiring. I hope you do get a chance to go to Corpus for a last visit, and beach pictures would certainly be nice. But I don't blame you for not being excited about your surroundings. I know the move can't come soon enough!
(Though the bluebells are genuinely gorgeous.)

The move can't come soon enough, but it's been pushed back until next year because Kathy doesn't feel like she can leave while Linda has so many health issues to deal with and can't drive herself to her doc visits because she's not supposed to be driving anymore (she has sleep episodes while driving of the nature where she's technically awake but not and has almost caused two wrecks going into Austin). So I'm stuck here until early next year, but hopefully not much past that. Kathy still hopes that we can leave here by August, but I don't know that that'll happen. Ugh.

I'm sorry the move has gotten pushed back. :/

It's sucky that you're being held captive by Linda's inability to take care of herself. That's... unfair of me. Health things suck, and that is a very legitimate reason for her not to be driving! But... it also doesn't seem like her health stuff is going to improve, so I'm afraid that if that's the reason you can't leave, that it will *always* be the reason you can't leave. :/ Though I certainly hope that's not the case, and that you really do get out of there by next year at the latest.

No, thankfully, Kathy has made it clear to me that she's not going to string me along on the moving thing. See, Linda can't drive because she's been having mini-sleep episodes when she's driving - the kind where her eyes are open but her brain is just not engaged - and she's almost caused two wrecks going into Austin when she had to go back to work in office two days a week. Part of what they're dealing with is that she'd been working from home since pandemic and doing well with it. Well, Joe is on permanent work from home because he actually gets much more work done that way, and they're cool with it. Linda tried to get that, too, when they started pushing for her to go in (she's over 70 with health issues out the ass but they were still being douchy to her to go in). She's gone down to part time that she works from home and eventually, she knows that they'll just let her go. She's using up all her FMLA to get doc visits covered, but she hasn't been there long enough to actually collect full retirement. Working for the State is not what they kept pushing it to be when they kept pushing me to apply. Oh you want me to be treated like shit like you two? Gee, thanks.

But because of those mini-episodes, she's not supposed to be driving. The doc even said that, and the State doesn't give a fuck and won't make it easier for her to work from home anymore other than what she's working it out part time until her FMLA is through. Joe can only take so much time off to drive her to appts, so Kathy doesn't feel like she can leave until these first rounds of Linda's kidney and heart appts are taken care of, and she thinks that by that point, Joe should be in a better position to take her when she needs - or that she should be able to reach out to someone else.

Kathy REALLY wants to move, too, so she doesn't want to string this along forever. Plus, I think she realizes that if she does, I'll just try and talk to one of my friends over there about helping me move out there and letting me stay with them until I've got a job and can afford my own place that'll take me and Darji. Kathy knows that I'm not going to stay here forever; I think she realizes that I would deteriorate pretty fast if that happened.

I'm very glad that she has an end date (even if it's a slightly flexible one) in mind. It is very true that Linda shouldn't be driving with those kinds of issues, and that getting to those appointments is important!
State jobs seem like they can be really good, if you have the *right* state job, but the best benefits can be hard to actually get access to, and unsurprisingly the bureaucracy can be the absolute worst. I'm glad you never wound up in such a shitty job!

I hope that she and Joe don't try to pull any guilting bullshit when Kathy stops being the always-available ride and does need Joe (or someone else) to step up and take over. I know that the guilting is effective on Kathy.

It's definitely understandable that she wants to leave them in a good - or at least better - position, as long as it doesn't turn into one reason after another to delay the move! You need to get out of there, for your own wellbeing.

May 09: Hudson Gardens (Part 1: Flowers)

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