So many trees are dying — flat-out falling over. Driving to uvalde to do my shopping I pass a small deserted ranch/farm house with three very tall pecan trees, one of which is dead and the others getting that way. Somebody owns that land, couldn’t they just water those wonderful tall trees once in a while? It’s infuriating.

But —- in the photo of my blue cattle-tank swimming pool you can see beyond it the trunk of one of my Spanish oaks that fell over. Actually it split in half. This was while the leaves were all green. I had watered it enough, or so I thought. Who knows.

Working on the sequel to Lighthouse Island and loving it. Haven’t ridden for a month almost except just here around the house, none of the girls are riding, too hot,maybe in a couple of weeks.

This is The Slot, the narrow channel between Lennard Island and its tiny apprendage island. I was going to use this more in Lighthouse Island, an early draft had somebody falling into it, but then decided that didn’t work. But it’s interesting; the tide charges through twice a day at full rip, one way and then the other way.

Working on the sequel to LI, have been looking up train-hopping videos on YouTube. There is quite a little society of train-hoppers.

Drought still very bad, today it will hit 102, the Indigo was on my back porch this morning. Chased him away. Don’t want to go out and step on a five-foot black snake with a cup of coffee in my hand.

Once a day I turn on the spray for the birds, even though we are supposed to be conserving water. The birds absolutely love it. They fly through it, stand in it and fluff their feathers, sing; sparrows, painted buntings, redbirds, the oriole, the bright blue scrub jays. I turn it on about 4, when it’s hottest.

Some roadside flowers blooming even in July and even in this drought. HC publicity people are lining me up for a few readings around Texas. My problem with readings and appearances is that I have animals — two horses, a donkey (anybody want a donkey? I’ll bring him to you, free of charge) and Rita the Whippet and two twin tabby-fellow cats. who, even as I speak are out murdering birds. Despite collars with bells on them.

And so I have to hire people to come and feed, take cats to cat-boarding-place. Friends would do it but you can impose on friends just so much. So there’s a lot of preparation and arranging and so on. Actually I love appearances, readings. It’s an ego-enhancer, a time to play dressup, excuses for new clothes, luxurious nights in places where they serve you food and clean your room. Not bad, not bad.

If they put me up in a Drury Inn I can bring Rita The Whippet.

We’re lucky to have a truly great fiddler here in this small community. Tom Bomer. He operates a cedar-clearing Bobcat and plays at contests and at church. Great voice, too.

Any distraction at all will kill the following fifteen minutes of writing. At my kitchen window, scribbling this sequel to Lighthouse Island by hand, I wonder if the cat is going to fall into the pool.

It’s a 500-gallon cattle tank, on a deck, a little bit of rainforest here in this dry July, and I wonder if he falls in, does he have enough sense to swim to that lawn chair in the water and get out? Of course. There went fifteen, twenty minutes.

Fascinating series of illustrations from about 1890’s; ‘France In The Year 2ooo’. The illustrators tried to imagine a century ahead — interesting how they could not see that social mores might change; our underwater siren has long skirts. And were apparently not able to understand the effects of underwater skirt-drifting and croquet-ball hitting.

There are a good number of these imagingings, just use Google/Bing images ‘France In The Year 2000’. Thus it is with sci-fi, imagining the future, we are always really stuck in our own time, especially in terms of social stuff.

Icon won! First in the VanIsle race. This is my godson Seamus George who was often at the wheel.

Here’s the Icon in the Vanisle race, I think my godson Seamus is the one barely seen farthest to the left in the blue jacket. Looks like his hair color anyway. Rock on Icon!

A huge Indigo snake in my back yard. He offered me no apples I told him no lies.

My godson Seamus George is racing once again on the around-Vancouver-Island race, we are all following him on racetracker, he is crewing on board the Icon, she’s very fast, they will come around the island to ‘Lighthouse Island’ — actually lennard island, where his parents and my friends Jeff and Caroline are lightkeppers there, the whole fleet stops each night at some harbour and are treated to feasts ashore, wow what a pleasure trip!

More a fantasy writer than a sci-fi writer. Vance was endlessly inventive, his ability to invent names, words, concepts seems limitless. I only recently discovered him and can’t stop reading his work. He also wrote detective fiction under the name Ellery Queen. so much of his work was tongue-in-cheek, funny, and once you open one of his works you are through the looking-glass. This is from The Dying Earth; his trickster figure Cugel wandering a dim earth in a future thousands of years from Now.

‘The folk who built the tree-towers were difficult to see among the shadows of the foliage. Cugel glimpsed them as they darted across their queer little windows and several times he saw them slipping into the sink-hole on slides polished from the native limestone. Their stature was that of a small human being or boy, though their countenances suggested a peculiar hybriodization of reptile, stalking bang-nose beetle or miniature gid. To cover their gray-green pelts they wore flounced belly-guards of pale fiber and caps with black ear-flaps, apparently fabricated from human skulls.
‘But if Cugel tried to travel by night he thereupon became prey for visps, which stood nine feet tall and looked across the night through luminous pink eyes and traced the scent of flesh by means of two flexible probiscises growing from each side of their scalp-crest. He approached a tree-tower somewhat isolated from the others. As he drew near he glimpsed weasel-like shapes darting back and forth in front of the windows.
‘Cugel drew his sword and pounded on the plank wall. ‘It is I, Cugel!’ he roared. ‘I am king of this wretched wasteland! How is it that none of you have paid your fees?”
From within came a chorus of howling high-pitched invective and filth was flung from the windows…’