Don' Worry Bout a Ting.....

 Buenas tardes! How is everyone? I am fine. Senor is fine. Cookies is fine. But look here, I have been a little worried lately. About three months ago the dozers and workers came into the lot next door where many of our birds and the family of skunks and o'possums live. They cleared the land and now, see what is there.

 A casa. 

The little skunks ran right through our yard trying to escape the noise. The o'possums climbed over the coyote fence at night and the birds didn't come around to the feeders. Here and there, a  fat white winged dove or a small gossipy group of inca doves, but nada else. I was getting upset. I am not a huge birder, but I like feeding them, putting out stuff they can use in a nest, making sure there is plenty of water. I love sitting and watching them and love to hear them sing.

I don't even mind the casa next door. It is a little close, but once we finish putting up the rest of the coyote fence, we will not even know it is there. Below you can see how the crew is doing the arches. It is all very interesting. There are about eight guys working over there, no doubt they will finish before we do.

 So, anyway, the birds. That lot had been covered with brush and trees and I wondered where they had gone to. I did what I could think of to get them to start coming back around. I made some little houses out of gourds and ran around hanging them from tree branches. I hammered nails into boards and slapped orange halves on the nails. I put out cantaloupe. I filled the hummingbird feeders. I kept the feeders filled with seed. At the end of the day, I added even more seed. I added cotton to the hanging iron circles. I cut more oranges and cantaloupe. Rarely did I see anything besides the doves.

But I could hear them. In the morning and evening, the green parakeets were swooping in huge packs across the sky. I know birds are flocks, but parakeets are packs, believe me. You can hear them coming when they are a mile away, they are noisy, noisy, noisy. I love them. In the sunlight they are brilliant flashes of emerald jewels.

I could hear the screeching of the black throated magpie jay. I could hear a gila woodpecker.

Then one morning I saw the bright orange flutter of an oriole wing. Then another and another. I looked out and saw three orioles on my oranges. The next morning I woke in the night to a mockingbird song.

The next night I smelled a skunk, which reminds me of good fresh roasted coffee and when I went out for my walk I saw a very large skunk run through the yard. 

I decide the birds and the animals were back and so last Sunday I skipped my walk and sat out under the portal instead. Here are some of the birds I saw as the morning progressed.

 I am sure you will recognize those three doves on the grill.

Below is a Gila woodpecker, off just slightly from the center of the photo. He is going for some red berries just to the right of the sunlit leaves.

Here are two birds on the tips of the Plumeria branches. Then below, a close up of one who looks like a cat bird of some sort. I swear he has ears.

 I think this fellow below is a flycatcher. I am not really certain. He has a beautiful voice.

 A little sparrow. You can see the oranges in this photo. The birds love this area, there are three water dishes there.

 Fighting sparrows. See that curious dove at the bottom.

 The Cardinal who was later followed by three babies.

 A close up of the fighting sparrows. Or maybe they are wrens.

I sat out there for hours. Senor went to the grocery store. Senor went to the hardware store. Senor went to the gas station.He finally asked me what I was doing. Cookies got a little curious and climbed up beside the fake doves on the grill. I made him get down. He growled and lay down beneath the hummingbird feeder.

I saw a mockingbird. I saw a little vermillion flycatcher. I saw a few other things that I can't identify. I saw butterflies. I even saw a frog and one scorpion.

 That was three days ago. Now every night I am listening to the mockingbird and smelling fresh roasted coffee.

Things are definitely looking up!

Doing My Something.

Hola, buenas tardes. Last night's full moon, right smack over Loma Guadalupe Hill, pretty, pretty. That green light is a something, I  have no idea what that green light is, maybe a portal light, a car headlight, a green star, a spirit.

We've hardly had a winter here and the brilliant blue skies just glow with the last particles of the sun from the west as the moon rises in the east. Beautiful days and nights that we don't want to give up. Finally we sigh, say bedtime, suddenly eager to get to sleep so the next colorful day can arrive. I am still on the road at madrugada, early before dawn or early to rise. The light is just cresting the horizon as I head down the street and out on the carrtera, the main road heading out of town. Amazingly quiet at six ten in the morning. 

Recently we were in Mazatlan with some friends and I have shared this photo on Facebook, but not with the blog. A shrimp boat, a dot in the offshore distance (or, KD, is it a dot offshore in the distance or possibly even offshore, a dot in the distance......) from our hotel. I telephoto'd this three times on my Sony cybershot and suddenly it was no longer a dot, it was a real boat with real birds. I like it. I think I'll enlarge and frame it.

 

And remember these things? The abandoned chairs at the San Carlos Tetakawi? My chairs now, well, a photo of only one of them, but all three are finished. Had Daniel, our iron worker, weld on a couple of the missing metal plates (beneath the base cushion).  I still need to stain the wooden base a dark brown. 

But they are 'sitable', I bet that's not a word, but maybe it is, maybe it's a word my Big Mama made up when we were kids............ why, this chair is sitable, this is a sitable chair, ya'll sit down now.

Anyway, they are pretty comfy. I went to Sorriana and bought the foam bases, they looked the right size and sure enough, they fit perfectly, snug. Covered them with some upholstery fabric I bought at JoAnn's in Tucson. Did you know you can get remnants there for five dollars a yard? You would not believe how much upholstery fabric I have. 

And I am not ashamed. I used my glue gun. 

so how long will they be 'sitable'..............you ask.........

why, forever and ever and ever, ya'll come over anytime and sit a spell...........

Senor is playing bridge. I should be doing something, I guess this is my something.