It’s a still morning with a promise of rain. An emergency vehicle just went down the road. Sirens wailing. Most likely EMS. But I didn’t look. The grounds and gardens are prepared for rain. New plants are in and mulch laid down. I even aerated the front yard, mostly for the trees and plants. I don’t think much about grass. My suburban dad days are long gone. I want things that flower and give me color.

Well, the garden spider on the east eave of the southern porch is done. She died sometime in the night on Sunday. I figured the cooling weather would do her in. She left four egg sacs, however, and each one of them might have between 300 to 1,000 eggs. That’s a lot of little spiderlings to carry on the family business, but we have lots of little mosquitoes so I’ll take all the help I can get. She lived a short, but productive life. About a year.

At distance the Barbados Cherry is unremarkable. A green shrub beneath green trees. Up close it’s another story. There’s a show. It’s covered in buds, less than 3/16th of an inch, and flowers that are about 5/8th of an inch. The flower has five petals, a single pedal at the top, one pedal on either side, reaching out like arms, and two pedals at the bottom that are close together and have the appearance of legs. There are yellow stamens in the center where the little cherry soon will be.

There is one weird window in my house. It’s in my bedroom, on the west wall at the south corner of the room. I have no idea why it’s there, because the house was built and laid out to avoid sun exposure. It’s a chink in our armor. I’m writing about it today, however, because I sleep facing that window and last night during my 2 a.m. wake-up, I thought someone was shining a light into my room. But it was only the moon shining through the weird window and the Venetian blind that covers it.

Freed from the shadow of the Turks Caps, the Marie Pavia rose has leafed out in all it’s glory. It still gets a dab of morning sun, but now the afternoon sun streams down the drive and across the porch to touch the rose in ways it’s not been touched in a while. And to help it take advantage, I also amended the soil at its feet with a conditioner. I can’t believe I was so inattentive to its dilemma.

The coming of fall and winter brings me a personal pleasure I never would have imagined as a younger man. It comes after that moment in the night when I can longer sleep and the tossing and turning drives me from beneath the covers. I go onto the porch, jacketless. I embrace the cold air. The cold air embraces me. I stare into the night. Sometimes there’s a breeze. Mostly not. Usually, it’s just the cold and me.

Another weather report. The morning low is in the 40s. That’s it, except to note that it feels good to walk outside on a cool morning. I wonder, however, if this is how it felt when the Little Ice age started in the 14^th century. One morning everyone got up, and it was cool outside and it stayed cool for six centuries. And no one much noticed. It was just the weather.

Well, the garden of the front porch is rid of the Turks Caps. They had a nice run, but I’m ready for new plantings. First, however, I need to amend the soil. It’s got too much clay, according to my arborist son, and needs a little something to break it up. We planted some red clover yesterday and that will help in the long run, but it needs something like rice hulls to make it a bit more friable so that oxygen can get to the roots.

They say a watched pot never boils, and sometimes I think a watched plant never blooms. Several years back I moved the schoolhouse flowers to three different beds around the yard. There were lots of bulbs, way more than enough to go around. But none of them seemed to thrive. Until this year.

The second Turk’s Cap is well and fully dug up, and the path for sunlight for the rose is mostly open. Only one to go. In my search for new companion plants, I came upon old familiars, lavender, salvia, and catmint. Suits me. All have been in the beds before, and now it looks as though they shall return. The front porch garden will have a new look this spring.

I dug up one of the Turk’s Caps yesterday. The Marie Pavia rose in the front porch flowerbed is down one competitor. It was easier than anticipated. Sixteen years of rotting oak leaves has given me nice, loamy soil. I’d like to think the next ones will come up with equal ease, but I’ve discovered the way of the world sometimes lures you in with something easy before banging you over the head with the hard thing.

Yesterday, I asked. Is it Fall? The answer this morning is yes. It’s 62, and I need to think about shelter for the cats. We’re down to two, and one of them is new. A tom. He’s getting used to the routine. He waits at the door for breakfast, shows up for dinner, and hangs on the porch during the day. I’ll bring down crates and bedding this afternoon and set them up on the south porch. No need for the heat lamps, but a warm spot to cuddle is good. 62 is probably chilly, even for a cat.

Thank you, Polo. Your tropical moisture was most welcome. I logged close to four inches at my house. Best of all it came down at a relatively steady pace over several days. So, there were no flash floods to speak of. The Llano River puffed up but the flood control lakes controlled the flood, and the water made its way to the sea without incident. The rain made a local music festival a muddy mess, but that was the extent of the generated news.

Big hand to the garden spider at the east end of the south porch. She has three egg sacks up. The third went up last night. I have no idea where the mates are coming from, but they obviously know she’s there. And she picked a pretty good spot for the sacks. They’re sheltered from the north wind, up out of the weather, and I’m not such a clean freak, that they’ll have to come down. They’ll empty in the spring. So, all in good time.

The air is unsettled this morning. Pacific moisture, the remnants of Hurricane Polo, is paying a visit. There’s also a slow-moving cold front dropping temperatures and playing footsie with the tropical moisture. We’re in for a fun few days of wet cool weather. That’s fine by me. I have nowhere to go, and I want to dig, so the rain will make it easier. I could have soaked the ground with a hose, but I thought I’d wait for the rain. Lazy?

When I moved from the Gulf Coast to the Hill Country of Texas, I was greatly relieved to be rid of the threat of hurricanes and tropical storms. Now I find myself yearning for them because it’s one of the ways we get the big rains that fill creeks, rivers, lakes, and aquifers. I say this because it looks as though one might be heading our way coming out of Mexico of all places. Hurricane Polo.

There was a roadrunner in my driveway as I arrived home yesterday. I took it as a good sign for no other reason than I like roadrunners, and I consider having one visit my home to be a good thing. It’s right up there with the foxes who come at night. And the tiny wren who sleeps in a nook on a cedar pole on my back porch. They’re little things and I’m accommodating them.

It rained last night, and now the morning air has a cool wet feel to it. More is promised today. I watched yesterday’s thunderstorms on radar. They were sparse, but I was pleased to see some of them lingering over the local river valleys, promising more water for the lakes downstream. Perhaps this is the start of the wet weather pattern promised by the super El Ninõ.

Yesterday was bulky trash day and I had a touch of bulky trash. So, out it went. I still have a lingering brush pile, but the thing about brush piles is that they decay. So, over time my brush pile will eventually become organic matter. It’s not the tidiest way to keep a yard but I don’t really consider my little plot of ground to be a yard in the traditional sense. Although, I have decided to buy a small mulcher to help keep the brush pile from growing.

It’s late in life to find my way west, but that’s what I’ve done. In the last six years, I’ve spent more time in West Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado than in the previous 74 years combined. I wonder sometimes how I missed it, but there’s no point spending too much time pondering why. It was just a thing that happened, in much the same way that I missed a lot of musicians I’ve come to enjoy late in life. Our paths just never crossed when I was young.