Storms have rumbled around the Hill Country all night, mostly to the west and north. The tail of one of them is dragging across me even as I write this morning. But it’s light and I doubt anything very heavy will fall. That’s okay. We’ve had a decent couple of weather weeks. And a half inch or so of another gentle rain is nice. I’m sure the plants and trees are in heaven, because everyone is putting on new duds in the form of foliage.

Let’s mutter around some more in the gardens and talk about blackfoot daisies. I’ve got them planted in four spots, and they’re doing amazingly well, especially since the recent rains have fallen, and we got another inch last night. I set them up to get the soft morning sun then afternoon shade. The soil is well drained although it might be too rich for them. I’d like them to become a fixture and now that I’m once again spending time with the plants, maybe that can happen.

This is going to be the gardening equivalent of bragging about your kids, telling everyone they really knocked it out of the park in fifth or sixth grade band, as if no one has ever had a kid who did something, some time to make their parents proud. But here goes. My catmint walker low is blooming. Both plants. Bought this spring for the back porch garden, which is notoriously hard on plants.

My goodness, we got another dose of rain last night. The big storm fell to the south of us, but we got a nice taste of the action. We have another chance tonight. That would be sweet. I like these seasonably cool mornings as we head into summer. The baking days will come soon enough and last longer than anyone really likes. So, the soft, cool touch of a rain soaked morning is a nice memory to carry into summer.

As expected the raccoon came to the bird feeder. Climbed up the tree, walked the fence, and found his dinner. Delicate and precise. He cleaned his plate, too. I know this because I moved one of my cameras to the mesquite tree off the back porch just so I could watch. It wasn’t a great loss. I don’t put a lot of feed in the birdbath feeder. One of these days I might fill it with water again, just to see if he comes to get a drink.

A thunderstorm sent me to bed last night and another woke me in the middle. A quick peek at the rain gauge this morning shows we got a bit more than an inch of rain. And that’s how an acre of land in the middle of Texas in the southern half of the US, fared yesterday. A private report. A data point. Something to plot. No doubt the AI engines will scope it up to learn what they need to learn, and maybe we’ll be better for it. And you can use it however you choose.

I think in the short term the new garden area along the north fence is complete. I moved the bottle tree from its old spot behind the big oaks and the new gazebo to a spot by the young chinquapin. Now, when I look out the kitchen window I see a tableau. The bottle tree, the oak, an upright rosemary, a statue of St. Francis, a talavera pot, a metal buzzard, a yellow bells, a sage, and gregg’s mist flower. The living and the inanimate.

I turned my bird bath into a bird feeder. It was an accident. The bird bath dried up and I watched a little finch land in it and start picking at whatever was lying about. I had some extra bird seed left, so I took it out and poured it into the dry bird bath. Here they came, the avian dinosaurs. A summer tanager. A cardinal. A house finch. They landed. They ate. They left. I’m going grocery shopping today. I think I’ll pick up an inexpensive bag of feed and see what happens.

I made a mistake. I started a new garden. Stopped. Changed direction. Here was the mistake. Rather than continuing to dig up grass and turn dirt I decided to put down landscape material. I have no idea why I thought that was a good idea. But I did. Hauled in mulch. It looked nice for about three months. Then the bermuda grass did what bermuda grass does. It grew. Through the landscape cloth, over the cloth, and in the cloth.

There are ups and down to living at the urban/country interface. Deer are the best downside example. Luckily, there’s enough country around me that the woods offer better habitat than my yard. Scorpions are another. Found one in the kitchen this morning. I took it back outside. Mostly I find their desiccated bodies in the house. There’s no water and little food. Once upon a time we had a pest control service spray the outside of the house, but stopped because of the dog.

It’s a summer morning in May. We touched 100 yesterday, and you can feel yesterday’s heat this morning. Still, there’s a special pleasure to be found in an early morning walk around the yard, feeding the cats, feeling the breeze, and looking at the plants. The Crape Myrtles, for instance, are getting ready to bloom and we have a fair collection of them around the place.

Stood outside last night in the light of the full moon. A glorious sight. The pasture was calm and well lit. I thought of our ancestors as they walked the savannah on such a night. Or did they walk at all because it exposed them to predators. And what did they think of that dim bright light in the night sky, so different from the sun, yet still a source of light in a time of darkness. A mystery to them for sure.

We appear to be down one cat. One of the feral kittens has disappeared, although she’s old enough by now to no longer truly qualify for that appellation. It’s just that her mother is still here and I call her momma cat, thus her kittens are still kittens. Everyone was fixed early on, so it’s unlikely to be for reasons of love. And food is always plentiful, so I doubt she wandered off looking for better lodging. I guess it will just be a mystery as to where she went. I do hope she’s in good health, but it’s unlikely we’ll ever know the story. And that’s the way of the country.

Fed the cats this morning and on my way back into the house found a Walnut Sphinx Moth hanging on the screen. What a nice set of wings. Swept back. Ornate. Didn’t seem to be the type of guy to flutter aimlessly around a lit light bulb. It disappeared at first light, or so I imagined. I wasn’t there when it left. I’m not sure what it will eat around here, we don’t have many trees it might like. I guess the little cherry tree might be considered a nut tree. We’ll have to see.

One of my gardens is freshly planted and the others are more established. In the established area beneath the big oaks, the vegetation is so thick it’s difficult to walk and I’ve given up going in after unwanted plant species. Mostly I work around the edges until the edges get established and I move the border. Occasionally, I move a plant from shade to sun as the border moves. I did that last year with two salvia greggi. They’re now flourishing.

In the time of blooming things, spring, I like blooming trees. The orchid tree is covered in white flowers as was the sandpaper tree (Ehretia anacua) early on. Now it’s the time of the golden leadball (Leucaena retusa). The latter has had a bit of a hard life in our yard. A young buck took a fancy to it early on, and wiped his velvet with it. Then the hard winds blew and thin limbs broke. But it survives, fenced, and now blooming, it’s bright yellow offerings.

Yesterday I met a fox. He walked right up the driveway like he was heading to the cat food for a snack. I spoke to him. He stopped and listened, then continued on his way. He seemed relatively unperturbed that I was out there. I followed him for a bit as he walked around the pool, sniffing as he went. Every once in a while he stopped and looked at me, but he never got in a hurry. He just went on about his business.

I’ve had a good spring in the gardens and around the house. To prove it, I can barely lift my left arm. Now, it might be that I slept on it wrong, but it’s more likely something happened during a mulch bag lift or a turning fork throw as I dug up coastal bermuda. I  don’t know. But there it is. I went to use it the other day and it was painful. I think it’s a sign I need to slow down. Which is okay, because I’m a fan of slow, especially these days, my days of elderliness.

I took down my bird feeder. It went from being a high end place for titmouses, wrens, cardinals, and the occasional painted bunting, to being a dive bar for sparrows with raucous comings and goings and food on the floor. I’m going to investigate other options, but for now I want peace on the porch. I’m leaving the bird bath, because everyone needs a drink and a good dousing and it’s fun to watch the birds flop around in the water, and I imagine it will be ever more popular as the summer wears on. I’ll be back with food but I just need to find the right feeder style.

It’s a lovely day in the neighborhood. It was windy yesterday and not so lovely. But it’s still now, and cool and that feels good. Springlike. Our need for rain continues, but I am beginning to despair. We have the month of May and most of June before the official start of summer. I’m afraid, however, we’re going to be in for a goodly stretch of hot and dry with only occasional showers. We need a monsoon.