It’s a fine chill morning in the Hill Country. The cool air feels good and if I were camping, I’d be drinking coffee around a fire. But I’m not camping, I’m just standing on my porch feeling good, drinking coffee from an insulated mug, while two cats nibble on their breakfast treats.

I know I fancy myself a gardener. But no one, seeing the wild growth beneath my big oaks, would take that seriously. Sure, I like to plant things, but after that they’re on their own. Take my scarlet sage. I dug up one plant fifteen years ago. Brought it home. Planted it. Babied it. And helped it thrive. Now. Its descendants are everywhere in the garden, and I have no say as to where. They just go where the wind blows.

There’s more fog this morning which means there’s a heavy dew. So, it’s wet to walk in the grass. Out in the pasture as the sunlight first hit the field I thought I was seeing a patch of rain lilies mixed in with the dry grass and field flowers, but they turned out to be spiderwebs, spun in the tall grass, collecting water out of the air, and making themselves known to their intended victims.

The air is heavy with fog this morning. There are no lights to see in the distance and the only sounds I hear, except for passing cars, are the sounds of the fog that is gathering on the tin roof sliding down into the gutters. It sounds like rain. My roof. The cloud catcher. It reminds me of stories I’ve heard about people in Chile and Peru doing the same in the Andes, spreading large nets to capture the sea fog to drink and grow crops.

We got rain yesterday. It was gentle. The ground had time to take a long slow drink. More is expected today. It was cool and damp outside, so I decided to have a fire in my newly refurbished fireplace. It was a small one, mostly comprised of dead pecan limbs gathered from a neighbor’s yard during a cleanup. The smoke rose straight and true right up the flue. It was gratifying.

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.

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.

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.