The Wild Wild Wind

What a beautiful day. This is one of the things I love most about Tinpalace; there are 14 windows and two skylights. We can throw them all open, and when we do we are as much outside as in. It's warm and the wind is wild, rattling the blinds and flapping the dishtowels on their peg. If you can buy a more exquisite joy then grab your pocketbook and rush to do it.

Outside the spring flowers are erupting into small volcanoes of colour. I took Salvador outside, but the wind was too much for him. He demanded that we go right back in, where he could lie on the cool bathroom floor and not have ruffled feathers.

After he was back in I took pictures, and will post a few, but the wind is so strong I couldn't get a clear picture of the barely open cherry blossoms. The branches are whipping back and forth so quickly the camera couldn't catch a clear picture. In their place I start with a picture of the quail in the apricot tree, taken at dusk a couple of days ago.

The cherry blossoms are just starting to open, so I have plenty of time to get a good picture. I did get a nice picture of what I think are pear blossoms, narcissus, daffodils, and one tiny blue flower on a creeping plant. The blue hyacinth was dancing with the wind as well, so she's a little blurred. When you can get back a foot or more movement ceases to be a problem, but with the three or four inch distance you have from these tiny flowers, the least shiver destroys your focus. We have some new bird arrivals. I saw a cedar waxwing yesterday. I love the sleekness of their feathers. Hard to describe the almost metallic quality of their grey gown, with its yellow-apricot breast and head with its tuft of feathers is very distinctive. It's little black eye mask cannot disguise its identity.

The rock doves are back. I haven't seen them, but I have heard them cooing back and forth. And speaking of hearing but not seeing, between a snoring husband on one side and a snoring cat on the other, about 2:00 am a couple of nights ago I heard a boreal owl very close at hand. He was probably in the apricot tree just outside. And from only a slightly longer distance the booming hoot of a great grey owl. Just one series of three or four hoots, each hoot lower than the last.

Yesterday a trio of crows mobbed the neighborhood goshawk, who was out looking for an afternoon snack no doubt. This time it was the female, probably the mate of the hawk I saw at such close range last fall.

We took the skirt off the trailer yesterday and discovered that something had drug a quail under the trailer and eaten everything but piles of feathers and just enough skin to make a terrible stink. Could have been anything but was probably the cat that roamed the park through the winter. Fat and well-cared for, wearing a collar, but still not averse to a nice meal of quail if presented with the opportunity. That's reason enough to keep a cat indoors.

We talked to Zak and Mandy last night. They have acquired a new pet, courtesy of their cat Roxanne. It is a teeny house mouse. Now you come down off that chair this instant! Zak caught the mouse, which he is thinking of naming "Dog", because when he was a year old he went through a phase of calling all animals "mouse". We got an enormous puppy, a Mastiff cross, which Zak took one look at and cooed, "Oh, MOUSE!" And "Mouse" he became, all 150 lbs of him. Now, a mouse who weighs less than a penny is in danger of being called "Dog".

But said Mouse is providing a good deal of entertainment as it demonstrates the cleverness of its kind. I love my kids. Who else would catch a mouse by the tail and make a pet of it? (Besides their mother?)