Wet stuff from the sky....

We went to sleep last night hearing the rain outside, and when we woke up this morning it was still raining.   I woke up twice during the night..... just awake enough to hear the rain but not awake enough to care what time it was.  

The deeper half of our pond is filled nearly to the brim.... the shallow end has a nice big puddle in the middle of it.  I'm guessing our pond is about the size of a football field, but sort of kidney-shaped instead of rectangular.  So nice to see water in that pond again... I'm hoping the ducks come back to the pond now that they have water to swim in.  At the beginning of last Spring, we had so many ducks and ducklings out there that it was hard to count them.  As the water level went down, so did the number of ducks.

After all the bags of mulch I put into the flowerbeds this past week, I was almost afraid to look out into the backyard this morning.  I had visions of pine-bark mulch floating in art-deco patterns all over our lawn after all the rain we had.  Wonder of wonders, all the mulch was right where I had raked it.... so that was a very nice Happiness moment indeed.

The rain actually started yesterday afternoon... I had just gotten Mickey into the garage before I saw the raindrops on the stone courtyard.  That cat sometimes goes under the back steps when it rains--- he's the last of our city-cats, and he doesn't like to get his paws wet.  I put Mickey into the garage before dinner-time, and when I went out there with his Fancy Feast before dark, I had to side-step my way around the frogs that were hopping around the lime-stones. Honestly, these frogs aren't afraid of people... they just hop around and look up at you, and if you don't want to create a frog-pancake out there on the pavement, then it's up to you to not step on them.

It's been hard for me to get used to having Mickey as a semi-outside cat.  He was such a good house cat for so many years..... then in the last year or so, he developed bad habits that I just wouldn't tolerate in the house.  We decided to keep him outside during the day.... then before dark, he gets sequestered in the garage, which has access to an open-air chicken-less chicken coop.  He goes back and forth at will between the two protected spaces, so he's safe from night-time visits from raccoons, coyotes, possums, armadillos, and heaven-only-knows what else.

Today has been a rainy drippy cloudy day...... which was very much welcomed.