Bright and sunny Monday.

Finally, the sun is out there and it's shining and warm, and the temperatures are up over 70 today. Happy day indeed.  Now, if we can just get the weather gods to keep it this way, we'll be just fine.  Looking around the property at all the trees that the tree guy trimmed up, we can really see the difference he made in the landscape.  Good job by that tree guy..... now if we call him back, I'm hoping he'll have bought himself a belt for his jeans, to make the next job go faster.  (You may remember his method:  saw off two branches, put saw down, hitch up jeans, pick up saw, saw two more branches, put saw down, hitch up jeans.... repeat, repeat, repeat.)

And if I can get the cat gods to keep that orange cat away from our porch, then we'll have more happy days. The orange cat is indeed making himself at home here...... walking around the porch in the afternoon and evening now, and coming back before midnight. I always know when he's out there because he will meow his little kitty-heart out from one end of the porch to the other.

Our two outside cats are dealing with the orange cat in their own ways.  Mickey Kitty just sits there and stares at the orange cat, waiting for it to do something. Once or twice when the orange cat first came around the house, Mickey chased him across the road. But  now he's just watching him from a distance, not bothering to chase him and not looking as if he's afraid of him either. (Mickey is a bit smaller than the orange cat.... Mickey has always been smaller than every other cat.)

Gatsby, however, who is more than twice the size of the orange cat, sits there in a corner of the porch and howls at the stray cat.  If the orange cat doesn't move himself away from the porch, Gatsby will hide under one of the chairs and continue to howl.  At the second set of howls, either me or my husband will go out to the porch and rescue Gatsby...... move the chair, pick up Gatsby, and carry him into the house.  Fearless Gatsby... he's like the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.

We had very heavy rains the other night..... rained all night long, a good hard rain that topped off all the ponds, made big puddle-ponds on the lower parts of the fields, and created musical trickling waterfalls along the creek.  We had to stop along the path of our morning walk this morning to listen to the waterfall sounds...... so pretty..... just that little bit of water rushing down the rocks made such a significant sound.

Bluebonnet seedlings are popping up everywhere.... huge bunches of them along the side of the road and in the pastures..... the barn swallows have been building nests around the porch, there are new eggs in the bluebird boxes around the property, and new baby goats are playing in the neighbor's field.

Please, please, please..... I hope all of the above means that Spring is now going to stay here and not leave us again with another blast of Winter madness.