Friday stuff.....

We had pouring rain last night... and a good deal of lightning that was off in the distance. Looking out from the back porch, I could see all the lightning strikes above the trees. I was standing there with a flashlight in my hands, thinking that the power would go off, but it never did.

I was also standing there and calling for Gatsby to come into the house. He wouldn't stay inside last night and wanted to sleep on the porch, but he must have run underneath the back steps or under the cottage when the rain started. For whatever reason, that cat likes his hiding spots outside when a storm comes along, rather than being inside the house. Probably because he can't fit his plump cat-self underneath the sofa in the TV room. So that's where he was last night... hiding from the rain... and when I opened the back door this morning, he had his nose pressed up against the screen door.

Lots of little green frogs outside this morning... which always happens after a good rain. The frogs were perched on the porch columns, just hanging there like little green ornaments. If you go up to them for a closer look, they don't even move unless you try to touch them. (I don't mind looking at frogs, but touching is out.)

The barn swallows have been sleeping in their old nests at night.... and I'm sure they're the same little birds because they don't move from those nests when they see me on the porch. All the little baby birds that were born in those back porch nests got to recognize me and probably even my voice because I would talk to them as I went up and down the porch steps. They would rest their little heads on the ridge of those nests and just watch me going back and forth. As they got closer to the point of leaving the nests, they would sit there on the edge and just watch me, not moving a feather. So now they're back... still watching me... and I'm still talking to them every time I see them. (My friend V used to talk to the squirrels back in the park in Clear Lake.... and here I am, talking to baby birds.)

I haven't seen too many wasps this week, but I surely have heard the bees. When I was in the upstairs rooms of the barn a few days ago, I could hear buzzing that sounded like it was coming from underneath the floor. My friend C told me that it sounded like bees were down in the barn. "Want to go down there and have a look?" she asked.  Absolutely not.  If the bees are there, let them stay there... and I'll send my husband down there with a can of the wasp spray.

A bubble-shaped dome........ a huge see-through, breathe-through bubble.... that's what I need surrounding this entire property.... and I'd be perfectly content. But I guess not even a bubble would keep out the fire ants.