Hummingbird update: here they are this morning, eight days old:
Their beaks are beginning to elongate, and they’re definitely plumping up, judging by how crowded the nest has become. We never see mama bird feeding the chicks, but she’s obviously hard at it when we’re not watching. And the patio floor is covered with her droppings … we’ll have to clean that all up when the chicks leave the nest.
I’m staying home today in case our yard crew comes. The schedule is one Monday a month, but I’m never sure which one … I might be a week off but I don’t want to miss them if they do come. There’s a new palo verde tree taking root just outside the concrete block wall surrounding our back yard. If we let it grow it’ll eventually shed millions of little yellow flowers in the pool and clog the filter. Palo verdes are pretty but they make a hell of a mess. That the roots might eventually damage the wall is another strike against it. I hate to see a tree chopped down, but this one picked a bad place to make its home. We also have a substantial underground leak in the sprinkler system … bad enough that I’d rather pay the yard guys to fix it than dig it all up myself.
We rode bicycles with the Trail Trash again Saturday. We named our bicycling group after Tucson’s Old Spanish Trail, and every now and then … as we did Saturday … we still ride that curvy, hilly road. Here’s a photo of me with my road bike at Saguaro National Park, our halfway rest stop along Old Spanish Trail:
The yellow flowering trees behind me, by the way, are palo verdes (so named for their green bark). As you can see, we’re not wantonly chopping down an endangered plant species!
Oh, okay, one more photo.
Schatzi, my faithful companion, is always there when I barbecue, pretty much right in front of the grill. Sometimes I’ll pick her up to show her what’s cooking, but she never seems too interested in the visuals. I think she gets more out of the cooking smells that waft down to her level. Cooking is Schatzi’s turf, whether indoors or out: she’s always present for duty. Maxie the auxiliary dog, curiously, doesn’t get underfoot when we’re cooking. She’ll come running if we say “dinner” or “treat,” but otherwise she stays out of the kitchen, and doesn’t want to have anything to do with outdoor cooking.