Rainy Friday.

It's been raining on and off all day long today. Not hard enough to bring the cats in, not hard enough to need an umbrella, just wet enough to be annoying. Mickey Kitty was walking around the gazebo this morning when it started to drizzle, and he ran back to the porch at lightning speed when he felt the raindrops on his face. What's this stuff? Why didn't you tell me that I could get wet if I came outside?! He sat there on the porch shaking the rain off, and then he proceeded to lick his paws and wash his face. Mickey will be five years old soon and today's raindrops are the first ones he's felt on that shining black fur of his.

Mickey hasn't wandered off since last weekend, and now if he does-- I have discovered two more of his hiding places so I will know where to look. I found out that he likes to curl up under the mint leaves, and he's so small and the patch of mint is so big that he can easily disappear in there. That hiding place was a dead-giveaway, though, because he came out smelling like mint just the other day.

The other hiding place is shared with Sweet Pea. Now that the wildflowers are more than knee-high and the wild grass is also growing that high, both cats have been chasing one another through the field near the house. When you look down at the field from the balconies, you can see their tunnels going in circles and figure-eights around the pasture. Thankfully, they haven't gone too far away from the front courtyard. If the cats can become invisible in that field, there's no telling what else is hiding out there as well. When the two younger cats are chasing one another, Gatsby just sits on the porch and watches. The Gray Gatsby is far too sophisticated for that sort of game.

We know one thing for sure--- there must be a million birds out in the fields now, feeding and/or nesting in the tall grass and wildflowers. We can hear them every day-- it's like a symphonic blast of birdsong as soon as you open the doors in the morning. Before the end of next month, it will be time to cut down the gone-to-seed wildflowers and the tall wild grasses. The tractors will come to cut everything down, then the balers will come and magically turn everything to huge 1200-pound bales. Our wildflower-filled pastures will soon be feeding the local livestock. One of our neighbors has already offered to cut the hay for us, and pay us for the bales he collects. "Too soon.... too many birds still out there," we told him. I don't think he was interested in saving the baby birds; he was just interested in feeding his horses, cows and goats.

The barn swallows who nested on our porch last year came back weeks ago and built nests on the porch columns again. We have five nests now, two of which are filled with soon-to-hatch eggs. The birds fly back and forth all day long, flying so low to the cats when they're near those columns that both Mickey and Sweet Pea have run away from those parts of the porch. Gatsby has been smart enough to just stay away from the nests. Last May, we had five baby barn swallows. This year, if they all survive, there will be ten little baby birds for us to watch. I already have the binoculars ready and have been watching the adult birds taking turns sitting on the eggs and guarding the nests. When the nests were being constructed, they would fly back and forth all day long with stems of grass and bits of mud. The nests they built are amazingly secure and wind-proof.

Scarlett is back to laying eggs...... one egg every day, just the way she did before she went "broody." She clucks a bit as she walks into the coop to get into the nesting box, and then clucks loud enough to be heard throughout the hills after she has laid her egg. No more lingering in the coop for Scarlett...... out pops that egg, and out pops Scarlett, off to find the other hens and get on with her day.

The corn we planted is growing visibly taller every day. The stalks are about as thick as my index finger and they're nearly two feet tall now, if not higher. Neither of us has grown corn before, so we are watching the plants carefully to see how they change from day to day.

The temperatures are getting warmer..... shorts and cotton shirts are the "uniform" of the day, and the jeans don't go on unless we visit neighbors or go into town. I have only worn high heels twice since we moved out here, and I don't think I've worn a dress even once. At this rate, my dressy clothes will last me the rest of my life....... my good jeans won't need to be replaced unless they start to fade, and my city shoes will stay in the closet unless we drive into Houston. However, I've worn out at least half a dozen pairs of flat-soled shoes, and I have an ever-growing assortment of clothes that I wear just around the house and the yard, all of which are chicken-proof, cat-proof, and garden-worthy. A lot sure has changed in a year's time.

"Green acres is the place to be......." (as that theme song goes).

Marco Polo and Scarlett.

Mickey Kitty (my little Marco Polo explorer cat) went missing last night. For nearly three hours, I had no idea where he was, and even though I tried to keep calm about it, my husband said I didn't fool him for a minute.

Mickey was in the yard just before the chickens went into their coop... Mickey scattered them all over the yard as they were making their way towards the coop in their nightly chicken conga-line. I was watering the vegetable patches at the time, and I called out to Mickey to Let the chickens be, for goodness sake! Mickey looked at me and then sat in the courtyard with his wide-eyed you-yelled-at-me?! expression on his whiskered face. I went on watering the vegetables, and Mickey just sat there pouting.

By the time I turned off the hose, Sweet Pea was sitting by the back door waiting to go inside, Gatsby was in his chair on the back porch, and Mickey was nowhere in sight. I fed the other two cats and started calling out for Mickey Kitty. Usually, he will meow in response when his name is called, or he will just start walking towards me. Last night, nothing. Not a meow, not a sign of Mickey. I even checked all over the inside of the house, because Mickey can pry open a door when he has a mind to, and unless a door is latched, he can get it open.

All around the outside of the house I went, half a dozen times, calling out his name. I did the same thing around the garage, the cottage, the barn. I even looked inside the cottage and the downstairs of the barn, thinking he might have gotten in there somehow. I went back into the house and upstairs and looked out over the fields from the balconies. There wasn't even a hint of a breeze last night, and I figured that if Mickey were out in the pastures, I would be able to see the wildflowers and grass swaying as he moved. Nothing. Not so much as one flower was doing anything more than standing there pointed towards the sky.

Back downstairs I went... outside again.... walking around everything, even walking down the hill towards the pond, thinking that Marco Polo Mickey might have wandered down there. By that time, it was getting dark. The snakes... the coyotes... the raccoons... the armadillos... the possums.... and heaven only knows what else comes out in the dark around here. I asked my husband if I should call the three closest neighbors. "Wait till morning, " he said. "Mickey knows where he lives, and he'll come back when he gets hungry."

We had taped "The Amazing Race" so we could watch it afterwards without the commercials, so we watched the program, with me jumping up to look out on the porch every time I thought I heard a noise outside. When the show was over, back outside I went, turning on the porch lights around the house, calling out for Mickey. And there he was, walking towards me in the courtyard, as if he didn't have a care in his little cat-world. I scooped that cat up and cried into his fur and he buried his head in my neck. And there I was, asking him where he had been, and why didn't he come when I called him, and why did he make me worry so much..... all these stupid questions that mean absolutely nothing to a cat but meant everything to me.

As much as I keep telling my husband that I am all catted-out, that I'm tired of the litter boxes and the heavy boxes of cat-litter, and the responsibility of cats (and house pets in general), the thought that Mickey was out there in the dark just broke my heart last night. This time, Mickey had a happy ending. There is going to come a time when there might not be a happy ending for that little adventurous cat. That's how we found Mickey in the first place-- wandering near the bayou in the park close to where we used to live. He was a tiny Marco Polo then as my husband carried him home, and he hasn't changed one little bit.


And Scarlett--- she was in her favorite nesting box today, and when I saw her in there, I got to thinking that maybe she had "gone broody" again and would stay in the nest for another 40 days. But Scarlett surprised me. I was in the kitchen and I heard her cackling and clucking, which is what my hens usually do after they've laid an egg in one of the nesting boxes. I went outside, and there was Scarlett, out of the coop and in the courtyard, cackling her little chicken-heart out for all to hear. I went inside the coop and there in her box was a brown egg-- Scarlett is the only hen who gives us brown-shelled eggs. Perfectly shaped, a small egg compared to the other hens' eggs, but the same size as Scarlett always gave us every day before her broody stage took over.

Scarlett waited in the courtyard... she saw me with the egg, and I thanked her for it... she tilted her head to one side, stared at me with those yellow eyes of hers, and then went off towards the barn to find the other hens. She didn't care that I had that egg of hers, so her broodiness is officially over and done with for now.


It is another glorious day here today....... bright blue skies, not a drop of moisture in the air, crisp and clean and sunny and warm and you can still smell the wildflowers. And the roses-- there are four rose-arbors around the property and they are filled with blooms and when you walk under them and that rose scent hits you, it's like heaven on earth.

There is a cafe in town called "It Must Be Heaven." Indeed.

Small towns.

On any given weekend in this state, you can find a street festival going on in one of the country towns or even the bigger cities... some sort of outdoor celebration that brings most of the town into town to enjoy the day. This weekend, our own small town had its outdoor festival, complete with small carnival rides, food booths, arts & crafts vendors, farmer's market vegetables, a chili cook-off, a cake cook-off, and a contest for little kids to determine who was going to be Little Miss Ice Cream Queen, or some such title.

The local police had roped off the streets to moving traffic, so you had to park on the outskirts of the town and walk towards the "historic downtown center" of town. There was a vintage car show, so those cars were allowed to come in before the festival started.... all those great old cars lined up on Main Street was a sight to see.

Whenever we go into town here, the word Mayberry passes our lips more than once. No matter what's going on, whether it's a street festival or just a plain old Saturday afternoon, our little historic downtown squares are very Mayberry-esque. If you close your eyes to the late-model cars parked diagonally towards the curbs, you would swear you left the technology-inundated millennium-years behind and somehow got plopped down into the early 1950s.

Walk into a store here and someone calls out Hey there! before you can get both feet over the threshold. And if the store-owner has to run to the corner to pick up their lunch, they will do just that as they tell you to make yourself at home. If you don't buy anything, you're still told to Have a great day, y'all! or Have a blessed day! And if you do buy something, then your face is never forgotten and you've made a shop-friend for life. I remember you! Y'all bought those cute little embroidered towels with the baby chicks on them!

No one drives very fast through the streets of our downtown area. The locals know that there's really nothing to rush about for, and the visitors are confused by the one-way street signs at every corner. Makes for a peaceful walking/shopping experience in town. And the streets are so small and compact that you can park your car just once and walk to just about everything worth walking to within the downtown limits.

Such a difference from the larger part of town near the highway, where four corners are filled with shopping centers. WalMart, the drugstore chains, supermarkets, department store chains, the dollar stores, the gas stations. Everyone seems to be more in a rush there. Not a city-rush, but a country-rush. On any given day, the WalMart parking lot is filled with travel-trailers whose owners have parked and gone into WalMart to get groceries for their mobile kitchens. The stores at The Four Corners (as the locals sometimes call it) are bigger, busier, more crowded, more suburban rather than country. The 1950s flair disappears once you leave our pretty little historic downtown streets. That's not to say that the rest of the town doesn't have its own Hill Country flavor, it's just more in keeping with the year 2010.

2010. Two thousand ten. Every time I think of the decade we're in, I remember an arithmetic problem we were given in the fifth grade. We had to figure out how old we would be in the year 2000. I remember the class looking at the teacher (a nun, actually) as if she had lost her mind. The year 2000 was so far away from anything we could wrap our fifth-grade brains around. And now we're ten years past that. In a heart-beat. Everything flies by in a heart-beat. Especially the pages of a calendar.

Camelot.

We went to the community theatre in town last night to see Camelot. Beautiful songs....... a classic musical, and very nicely done by performers who have been on stages from Chicago to Houston to New York.

The stage here in town is very small, and the theatre holds about 150 seats, about three-quarters of them were filled last night. Very intimate theatre... and wouldn't it be nice for Barry Manilow to perform there?

My husband and I were looking at the audience as we waited for the play to begin. Mostly everyone was in the "senior citizen" range, with a few younger couples (like us) sprinkled here and there. Made us wonder who would be sitting in those 150 seats watching a live performance when the present senior citizens in this area are attending the Broadway theatre in the sky?

The songs last night were wonderful, but when you've heard Richard Harris and Robert Goulet sing them, anyone else without such a powerful range of voice just doesn't make the same impact. Not taking anything away from the singers last night, because they were very good, but there was only one Richard Harris, one Robert Goulet. And with such a small theatre, there wasn't an orchestra... just a drummer and a keyboard player, with various bells and whistles added into the keyboard for special effects. We are so jaded when it comes to theatre performances... and we have seen Broadway-caliber plays and musicals right in downtown Houston theatres. But we don't live that close to the Houston theatre district anymore. We are here, and here is where we want to be.

"Bloom where you are planted." We're blooming. And looking forward to the next production at the little theatre right here in town.

Salmon Burgers.

We make a point to watch "Diners, Drive-ins & Dives" on the Food Channel network. The host, Guy Fieri, makes a good show great, and he has been to countless restaurants in Texas, and we've found about half a dozen of them and weren't disappointed.

I don't remember where he was last week, but one of the restaurant's specialities was a Salmon Burger, made with fresh ground salmon. We love salmon and have it about twice a week, so I thought I would try the burgers. Of course, I had to tweak the recipe a bit, because either I didn't have some of the original ingredients, or we didn't like some of them-- red chili sauce was one of the items.

I have not had a beef hamburger in more than 20 years, unless you want to count a bite here and there of a good burger that my husband would order in a restaurant. The thought of a salmon burger got my attention.... a guilt-free, low-calorie burger.

The raw salmon... I cut it up into tiny chunks, more like dicing than cutting. Into that I added sauted diced onion and garlic, fresh parsley, Old Bay seasoning, and a little bit of shredded mozzarella. Mixed it all up, and formed it into nice-sized burgers. Into the fridge that all went, letting everything rest and get happy together, and I was hoping the cold would make the burgers hold their shape.

I used one of my best heaviest skillets to cook the burgers, about three or four minutes on each side-- really hot skillet. I had also grilled some pineapple rings and made caramelized onions, and had fresh lettuce ready. (The pineapple rings on a burger was from another one of Guy's shows.) I didn't have hamburger buns, but I had fresh home-made bread from the French restaurant in Burton, and I wish I'd had fresh tomato and avocado in the house, because both would have been good on the salmon burgers also.

The burgers did indeed hold their shape, they were tender and moist, and totally delicious. It was a warm and gorgeous day when I made them and we had dinner out on the front porch. With every bite of that burger, my husband kept saying how delicious it was. Totally, totally delicious.... and the pineapple with the salmon was great, and the only things I would have added would have been a slice of fresh tomato and thin slices of avocado. I'll make sure to have them in the house the next time I make those burgers. The consistency of the salmon when it's chopped up so finely is similar to that of ground beef, so there really wasn't a problem in making and keeping a round burger-shape.

I told my husband that we should eMail Guy Fieri and tell him about our own salmon burgers, and invite him to have dinner with us on the porch as we look out at the fields of wildflowers. Salmon Burgers, Hill Country style.

Welcome back, Scarlett.

My red hen Scarlett is now officially out of her "broody" stage. It may happen again at some point, but for now, she's out of the nesting box, out of the coop, and back to her happy little self. One thing has changed-- she now eats out of my hand, certainly because I was hand-feeding her bits of bread and lettuce when she refused to get out of the nesting box for nearly 40 days. She is as gentle with my fingers now as she was when she was sitting on the fake egg that I gave her, which is very nice because the three other hens have a tendency to grab at the bread pieces and manage to get my fingers inbetween their beaks. Doesn't hurt much, because they don't have teeth, but the sound of their beaks against my fingernails is a clickety-clack noise that makes you get your hand out of the way real quick.

When it's time to lock the gate on the coop at night, Scarlett is back to her old tricks... she is the last one to get into the coop. The other hens will follow me into the coop, but Scarlett will wait just outside the gate, knowing full well that if she goes in, I'm going out and then locking up. And Scarlett doesn't want anyone telling her when it's coop-time. So I have to just wait till she gets herself in there, then go back and lock the gate. Scarlett. I certainly gave that hen the right name.


The wildflowers that C and I collected last weekend...... the wax paper that I had them pressed between didn't work at all. When I checked the flowers, they were slick and sticky and sort of nasty-looking. Into the trash they all went. Thankfully, I had marked the pages in the wildflower book, so I know each and every one that we have on the property. I'm sure there must be a certain type of paper necessary for pressing flowers, and I will have to find out if the stores around here carry that. We don't have near as many stores here that we had in Clear Lake, so I will have to hunt around, or just look somewhere like Hobby Lobby when we drive into the bigger towns.


People are still out driving around and taking photos of the wildflowers. On any given day, I see cars pull to the side of the road here and someone will get out with a camera and start clicking away at the flowers. We have an abundance of "Wine Cups" on one side of our field, and the color is just magnificent. They are the color of the Magenta crayon in a box of Crayolas. An entire field of them would take your breath away, but I'm more than happy to have the fairly large patch of those cute little flowers in the side field. The Wine Cups have multiplied since the flowers started coming up. Seems like there were just a few a couple of weeks ago, and now it looks like there are more than a hundred in just that one spot.


In a couple of weeks, Spring will have sprung itself out and Summer is going to be here in all its over-heated glory. Everyone is hoping that this summer isn't a repeat of last year's, but whatever it is, I plan to keep my promise of not complaining about the heat. I can still remember the frigid cold that made us shiver and froze some of the outside water pipes. I would rather put up with the sun and the heat than have to wear layers of clothing in frigid temperatures.

The past two days have been perfect... sunny but not broiling, warm nearly to the point of being hot, but not quite there yet. And the sky..... such a pretty blue and filled with white puffy clouds for as far as your eyes can see. Truly picture-postcard days. We still can't believe we live here.

Wildflower weekend.

Our young friend C (now into the last of her teen years) came up and stayed with us yesterday and today. As I type this now, C is with her friends in a nearby town, having dinner and going to a country line-dancing place called Hurricane Harry's, or something like that.

We spent part of yesterday afternoon collecting one of each wildflower we have on our property. I looked up the unfamiliar ones in my wildflower book and we marked all the pages that have color photos of each wildflower on our land. At last count, we have 27 different species. I have one of each pressed inbetween paper, and if they dry nicely, maybe I can make a collage out of them all.

The three of us went into Wellborn yesterday and had lunch at the Hullabaloo Diner. C had never seen a vintage chrome and tile diner before, and she seemed to like the idea of the swivel stools at the counter. The resident peacock was there in all his glory, with spreading feathers aimed at the sky for all to see and admire. We also went into College Station to "Shakes," for their delicious homemade ice cream.... the best around..... sort of a mix of hard ice cream and soft custard. Only two flavors, chocolate and vanilla, but they will mix in just about anything that you can think of. In my opinion, there's nothing better than plain old chocolate ice cream, and as long as the ice cream is perfectly delicious, it doesn't need anything else.

On the way back from College Station, we stopped to see the miniature horses at the convent near Navasota. There were four tiny recently-born horses, two of which I have already named (Rusty and Buttercup). No, we're not getting them. No, I don't want anything else to take care of. But yes, they were cute as cute can possibly be.... and we ooohed and aaahed over them for nearly an hour.

Today we drove into Burton for their annual "Cotton Gin Festival." The tiny town of Burton has the only still-working cotton gin in the entire country. We saw the original building, but the line of people waiting to get in was too long of a wait. We walked around the fairgrounds.... lots of food booths (selling either meat or fried things) and merchandise booths (selling everything from homemade apple butter to yard art). They had about 50 tractors all lined up for a "tractor pull," and for the life of me, we couldn't figure out what that meant. By the looks of things there, they would hitch a trailer to a tractor, fill it with dead-weight, and the tractors would take turns trying to pull it a certain distance. I guess the less time it took the tractor to get from here to there, the better the chances of winning the competition. We didn't stay around to see the results of that.

For lunch today, we drove up to Round Top, to Royer's Cafe..... grilled salmon on top of salad, with cherry pie for dessert. I tasted the crust, which was totally delicious, then ate the cherry filling and left the crust to eliminate those extra calories. Royer's is always fun, filled with vintage memorabilia and the best music from the 1950s and 1960s always blasting quietly in the background. Great place, and probably the only place to eat in Round Top. They're known for their hamburgers, which look and smell delicious, and if ever I were going to eat a burger, Royer's would be the place to do it.

On both days, we drove along such beautiful roads, stopping here and there to take photos of wildflowers and livestock. Fields filled with bluebonnets and paintbrush, daisies and yellow-stars, and a host of wildflowers of all colors of the rainbow. And when we got home today, there were a few cars driving down our own road, stopping to take photos of our wildflower fields. Too wonderful for words. I told one of my NY cousins about Texans driving around at this time of the year to take pictures of wildflower fields, and she told me that if people did that up in NY, homeowners would be calling the police.

But not here. There are small-town festivals, working cotton gins, vintage diners, 1950s music playing in the middle of a town with a population of just 77, and endless fields and pastures filled with the most beautifully fragrant and eye-popping wildflowers, for as far and as wide as your eyes can see. What a great place to be. And we live here.


About the chickens-- Scarlett has come out of her nesting box, with a little help from me. I just kept picking her up and taking her out of there, then walking to where the other hens were pecking in the grass before releasing her. "Go and play with the girls," I told her. Around about the 17th time, she stayed out, rather than running back into the coop and flying back up to the nesting box. I'm hoping Scarlett has turned the hatching-corner now...... otherwise, I will have to continue going out to the coop every half-hour to get her out of there.

Tomorrow is another day, Scarlett.

Over the weekend, I talked to everyone I know who has chickens, asking them about Scarlett. My red hen continues to sit in that nesting box, no longer sitting on a fake egg, just sitting there in contemplation. To hatch or not to hatch... that is the question. For Scarlett, there's just one answer-- there's no egg in that nest, you crazy hen, so there's nothing to hatch!

A hen on a mission... that's what Scarlett has turned into. A couple of our chicken-raising friends told me to get a fertilized egg for Scarlett to sit on, or just get her a day-old chick from the Feed Store. Scarlett has been sitting in that nesting box for 34 days now. Getting her a fertilized egg at this point is taking a gamble that she will sit on a chick-filled egg till it hatches, after all the hatch-less sitting she has already done. Buying a day-old chick is a different sort of gamble. When you buy chicks that young, you don't know if it will mature into a hen or a rooster. The Feed Stores don't sex-test them, they just sell them. Our across-the-road neighbor just bought 20 chicks and he could very well end up with 18 roosters. We don't want a rooster. They bother the hens too much, they're too noisy, and they tend to take over the coop.

Baby chicks aren't the easiest things to raise, either. You have to keep the little chick super-warm till it gets its second set of feathers. And I would have to keep both Scarlett and her chick in a separate "quiet coop," away from the other hens who might be jealous and decide that they don't want an alien chick in their coop. Plus the cat-factor here..... my cats know they can't catch the hens, but they sure would be able to catch a tiny baby chick.

Mickey Kitty, however, is still learning that he shouldn't chase the hens. He was chasing Audrey around the yard this afternoon, and Prissy got into the parade and started chasing Mickey. As soon as he realized that he was being chased by another hen, Mickey jumped up onto the porch, breathless and confused, and gave me his best please-please-please-pick-me-up meows. Of course I picked him up and his heart was beating so fast that I could feel it. He will forget his little adventure tomorrow, and he'll probably be chasing one of the chickens again.

But... back to Scarlett. One of our friends suggested we bring Scarlett to a vet-- could it be possible that she had an egg stuck inside her? Maybe that's why she was staying in the nesting box? Because she just couldn't release the egg? Well, didn't that possibility just make my day. My husband told our friend that the vet bill for a chicken check-up would cost more than what we paid for the chicken in the first place. I finally thought of calling Mr. Watson, the man with the 200+ chickens on his property, where we bought all the hens.

Mr. Watson remembered us, and I'm sure when I told him my Scarlett story he was laughing and smiling at the other end of that phone. When I told him that I had been feeding Scarlett fresh bread (without the crust, which she doesn't like) as she sat in the nesting box, he said "Say what? No crust? In the nesting box? Well, if I wuz a hen, I'd be settin' there too for 34 days."

Watson told me that if Scarlett had an egg lodged up inside her, she'd be "one dead hen already." He said that getting a baby chick for her would be a good idea, but only if I could keep the chick away from the other hens, and only if I was willing to take a chance that the baby chick would grow into a rooster. His last suggestion made the most sense-- "Just keep pullin' that stubborn hen out of that box. Keep on goin' out there and just pull 'er off and set 'er down on the ground. And stop givin' 'er bread when she's in that box!"

So that's what I did. No more breakfast in the nesting box for Scarlett. (Both Watson and two of the neighbors told me that Scarlett wasn't starving herself, that she was leaving that box to get food and water right there in the coop when I wasn't looking.) Nearly every hour yesterday, I went out to the coop and covered Scarlett with an old towel and wrapped her up and took her out of the nesting box. (The towel prevents her from scratching me with her claws or pecking me with her beak, both of which she might do if she's scared or just plain doesn't want to leave the nest and those phantom-eggs of hers.)

One of the times when I took Scarlett out of the box, I set her down in the grass outside the coop, and there was Mickey, hiding in the rose bushes, and out he came... and chased Scarlett towards the barn. That red hen ran across the yard flapping her wings and looking as healthy as the day she first started sitting in that nesting box.

This morning, when I went to give the chickens some bread, Scarlett was in the yard by the cottage. She saw me coming with the bread and she took off running towards the coop. I heard her fly up into the nesting box and I just know she was in there waiting for me to give her the best center parts of the bread, no crusts please. I gave the bread to the other hens, then went into the coop and told Scarlett that coop-service was over and done with. If she wanted bread and vegetables, then she had better get out of the nesting box and into the yard with the other hens. Scarlett sat there and blinked those yellow eyes at me.

Scarlett and I are at a stand-off. I'm going to continue to go into the coop and take her out of the nesting box. She's going to walk around the yard a bit here and there, and then probably take herself back into that box of hers. There is no egg underneath her, and the fresh grass that was in her nest has turned into brown hay now and I'm not going to replace it till she comes to her senses. This "broody" state of hers may last another couple of days, or another couple of weeks. It's up to Scarlett.

Scarlett, indeed. I certainly gave that red hen the right name. Makes me wonder if she's living up to the name itself, or if the name truly suited her to begin with. I named her Scarlett just because of her coloring, and then the other "Gone With the Wind" names (Prissy and Mammy) just seemed to fit the two black-feathered hens.

Chickens. Every day with them as been another lesson.

Weekend moments.

This was a weekend filled with friends and wildflowers, and you can never have too many of either. K and B drove up from Houston and they stopped along the way taking pictures of the wildflowers fields. When they got to our road, they stopped their car at the bottom of our hill and snapped picture after picture for nearly twenty minutes before getting back into their car and driving the rest of the way to our house.

More pictures followed as soon as they saw the field of bluebonnets behind our barn. When K's camera needed a rest, we all got into our car and drove to the little French restaurant in the tiny town of Burton (French, because the born-in-France chef there used to work at a famous Houston hotel before saying auvoir to the city and bonjour to the Hill Country.) On the way to Burton, we saw fields of wildflowers and Longhorn cattle, but not one of those pastures could compare to the pastures on our property. (No cows, no horses, no goats = more wildflowers.)

After lunch, we drove further up, into the teeny-tiny town of Round Top. We went to Royer's Cafe, intending to have pie for dessert. Not a chance. Bud (Royer's owner) wasn't seating anyone who had driven there "just for a piece o' pie" because he had a too-long waiting list of customers wanting lunch. Half of the County was driving around this weekend, looking at and photographing the wildflowers. So we bought a whole pie and brought it back to our house. On the way back along the country roads, we saw so many people sitting in the wildflowers and taking pictures, or sitting along the sides of the road and having a picnic. (Doesn't anyone else in this state worry about spiders and fire ants and scorpions?)

Our new friend from last Summer, J, who spends a sizzling month down the road at her house here and the rest of the year at her home in Pennsylvania, surprised us with a visit.... she was here visiting family and inspecting damage done to her home during this past January's "hard freeze." We didn't know she was in town, and when she came to the porch in her Jackie-O sunglasses, I truly believed she was a "lost wildflower looker" who needed directions. Not until she took off the sunglasses did I realize who she was. Lots of hugs followed, with lots of "So good to see you......" and her daughter was with her, so that was a special treat. Their visit ended in a heart-beat, and now we're once again counting the days till J and G come down here for their summer month. After seeing her field filled with bright yellow wildflowers, it's a wonder that J didn't go back to Pennsylvania, tell G to pack it up and move it out and forget about waiting a few more years for retirement.

The wildflowers are still blooming..... the fields are still blue and yellow, red and pink, purple and green. And in our field behind the barn, and in J & J's field across from their pond, we have found some snow-white bluebonnets. How did that happen? They are pure white, and so very different-looking than the bluebonnets, yet just the same. Amazing. This has been an amazing Spring..... and it has hardly begun, and in another heart-beat, it will turn into Summer when we're not paying attention.

Got corn?

Indeed we do. We have planted corn, in a separate garden patch, inbetween two garden plots filled with rose bushes. The first garden we planted has green beans, tomatoes, zucchini, parsley, oregano and basil, as well as a few marigold plants and one strawberry plant that didn't fit into the strawberry pot on the back deck. The strawberry pot is getting filled with blooms, and some of the blooms have turned into green berries, and one of the berries is huge and beginning to ripen.

The first garden plot wasn't big enough to hold the corn plants, so we had to plant those by themselves. My husband is proud of that corn and has high hopes for it. He planted all the seeds in tiny peat-pots, and we've been watching its progress every day. Both of us like fresh corn, and we're hoping that each plant gives us perfectly sweet ears of corn. We're also hoping that the night-time wildlife doesn't begin helping themselves to our gardens.

The chickens have already walked among the young corn plants, and scratched in the mulch around the rose bushes. I have eggplant seeds in tiny cardboard cups on the side of the vegetable plot, and the chickens have walked straight across the struggling eggplants. I had saved those eggplant seeds from last year's Thai eggplant that we bought at a local farmer's market. I hoped the seeds would sprout..... they didn't. I hoped the chickens wouldn't disturb the little eggplant experiment.... they did. So unless our local Home Depot can get us some Thai eggplant starters, we won't be growing that this year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the farmer's market will have that delicious green-skinned eggplant again this summer.

The grape vines growing along the fence in the backyard have blossomed with teeny-tiny clusters of the teeniest green grapes. Too cute for words, and we keep watching those blossoms now. Last year, my husband picked all the grape clusters, and we squeezed them through some kind of masher and had one large delicious glass of fresh grape juice. Totally delicious, but totally not enough grapes to reward us for all the water we gave those vines during last summer's extraordinary heat. We're hoping for less heat this summer, and more grapes.

As my cousin F would say-- Hope floats.

The baby birds-- home again.

Last year when we were unpacking our moving boxes here, there was a nest of Barn Swallows out near the top of the columns on the front porch. Two adult birds, five eggs. The mama bird sat on the nest day in and day out, and before I started opening the boxes every morning, I would check on the nest. The mama bird got to know us and didn't squawk at us after a while when we were out on "her" porch.

Not too long after we moved in, those eggs began to hatch, and soon there were five little mouths to feed. Both adult birds flew back and forth to the nest, feeding all those open beaks. I remember the day I unpacked the binoculars-- I ran to the front porch to get a better view of the babies, and to this day, I keep the binoculars in the front hallway, always bird-ready.

One of our neighbors told us that those baby birds would come back every year, and they would have babies who might also come back, and so on, down through their generations. About a month ago, the Barn Swallows did come back. We know they're the same birds-- they seem very familiar with every inch of our wrap-around porch, and they're sitting on the ceiling fans out there again. The breeze will blow the blades of the fans around, and there are the birds, sitting on the blades and going along for the ride, just as they did when they were babies. A Barn Swallow carousel. The birds fly in and out and around the columns of the porches, seemingly effortless in their flight, not crashing into pillars and posts as they weave in and out, back and forth.

Two of the birds are using last year's nest. Two other birds have built-up a nest that is just opposite last season's nest. That particular nest was just half an inch high last year, but the new couple has moved in and made improvements and now that nest is a mirror-image of the nest we watched so carefully last year. Another Barn Swallow couple has begun a nest on the porch near the back steps. The cats sit out there near the kitchen door and they're watching the progression of that nest-- quarter of an inch high one day, an inch high a day later.... in a few days, that nest also will be nearly four inches in height, built of grass and bits of mud. When the birds aren't building, they're riding on the fan blades and looking down at the cats.

The Barn Swallows are very vocal, and extremely curious. They sing and chirp all day long, and I've caught them watching me through the kitchen windows. They will sit there on top of the woodwork around the columns, and look at me as I stand at the sink or the stove. They stare at me as if I'm in a bird-cage of my own. A kitchen-cage, with pots and pans and plates, and no ceiling fan to ride on.

In another month or so, we will have lots of baby birds to watch. Three nests, filled with open mouths and stretching beaks, waiting for their mamas to feed them. I will be going from one end of the porch to the other, binoculars in hand, waiting for the first brave ones to flap those wings and propel themselves into the garden.

Our second season in this big old wonderful house with the baby Barn Swallows.

Wildlife moments.

Since moving out here to the country last year, we have seen our share of the local wildlife... possums, raccoons, armadillos, rabbits, snakes, hawks, vultures, coyotes. This morning, we can add another one to that list--- fox.

It was the first thing I saw this morning when I looked out the front door.... a beautiful red fox, with the longest bushiest tail. Right on the front lawn, sniffing around the wildflowers by the fence. No doubt, the fox was picking up the scent of our cats and chickens, and I was wondering if the fox would also realize that we had a dog and maybe smell that out there and decide to find another property to explore.

I have never seen a fox out in the wild before, and its size surprised me. I thought it would be larger, taller, and with bigger paws and a more menacing-sized head. But this morning's fox was almost delicate-- long thin legs, cat-sized paws, long pointed snout, and that tail was just too beautiful for words. I stood there at my door just watching as it moved slowly and deliberately, as it sniffed around the fencing. My hand touched the doorknob and made the slightest of sounds... the fox heard that and without even looking towards the house it started running towards the road. Once the fox left the grass and its paws hit the paved road, it took off like a shot, down the hill and into the tall wildflowers. I couldn't see the fox at all once it ran into the wildflowers-- the fox runs with its tail down, so if the grass is high, you don't even know it's there.

Something else to add to the growing list of what to look for on the property. And something else to worry about with the chickens and the cats. Oh goodie.

Impressionist Hill Paintings.

I don't even know how to describe the explosion of colors outside. That's the first thing I do now when I get up in the morning... go out on the balcony and look at the fields. The bluebonnets are just everywhere now...... an ocean of blue, sprinkled with yellow and orange, red and purple and pink, lavender and magenta.... all wildflowers, all magnificent. Because of the frigid temperatures we had over the winter months, which we normally do not have, all the wildflowers came into bloom at the same time this year. And the result looks like a Monet masterpiece.

Just imagine a huge field of green as far as your eye can see..... and then add massive amounts of blue to that field, sprinkle that with orange and yellow and pink, add in touches of purple and magenta and some red here and there...... and what you're looking at can just bring tears to your eyes. It is that beautiful.

We had our neighbors J & J here for Easter dinner yesterday.... after we ate, we all went outside to look at our fields, our pond, our vegetable garden. We all ooohed and aaahed over the colors and arrangement of the wildflower patterns in our pastures. After J & J left, I cleaned up the kitchen and straightened up the dining room, and my husband and I drove up to their hill and we all ooohed and aaahed over their fields, their pond, their vegetable garden. Everyone's property looks unique up here..... the ponds are different shapes, the homes are not identical, the pastures have their own one-of-a-kind patterns. From J & J's front yard, we can see our house and property..... and it just takes your breath away.

At this time of the year, people from all over the state are taking car trips to this County, just to see the wildflowers and the annual explosion of colors that decorate these hills. To think that we live here..... we live here..... is just beyond anything we could have imagined a few years ago when we decided it was time to get away from the waterfront area.

When I look out of my kitchen door, I can see at least seventeen shades of green and I still can pinch myself at the sight. The mesquite tree by the backyard deck is bursting with delicate feathery leaves right now, in a shade of green that I've never seen before. That tree must be at least a hundred years old, and it's just a sight to behold whether it's in bloom or not. The pecan trees are just beginning to bud now, and without the distraction of unpacking moving boxes (like last year) I will be able to pay attention to the daily changes in those big old trees that gave us such delicious pecans last Fall.

As I look out of the window near my desk here, I can see the pasture way out back behind the barn. That pasture is almost entirely covered in bluebonnets now, with a little carpet of yellow in the center. Beautiful beyond belief.

Walking outside at this time of the year is like being in a museum filled with paintings by the Impressionists.... you just don't know where to look first because you don't want to miss a thing. And we live here.

Mickey Marco Polo.

Our once inside-cat Mickey is now an inside-outside cat. I'm not crazy about that, but his behavior once the cold weather finally went elsewhere made us decide to let him go out onto the property. And out he went..... like he was shot out of a cannon. I know that little cat missed his old screen porch, but the way he catapulted himself outside you would think he was being chased by the vacuum cleaner in here.

Mickey Kitty loves the outside. He has been all over every inch of this property, and when there was nothing new to explore here, he went into the neighboring pastures. The other day, I looked out the window and there was Mickey, in the neighbor's field-- with his cows and Longhorns. The cows didn't seem to mind, but it bothered me to see that small black cat in the same field with huge livestock.

Mickey will come when I call him-- either right that second, or he will take a long winding path from there to here. That day, he took a winding path that would make the little kid in the "Family Circus" comic strip look like he was taking a short-cut.

My husband says to "let nature take its course" with Mickey. If he intends to explore and discover every bit of these hills, there's no way we can stop him unless we keep him in the house again. And just how do you do that? After you've let him run free? No way, Mickey would tell us. One of these days, Mickey is bound to roam too far, or get lost on someone else's hill, or meet up with un-friendly wildlife. "So be it," says my husband. I'm trying not to think about it.

The wildflowers are up and blooming and every day there is another explosion of yellow, red, or blue. Mostly blue now, as the bluebonnets come into their best couple of weeks. The yellow flowers look like miniature daisies, with just five leaves. Millions of them all over the hills here, and they remind us of the endless fields of the "butter-blooms" we saw in Germany. We haven't heard the sound of lawn-mowers and tractors lately-- no one dares to mow till all the wildflowers have gone to seed. For the next few weeks, driving anywhere will be a treat for both the eyes and the soul.

The barn swallows that had nested on our front porch last Spring are back again. There were two adults and five babies last year. Five tiny babies in that little nest last Spring, and we watched them every day and got to see their first flights out of the nest. This time, there are three barn swallows. At first, they were using the old nest from last year. Now they have begun to build a new nest not far from the old one. Both Mickey and Sweet Pea are watching the swallows going back and forth with grasses and weeds for the nest. The cats can't reach the nest-- it's way too high, but the birds are keeping an eye on the cats as they fly back and forth.

The bats are gone..... haven't seen any lately, either inside (thankfully) or outside. I'm sure they're out there somewhere at night. Maybe the barn... but there's no way I would go in there after dark anyway, so if the bats have found a new home in there, that's just fine.

Easter weekend already. I've begun to get the dining room table ready for company..... we invited J and J over for Easter Sunday. We'll make some food, they will make some food, and just like Valentine's Day, we will have way too much food and then we'll share the left-overs.

Scarlett is still sitting on the fake egg in her nesting box. It has been 23 days now since she began sitting on that egg and waiting for it to hatch. She has come down out of the nesting box on her own a couple of times, to eat and drink, but for the most part, she's just in that box and on top of that egg. What on earth does she think of all day long?