Spring things....

As I type, there are dozens and dozens of birds outside by the feeders and getting themselves acquainted with the new birdbath we just bought this afternoon. At any time of the day, you can hear the bird-songs and the wing-flappings of happy birds.

With the warm weather we've been having (nearly 80 degrees today) the barn swallows have come back and are in the process of renovating their nests from last year. My husband took down some of the woebegone-looking nests that needed re-building rather than refurbishing, and the swallows have been busy deciding which nests to claim as their own.  Last year's baby birds have come back, and I'm pretty sure which ones they are because they don't fly out of their nests when I go up and down the back stairs... they just sit there on the edge of the nest and look at me, just like they did last Spring. ("Oh, look! She's back here again!")

The new birdbath has a gnome sitting on the bottom of it, so before I set that into one of the backyard flowerbeds, I moved a little red and white gnome-home from the front of the house and put it near the gnome birdbath. I doubt very much that the birds will notice, but the gnome-theme in that back flowerbed looks very cute.  I'll be looking in the thrift stores for other gnomes to join the party out there. I refuse to buy high-dollar gnomes from the garden stores, for the simple reason that the raccoons and armadillos dig around the gnomes and knock them over, usually destroying all or part of them. I've got a one-armed gnome out in the yard who lost an fight with a raccoon a couple of years ago. Poor little gnome... but he seems to be doing nicely with just the one arm, the lack of which is hidden by the front door of the gnome-home anyway.

And that's what happens out here in the country.... you start planning your afternoons around the placement of one-armed gnomes and little gnome-homes under the rose bushes in the backyard.  And in the course of doing so, I've gotten my first (and certainly not the last) bite from a fire ant. Within the hour, I expect that my right ankle will be swollen and red and throbbing.

And so begins another Spring in the Hill Country.....