Welcome to April...

...it's warm and sunny here, but Opening Day for baseball had to be cancelled in New York (Yankees vs. Houston Astros) because of snow and ice and power outages.  My cousins are eMailing me about the colder-than-normal temperatures, the horrible commute this morning, and the frigid weather. I keep telling them all that they're living in the wrong zip code, but no one listens.

My first-ever compost pile is now history. I had to spray it with ant killer because there were zillions and zillions of fire ants smack in the middle of all my carefully-preserved kitchen scraps. Maybe we started that pile on top of an existing mound of ants?  When I raked into the center of the compost pile this morning, I found an entire universe of ant tunnels complete with countless stashes of teeny tiny ant eggs. (Which of course translates into more and more ants.)

I threw today's food scraps into the trash can, went into the garage and got the ant spray, and proceeded to annihilate every blasted one of those ants in their well-planned tunnels. Honestly, the entire state of Texas is built on top of one enormous fire-ant mound.

The new plan (Compost Pile 2.0) is to buy a round plastic container with a tight-fitting lid. I can keep that right on the back porch or the back deck, add food scraps to it every day along with a little bit of water and grass clippings and small weeds, and then I can roll the container around the deck a bit to keep it all mixed up so it really does turn into 'black gold' for the flowerbeds. Hope floats.

Our nocturnal puppy (nearly one year old, actually) is still waking me up two or three times during any given week. Last night she heard an armadillo in the yard. (Let it be noted that such an animal does not exactly stomp across the property in combat boots.) But Savannah heard it, and exploded into her roaring bark at 12:30, then again at 1:45, and once again at 3:30.  I truly have to admire Savannah's sense of protectiveness but I'd really enjoy getting an entire night's sleep as a rule, not an exception.

And how did I know an armadillo was out scavenging in our yard? Because I was out there in my coat and pj's with Savannah, waiting for her to find the perfect spot on the grass so she could pee. The armadillo gracefully walked across our driveway, across the grass by the guest cottage, and made its way calmly towards the barn. And there I was, holding tightly onto Savannah's leash, praying to the stars that she wouldn't lunge towards the armadillo because I knew I was just too tired to control that leash if she tried to chase that poor thing.