Flower Friday : : Streletzia

It has been such a beautiful day today that I have succeeded in accomplishing nothing except sitting outside in various locations outside in a tee shirt. I think that is an accomplishment in itself in some ways, but not one to which I can lay claim. 72F degree weather (~20 degrees C) in the first week of February is an accomplishment I can get behind....

Of course the weatherman is starting to mutter the "D" word. Can't they just let us enjoy a few days of spring-like weather without intimating drought, famine and fire ahead? It used to be that when all else failed, one could always talk about the weather, but now even that is off the table!

In keeping with my vow to live in the moment, I'm now swearing off predictions....

The streletzia are on the move...at least they appear that way to me. There are quite a lot of them coming up by the front porch (coincidentally, they are the same colors as the Fermob chair I just put out there). The unopened buds remind me of geese on alert, looking in all directions. 

While I sat on the porch watching the birds, what caught my attention most wasn't the goldfinches looking like falling leaves, or the house finches with their red breasts, or even the titmouse with his fetching little crest and big round eye, but the raucous squirrel and his avian counterpart the stellar jay, who seemed to be having a very loud conversation in the oak trees.

OilMan is trying to track down the source of what he believes to be an irrigation leak...it involves kneeling in the mud and digging up the garden to examine the irrigation hose without disrupting too many plants. Of course they are already disrupted because they are planted in standing water which won't drain through our clay 'soil'. As you might well have predicted, I have my opinions about irrigation hoses, but OilMan is an engineer, so I try to leave the job to him....