Western Bluebird

They're common here, but we rarely see them in our garden. This is a female and if you look carefully you can catch just a little bit of their characteristic blue on her wing and tail feathers. The males have bright blue backs and wings and red breasts. 

This little one has been flying into the bedroom door, perching on it's handle and grabbing onto the screen over the window. This slightly out of focus picture was what I got after I missed the shot of her sitting on the door handle. We put some mealworms in the feeder outside and closed the curtains in hopes of luring her away from her apparent fascination with her own image. Or her fruitless search for something in the bedroom.

We took a nice long walk down by Brush Creek once the early morning rain drizzle was finished. The grasses are still a verdant green and mixed with vetch, buttercups and vinca. There is a little patch of crocosmia (montbretia) and a large carpet of wild onions. We met a woman with two little dogs one her, one belonging to her friend, both quite old but enjoying their outing. So was the woman, who had a wonderful French accent and some eye catching eyewear, and told us how happy she was to see the sun and promised warmer weather.

We stopped by Sarmentine, the French bakery, for one of their delicious fig, brie and arugula sandwiches and brought them home for lunch for I needed to cut an enormous sticker out of Spike's curly chest hair before it became impossible. 

The administration claims that the 'beautiful' tariffs will bring manufacturing back to the US, but has also gutted programs designed to build plants, which are not built overnight even when the money exists to  do it.The need for legacy manufacturing of things like steel and mining of coal, or the milling of textiles no longer exists, and Biden programs were designed to bring  more relevant chip and software makers back here where the technology for them was born.

The Republicans are scrambling to explain the inexplicable, some resorting to MAGA tropes, others clearly contemplating bolting, faced with serious pushback from their constituents who insist that this is not what they voted for.