Lonesome toad

Renée
Renée on display

One evening this week as I was about to brush my teeth, Joyce came in from tending her flock and told me to come outside to hear a strange noise.  She said it was coming from the pond area so we strolled through the crepuscular gloom in that direction.  We didn’t have to get very close before we could hear the sound.  I told her it sounded like a frog and later revised that to toad, thinking that the more likely explanation.  Darkness was descending rapidly so we got a flashlight and were able to identify the source of the noise.  It was indeed a toad, sitting in the water at the edge of the pond and sending forth its plaintive call into the night hoping for a response.  I like to think eventually it found company if not love.  A love-sick toad is a terrible thing to waste.

Po Kitty went missing this week.  She wasn’t around Wednesday evening when the weather started turning cold and she wasn’t around at dinner time, which was very unusual.  She wasn’t one to stray too far.  We had never seen her go out of our gate.  She would hang around the enclosure and wander east of the house but never much farther than that.  Maybe she got a better offer somewhere and I hope she did, but after refusing to be run off by the other cats or shooed away by us when she first turned up, it seems odd that she would just disappear without foul play being involved.  We miss her.

A squadron of Mississippi kites was overhead Tuesday evening.  Like the kingbirds, they are a harbinger of warm weather.  And we did have warm weather Monday and Tuesday, maybe a little too warm, but Wednesday and Thursday were particularly unpleasant with a cold wind blowing.  We stayed dry, though.  That much we can count on.

A humingbird showed up outside our kitchen window last Sunday and inspected the place where we hang the feeder.  Maybe it was one of the regulars from previous years.  We didn’t have the feeder out but Joyce hopped to it and we did before the day was out.  During the cold of Wednesday and Thursday the hummer was a regular visitor.  It seemed strange to see a hummingbird visiting the feeder in cold and wind like that.

We spent a pleasant Saturday afternoon hiking in Caprock Canyon State Park with Renée as our guide.  It was a nice afternoon, lots of sunshine to highlight the red terrain of the canyons, and the air was cool enough to keep us from overheating.caprock canyon  Renée hikes in the canyon regularly after work with some of her colleagues so she knows the trails pretty good and seemed to be a little more fit to hike them than we were.  Anyway, it was good to see her and have a little break from the non-stop work on Six Acre Farm.