Friday Rain

Finally we are getting some rain here in the Valley of the Sun. I can’t believe it’s Friday already and I haven’t blogged all week. Oh what a tragedy! I’ve been busy with projects and I really don’t have time to be writing this post right now, but the rain has inspired me.

The big chill left its mark around Scottsdale with lots of dark brown trees and shrubs. It looks like the ficus and citrus trees along with Bougainville took the worst of the freezing temperatures that we had for about three days. Fortunately we have pine trees in our yard which seemed to do OK.

Oh, yesterday I saw a kestrel land on the sidewalk three houses down from us! We were driving home and had just turned onto our street. I saw this bird land on the sidewalk and couldn’t believe it was a kestrel. I’ve only seen them away from town out on the highway when we are traveling to California. They’re a small hawk. You can see a picture of one here.

I kept telling Norm to look at it and he couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. He’s not as familiar with birds as I am. I know a lot of the names of the birds we see around here. A couple of weeks ago I saw a chickadee on one of the low branches of our pine tree right in front of our living room window — it was so cute. That’s one of the nice things about living in a southern climate during the winter. You see birds who have migrated south. If you’ve never been to Scottsdale then you wouldn’t realize how many Canadian geese we have here and other waterfowl who make this place their home in the winter. Of course, we get all snowbirds from everywhere here in Scottsdale and Phoenix metro. It’s getting crowded everywhere we go because of all the snowbirds.

OK, I’ve got to get back to work!