things the rain brought

Last Saturday and Sunday it rained. And then on Monday we packed up and went to the city for the week.

I like home coming. The cat likes home coming. She bounds down out of the truck as soon as I open the door and then she makes herself scarce, coming in only to eat, maybe an hour or two in the evening and then she wants right back out.

Now that the weather is cooling off a little and it's amazing what a difference 10˚ makes when it still gets up to the low 90s˚ and you are thinking that it's nice out we've been opening the doors and turning off the AC til about 3 PM. I actually got out there and did a little weeding and grass pulling in part of one flower bed today. Still needs to done be earlier in the day though.

I guess you could say that's one thing the rain brought, some cooler temperatures.

I like coming home because all my stuff is here and although the bed there is comfortable, the real bed is here.

Knowing what bed I am in is important and as it happens, I have four 'beds'. Since I've been having a relationship with insomnia for at least part of about two or three nights a week for a couple of years now, I sleep on the couch a lot. Plus, I stay up later because I have found that, if I can stay up til midnight, I can usually sleep through til 7 or later. But staying up til midnight usually means sleeping on the couch til midnight. What can I say, it's a comfy couch.

So I need to know where I am when I wake up in the middle of the night...country bed or couch, city bed or couch. Knowing what bed I am in tells me where the furniture is and in which direction lay the bathroom.

Seeing where I'm at in the city shouldn't be that big a deal considering the city's need to highly illuminate my block, especially right in front of my house but by then I'm usually trying to stay asleep so I open my eyes only as much as absolutely necessary.

You're probably wondering what this has to do with what the rain brought and I can tell you this...

absolutely nothing

But this does.

Once back home, we walk around the yard to see how things have fared in our absence.

These miniature amaryllis that pop up out of the ground unnoticed in the fall are always a delight.

The oxalis were not blooming when we left.

The pink and yellow rain lilies were blooming in Houston and I dug up some of them as we were leaving.

The little yellow ones I dug a small clump up out of an easement by a nearby street years ago and they have multiplied nicely. I have planted three little plugs around the country house and added more pink ones.

And we have a new resident in the turtle pond. Actually the rain didn't bring him, at least not last weekend's rain because I have heard him out there before, but today was the first time I have seen him, nestled in the pot of elephant ears. Eventually I annoyed him enough taking pictures that with one great leap, he jumped out of the pot, cleared the turtle pond altogether and landed in the space between it and the fence.

All righty then.

Haven't seen him since and have no idea how he found his way here in the first place.

A young bullfrog.