March 1
I love it when birds look exactly like their pictures in my bird book. I just had a beautiful male Scott's Oriole on the fence behind the bird pond. According to the map, he's up here for breeding season. I wish him great luck--preferably in my back yard, so I can watch his babies grow up. (I've never seen baby orioles, to my knowledge).

The spate of rain stopped and everything is lovely now--blue skies, high sixties to low seventies, a few puffy clouds, the air clear and the mountains every shade of lavender. Everything in my back yard is fixing to bloom, except the new citrus trees.Even the "dead" ocotillo out behind the pond is putting out leaves, and it practically never does. The others all have orange flowers already.

Out in front of the house, the brittle bush is starting to bloom. The desert zinnias have been flowering for a few days. A bunch of other stuff is coming up, but I don't know if it will turn out to be wildflowers or "weeds." Which is also what wildflowers are.