Early morning on a quiet walk through our neighborhood is the best time to appreciate all the beautiful things along the way. While the sky is still transitioning from dark to light, the birds are just starting to welcome the day with songs and chirps that bring trees, cactus, roofs, and powerlines into focus. Some trees sound like hundreds of birds have been roosting overnight hidden amongst the foliage. Just this morning we spotted a cardinal, grackles, doves, pigeons, hummingbirds,  woodpeckers, some small, obviously non-native parrots, geese, and assorted other birds.

Speaking of the geese, their honking has only returned this week as they are heading to wherever it is the geese are going here at the beginning of spring. We often catch the call of hawks before we see them but haven’t seen any for a couple of weeks now. The mockingbirds have made themselves visible once more which is strange as they are not migratory, but over the past 5 or 6 months we couldn’t find hide nor feather of them and then today or maybe it was yesterday we saw (or rather, heard) that they are back. For that matter, we haven’t seen hummingbirds for a long time either, and then all of a sudden we’ll spot them darting about.

Then there was that coyote about a week ago that lept right over a 6-foot cinderblock wall and like an apparition from another dimension was gone in a flash. On the other hand, there’s this semi-obstinate donkey named Lucy that some days will bray at us as though it’s excited to see us, while on others it will throw a glance from the far corner and stand there sulking as by now it’s well aware that we don’t bring treats. When Lucy does trot over she gladly accepts head and ear scratches. One of the donkey’s neighbors is a horse that’s trying to be social but doesn’t seem to want to be petted and would prefer that we would accept some nibbling of our hands.

Depending on our walking route we can see upwards of a dozen cats, none who are responsive to our attempts to coax them into a nuzzle. Penny and Bella are a couple of dogs who by and large no longer bark at us and will even wag their tails as we walk by, but if I should walk directly towards them they let me know that the wagging tails are a trap that triggers wild, angry barking.

Now combine all of this life with the still cool morning air, half a dozen hot air balloons drifting across the sky with some pink and orange clouds catching the rising sun, while those aforementioned orange blossoms from an earlier blog post punctuate our first encounter with the new day and you too will hopefully understand our appreciation of all these beautiful things.