Friday Afternoon.

5 pm. 80 degrees. Maybe 81. Maybe 79. Squirrels yelling at each other up in the crown of the Japanese magnolia. Starlings nesting in the Chinese Fir. Robins front and back, two sets of two babies alive and well. Eyes open in the downspout nest. A day behind in the drama that is the azalea nest. The canopy of the Japanese magnolia's thicker this year: no late freeze. Those leaves that get sun go translucent in it; those that don't are a kind of new grass green. It's almost the season where this tree starts kicking some of its green leaves down onto the WeatherDeck. Very few seasons where this tree isn't spitting something out onto the ground. Baby towhees screaming over in La Vieja's shrubbery. La Vieja's transplanted daylilies — I asked her nicely last year if I could move them twelveish feet out into the sun — are huge, two or three feet tall. Little breeze out of the south-southeast. Gusts to something. 15 mph. That's a seated guess.

Friday, May the Two. Already cooling back off into evening. Birds everywhere. Everywhere. Sun. Mostly sunny. Mainly sunny. Home from school. Walking out to the parking lot today I had that old feeling of being free of something. I have to go back Sunday afternoon, but for now, it's the porch and the dog and a cold beer and, when she's finished completing tasks, AMR. Here she is now, sweater in hand, god love her. 80 degrees in the shade. AMR's got a cardigan. Be prepared. We are prepared.