Exhausting day

I got up at 5 AM and headed out for Odessa to my early morning eye doctor appointment. Skipped breakfast (normal for me) and too tired to do much about lunch. My pickup was in the shop for an oil change. I had expected to get it and head to CMO when I got back to Alpine. Since we got half an inch of rain, I knew my feeders would be covered with bees.*

Well, the shop called before I got to Alpine and told my husband some drive shaft carriage was missing and I couldn't drive it. They ordered one, and it might be ready in a couple of day. I decided to drive the car to where the blacktop ends and have my sister pick me up from there. That worked great except I didn't have transportation at CMO and I was exhausted. Additionally there was a little water that had run into the settling pond that I wanted to transfer to a storage tank. I'll skip all the tedious details, but I ended up making four trips up to the house for one thing an another, besides getting wet... and more exhausted. Couldn't get the small pump that I worked so hard to set up to work, so had to lug by foot a big heavy pump and hoses. I'd use the expression, "it ate my lunch, " except I hadn't had any lunch. Finally got the big pump going. It sucked all of the water out in a mere hour, but water is water. Waste not, want not.

The cottonwood is starting to bloom. Those at Lajitas are fully leafed out and lush. Even half way between Alpine and CMO at Calamity Creek the cottonwoods are half leafed out. But, that's just the way it is every year. My cottonwood is later than everywhere else in S Brewster Co, it seems. Not a trace of green on it. It is an E Cottonwood and the others in the area are either Rio Grande or AZ Cottonwoods, so I'm sure that has something to do with it.

The feeders were covered with bees. Sometimes I try to recycle the sugar solution in them, but today, I just dumped it out and started over. Too much hassle without my pickup. As it may rain again this weekend, I just filled them half full. The Lucifers are still coming to the feeders since the ocotillo nearby haven't started blooming yet. Some birders came to see them today but the birders had left before I got here. I hope they saw them. Surely they should have. I had no trouble seeing several. Here's one rather pale female. The male displayed (courtship) to her down in the bushes for a long time but I couldn't get a shot at her until she came and perched by the feeder.

The honeysuckle are about the only thing blooming in my hummingbird garden, but it won't be long now.

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* All hummingbird feeders get covered with bees here except the Dr.JB, which only get covered after a rain when the rain water overruns their internal baffles.