Blogasaurus!

What a truly wonderful day! The sun is fabulously bright and the air is dry and almost cool, 78 at the end of May in Arizona is cooool. A beautiful breeze is rustling in the pines, what a mysterious sound. I'm sure most people would be inured to all this, but I'm from the big city and this really beats the sound of fire engines at 3:30 in the morning!

Just took my new cat, Mars, out for a walk. Oy vey! I leashed him up and off we went for a wonderful adventure. This is only his second day here and our second attempt to take a walk in his harness. He spent the first 15 minutes inside the recycle box. ha! ha! Then he took off under a big manzanita bush, I didn't know how fast he could run! Unlike his brother in arms, Mushi who is staying with his friend Blue in PA for this trip, Mars has never been on a leash. He's long and lanky, built for speed and somewhat unpredictable... not a good thing when the coyotes come out at dusk. He's a great guy and I would be devastated if anything happened to him. Maybe this freedom thing is not such a good idea for Arizona.

We built a special, very large, outdoor pen with a high perch so that the cats can watch the goings on in safety. At night it's really magical, all the spooky night sounds of the high desert... coyotes calling to each other, javelinas rooting up my plants, rabbits rustling, lizards scurrying and families of quail running for their lives. My neighbor, another NYC transplant, has seen bobcats in her yard and there was an enormous buck, with a huge rack of antlers just 10 feet from the house last month. This is the real deal and you never know what's going to happen next.

I think I'll take a break from all the excitement and stress of cat wrangling and nature and make some jewelry. What a peaceful respite from the "real" world!