I think they're back!

I believe the hawks are nesting in a tree in the back yard again. I was on the patio just now, looking at my dead tomato plant, and heard what sounded like a young or hurt bird--that crying or mewing sound. So I walked out under the trees to see if I could locate the sound. I looked up and, on a bare limb almost directly over my head, sat Mama Hawk--I'm sure it was a female, because she was a good bit smaller than the hawks I've seen here in the past. (She also appeared to be dark all over instead of having the brown-flecked cream-colored breast, like the big hawks I've seen before.) She was making little soft sounds, apparently in reply to those mewing sounds. She didn't pay much attention to me, but sat there for about half a minute, then flew to a tree out by the street. Probably waiting for me to go in the house.

The Lowe's guy came about noon and measured the doorways. I spent the morning sealing up and stamping my packages, then took them to the P.O. as I was afraid I would miss the mail truck. At the post office (going in with my second load in my arms), I ran into Betty W. who had started leaving. But of course we had to talk, and I stood in the lobby for the longest with the perspiration dripping out of my hair, my glasses sliding off my nose, etc. I finally just set the big box down and listened. Anyway, it was good to see her--I like Betty. She and Curtis are going to the Holy Land in October, and she was there for the papers to get their passports renewed.

I almost started to ask if I could go to the East with them. I'll bet she'd let me. It would probably be my only opportunity in this life to see that place. Said the Compleat Non-Traveler.

When I got home, the ice cream I had bought at the grocery was mush. (Of course I had gone to the store and P.O. in the wrong order.) It wasn't my favorite kind, anyway.