Mostly crabgrass that has spurted up and needs to be "Round-Up'ed".
We kept hearing an insistent rat-a-tat sound coming from our next door neighbor's tree and finally Judy spotted the culprit briefly before he flew away.
Then today she spotted either him or another one in the tree just above our bird bath.
I spotted him from my window, which is closer, and identified him (with the help of "Sibley's Birds of the Arizona Central Highlands") as a Ladder-Backed Woodpecker.
He's easy to identify with his distinctive black and white striped coat and scarlet top-knot.
(And no, I didn't take the picture, I swiped it from the Web.)
Now on another note I just realized that the day I'm having my pacemaker replaced is the day of the total solar eclipse!
I'm not sure how I feel about someone messing with my heart on Eclipse Day but I'll just have to trust him.
The eclipse will only be a partial one here in Arizona but I was lucky enough to witness a total one back when we lived in Mexico.
It must have been 1991 because it was at our last residence down south in San Antonio Tlayacapan.
(Try saying that after a couple of margaritas!)
We shared the experience with a couple of friends, Lori and Hugh.
You can see the sky darkening behind us and this was at around high noon, I believe.
We have our dark film viewers to safely look at the sun.
Another safe way is by viewing the sun's reflection in a bowl of water, which is what we were doing here.
One interesting sidelight: our yard boy was an educated lad.
He was going to college but he still held onto some of the old superstitions of the native people.
One of these was that a red cloth should be tied to any fruit tree to keep the fruit from falling off during the eclipse.
Our backyard had probably 20 or 30 fruit trees and each one got a red cloth tied to it.
Superstition or science, it must have worked.
None of the fruit fell.
Maybe I should tie a red flag around my wrist when I go in for my surgery on the 21st!
