At the end of June, I will have one year in my new house.

Yep. I love it here.

My development is brand new, like my house, and also like my house, not completely done yet. We're surrounded by open fields, some under cultivation, some not, and a few small hedgerows and copses and woodlets of trees, primarily Coastal oak and mesquite. Real edge of town stuff.

Living on the edge of such things, there have been surprisingly few occurrences of wildlife around my home, other than the inevitable (and welcome) crickets. Just three, actually, but all three have been intriguing.

When I first set up housekeeping, a large toad took up residence under my lawnmower (no shed yet, so I park it outside the storage room off the patio, where the hot water heater is) and looked positively grumpy every time I mowed. Eventually, he moved on, disliking the weekly interruptions I guess, but at the time, his presence made me feel . . . home. Like I was returning to the natural cycles of the countryside and observing a native ecosystem which shared edges with my own, more manicured holdings.

Then I came home from 12th Night at Haus Hoffman to be greeted by a white crane in my backyard . . . I'm not good with bird identification, but it was too large and not nearly wispy enough to be an egret. I think it was probably a young whooping crane, as this is their season here. It . . . she? . . . showed up once more, on a Friday, just in case I missed the point. Frigga, gentle and wise, blessing and keeping watch.

Today's was . . . unusual. There's a patch under my bedroom window where the sod didn't take, so I pulled it up. Unfortunately, I never got around to starting the planting bed, which will feature (eventually . . . ) blueberries, dwarf bananas, caladiums, ferns, and a Hand of Buddha citron, extending from the edge of the patio to the fence, and encircling a Mexican Orchid tree I'm going to start from a cutting of my mother's.

Yeah, it'll be pretty. But right now, it's a weed patch. I do live right on the edge of an enormous field, after all. Because of the cold weather, and the lawn not needing mown much, I haven't been out in the backyard a great deal for several weeks. The weeds got HUGE, and began flowering. Half a dozen different kinds, too. It was actually rather pretty, but not really where I intend the wight's corner (old Scandinavian farm custom) to go, as it's right against the house and I don't want insect life thriving quite that close to my walls. Hard enough keeping them out down here on the Gulf as it is!

So today, since I was mowing anyway, I decided to go ahead and mulch it all down with the mower and then finish it off with the whacker . . . but as I pushed the mower into the last stand of vegetation, something brown and chubby streaked between my legs and hid under the edging machine on the patio.

Too small for a cat. Too big for a chipmunk. Too fast for a hamster, which was my initial blurred impression of it.

Baby rabbit!

Cute as all get out, in a picture postcard almost not quite real kind of way. And determined to do what rabbit DNA commands rabbits to do under the circumstances, which is to stay very, very still and try to look like a rock.

Kept me company the whole time I mowed the back yard, but scrunched even farther up under the edger when I tried to feed it some organic Spring Mix lettuce I had in the fridge.

Eventually, I had to move the edger, which unlike the mower fits in the store room, and it bolted for the fenceline. I find myself wondering if I'll see the little guy again . . . or like Elmer Fudd, be forever chasing it out of my carrots once I get a garden started!

Home. Mine. Love it.

~Boar