More Hike and Hummer Plus Painting

ARGH!  The weather is driving me nuts.  We had high winds today, the palm trees are swaying like crazy, I'm surprised the hummingbird on the nest is not vomiting from motion sickness.  And it's not warm.  Wednesday is predicted to go down to 36 35.  What the heck?  It's March!

Anyway, yesterday was cloudy but warm enough to hike in shorts and tee shirts.  We went back up onto Ringtail Ridge.  Some of the ocotillos are leafing out.  It seems like they're late this year, probably because it's been so steeeenking cold.

We went left for a bit on the ridge trail.  This is what you see.  We've been told there is a trail that loops around Bren peak, and we think we spotted it, but it's a long walk and we should have started earlier if we were going to do that.

Then we went right on the trail for a bit.  It was really windy.  After getting bashed about by the wind, we decided to go back down where it might be calmer.  Our neighbors have done the entire length of the ridge, apparently there is no trail to get off it, one has to bush whack down a steep face to get back into the valley and the Yetman trail.  I doubt if we'll do that, either.  My feet start yelping after about four or five miles, and it's longer than that.

Here is Jim coming down the trail off the ridge.

Cactus are really survivors.  Here he is, growing out of a rubble pile.

Today we got up and prepped food for the crock pot.  That was a really good idea.  Then we masked and painted two walls in the garage.  I can't believe how many places required blue tape.  It took for ever to get it done.  Tomorrow we have to do it again because it needs two coats.  We're not doing the wall that has shelves on it, it's pretty much covered up, and getting those shelves down would take monumental effort.

Here I am cutting in the walls.

Jim is painting around our new water heater.  Despite our best efforts and getting every single off-white paint chip in the area, we did not get a perfect match on the paint.  The off-white we bought has more of a pink tone than was suggested by the paint chip.  However, I do not believe I care.  It's a garage!

The hummer spent a lot of time on the nest today.  It's not warm and it's windy, so I guess she had to keep heat on the eggs.  If you look dead center you can see her hovering in front of the agave.  The new palm we bought is still in the plastic bucket from Home Depot and the wind blew it over today.  My going out to pick it up disturbed her.  She frequently goes to the agave when she's disturbed.

Here she is on the nest.  I'm taking pictures from the house so they're not that good.

I assume since she is on the nest that the eggs are still intact.  I didn't look today, we're trying to stay out of her line of sight.  Of course all that will be undone Monday and Tuesday when the people come to epoxy the dismal looking garage floor.  Hopefully there will be sun on the nest if she's off of it.