The weather has been much better although we had two weeks of high winds. In one stretch of 36 hours the wind never dropped below 20 mph day or night, with gust up to 40 mph. It has helped getting the leaves off the trees though. Of late the weather is nice with day highs in the 70's and dropping to 50's at night. Good working weather although this is my busy time in the office.
We have cleaned all the flower beds set out all new flowers, mostly begonias. The deer did get the Mexican Heather in the pots out front, but everything in the beds are fine so far. This is the first time we have planted since the new rock borders were completed. The beds around the house look very good. We set three tomato plants and the Mint is coming along very well. I don't think we are going to get the big garden in this year.
The trees continue to look good. They are still in process of change. The Live Oaks are dropping old leaves as the new ones come out. Most of the Spanish Oak have budded and should be in leaves very soon. The lone Hackberry tree, usually the last to bud, has now done so. I have to double my inventory of Pecan trees. We have really cleaned the area where I knew I had the big pecan and now I know that there are two very large native pecan trees. When I looked before I just assumed there was one, but now that the brush and briars are cleaned I can see both at the same time. The wildflowers are coming now out. We have a lot of Prairie Verbena around the house as usual. Between the goats and the deer they have eaten most of the wildflowers on the ranch. There are a lot of Bluebonnets along the roads and highways.
The wild birds are not as active as last year yet. I think we are behind schedule this year. We had beautiful indigo buntings by mid-April last year. I did put out the first hummingbird feeder today. I haven't seen any hummers, but they are due anytime.
The deer have not been as active now that we have grass and they have lots of things to eat on the mountain and pastures. We still get the regulars that live here on the ranch, but I haven't seen the large groups of deer for a week or so. I did have a deer stand in the ranch road yesterday when I was going to feed the goats. He didn't move until I had to come to a stop in the Gator.
We have added pots to the new patio and the furniture has been painted so the patio is looking very good as well. I believe it is now officially open!! Still too cool to swim, but the water has been getting up to 70°. It's still cooling off at night so the water also stays cool. Won't be long though.
It was a nice week on the Ranch. The weather was generally nice with high's about 78° and cooling at night. We did get an inch of rain on Friday night. We planted some more larger Asian Jasmine as a ground cover, but our order of two flats of small AJ didn't come in this week.
I did get the huge pile of brush burned this week before the rain. We had accumulated a lot from trimming and cleaning on the county road fence row and other places. I also did some stump burning as weather allowed.
Pepino painted the new pipe rail gate and entry. It looks very good. He will be in Mexico for three weeks so we'll miss his fine touches around the place. The wildflowers are looking good. They are everywhere for better or worse. We cleaned the wildlife tank and added two Water Lilies that we got from our neighbor. The deer are trimming the pads closest to the edge of the tank for us. 
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