There was a beautiful Cardinal in the atrium yesterday! I loved seeing it in there. I do have bird houses in there because some tiny finches keep building nests in my plants. I am scared of drowning them when I water.

Two different turtles we've seen in our yard. The box turtle was an unsurprising find, but the snapping turtle (whose shell was about 12" by 18") really seemed out of place, since we don't have any water on our property.

When I lived in Memphis there was a shop I bought a lot of my jewelry making supplies at, he would get big crates of the agate rocks various sizes. You could buy them whole and he would crack it open for you or he would saw them into slices of what ever thickness you wanted. I loved doing that because it was always such a surprise to see what the inside looked like. I still have lots of the slices. They are all so beautiful.

Raven- they do eat my plants! I dont like it but at the same time I dont mind it, because I feel like I am the one who is really on their property. That is funny about that roadrunner! I also had one tapping on the glass...it woke me up from a nap a few months ago. When I went to the kitchen, he followed me there and stood outside the window watching me. When I went to the living room, he went around the house and stood there by the living room glass. He wouldnt take any food, but I didnt know what to feed him. So I ordered meal worms on amazon thinking he might come back. By mistake, I ordered too many and several large bags of meal worms arrived, a box each day for 5 days! And of course I rarely see the roadrunner now. I need to feed the mealworms to the wild birds to get them out of the house!