Look at that! Early February and here are the first signs of Spring! In Arizona that is ..

As much as I love winter, and boy do I wish we had a "real" one over here (snow and ice in Holland, and even in Oregon), to find these buds and tiny flowers is always a thrill!

The Red Yuccas are shooting up their tall spikes, each covered in tiny orange flowers with their yellow hearts :

I walked through a 'new for me' area, where they're still building a whole new section of the neighborhood, but already planted some huge Saguaros alongside what are going to be the new roads.

      

They have already been discovered by the Gila Woodpeckers, who are busy carving out their new 'apartments'.

Since this area is relatively quiet at the moment there's still lots of wildlife running around, quite literary, I flushed out a whole bunch of rabbits, some roadrunners, several quail, and all sorts of birds!

 

I finally got a shot of a gorgeous little Anna's Hummingbird, flashing me his brilliant colors! Usually they just show me their more 'blah' side (if you could ever call that emerald green blah ..).

 

But the most exciting wildlife discovery was this one :

 

                                                       

 I think we have 'bats in the Belfry' dear!

 

Yup! Definitely!

Oh my goodness! It turns out here's a whole colony of bats nesting under the roof tiles! 

How cool is that? Well, I guess it's not for everybody, but I think it's really great!
They're most likely Arizona Myotis, a small brown bat, weighing about 0.30 oz and 9.6" long. 

They can live for about 2 years and usually have 2 young in the summer and generally hibernate from October to March.
When they emerge in the spring, they eat a truck-load of bugs between dusk and dawn and turn this around into Guano, their highly prized and effective fertilizer excrement.

 

    

They're protected, but can be re-located if they're inside the house. Fortunately these are not inside but just under the roof-tiles and create no problems whatsoever, so I truly hope they will be allowed to stay there.
For now, we're not going to mention them to Doug, since I'm not so sure he's not going to freak out and disturb them.

In the meantime, we're installing us on the back porch around 6pm and enjoy watching them emerge and fly ..

 

                   

 

And finally, inside the house, we've finished the dining room wall and the wine cellar. The new walls were textured and painted, tiles installed on the floor of the cellar and the baseboards installed.

 

                                     

                                                          Look at that beautiful wall!

          

And here's the wine cellar.             

                                 

The only thing left to do is install the cooling unit, which will happen on Saturday when the crew is here, since that bugger weighs 60 pounds and has to be lifted all the way up to just under the ceiling where it will be installed in place.

Also, minor detail, it's still missing a door. Which has been (special)ordered but was back-ordered (a covid problem, no doubt..)

I once again cleaned all the dust and dirt from about everywhere (hopefully for the last time) since most of the 'big stuff' is now finally done, and also because Doug and Brenda are back for a visit on Saturday. 

That is, if the Oregon weather will allow them to fly, since at the moment it's slating and snowing over there with freezing temperatures of 27F! Yikes!