Prickly Pear Bloom

Do you see it?

I’ve been trying all day to decide what to say here today. If I should tell you about the relaxing evening I spent on Friday, on my own while The Husband was off fishin’, watching Juno again and snuggling with a bottle of wine. Or maybe about the catalog that dominated my weekend, the one that I worked on for hours and hours, prepress, and printing, and making a kickass comp. Nah, I’m not quite ready to tell you about that. That’s a whole saga that deserves more than the time I have available to devote to it this night at 9:47 pm.

So I guess I’ll tell you about the rather large fowl I encountered in my rather urban landscape on Saturday morning.

I got up at the break of dawn to go to the Farmer’s Market, the third of the season!, and as I was opening my car door, blurry from sleep and in need of coffee, much to my surprise I see a big bird standing in the far corner of my backyard.

Now, I live in the middle of downtown Madison, just for the record. Although the arboretum is about 6 blocks south. But still. This bird was a little far from home, if you ask me.

I ran to get the camera, and she hunkered down in the lilies and I was all freaked out because she was backed into a corner and damned if I know how turkeys react to being cornered and approached with Nikon wielding humans in the middle of the city and so I didn’t get too close and all she did was poke her head up from her cozy little lily bed to look at me.

I had things to do, coffee to drink, tulips to buy, and a part of my design team to meet to hand off catalog files, so I reluctantly headed off, but when I came home 2 hours later, there she was, nestled snugly behind  my neighbor’s hostas.

We chilled for awhile, she and I. It doesn’t look like she nested any eggs in my lilies, but I sure do wonder if she was looking for a suitable place. It’s that time of year, after all. And I do hope she wandered back to wherever she came from.