At dawn, I awoke to a few drops of rain on the skylight above my bed. I haven't seen rain fall for months, the winter of this year being the driest on record in California. While I sipped a cup of coffee the rain increased. I realized the carpenters working on my cottage remodel project had left their power tools sitting out in the open all night. I ran around quickly in the increasing rain and covered all the tools with blue plastic tarps. They told me, when they arrived later, that the rain doesn't ruin their tools, but shortens the useful life of the tools.

A few morning shopping errands, then a walk on the beach in this cooler weather. The sky today is filled with bands of various colors of blue and gray clouds. The mountains to the north of me hung on to tall thunderheads. A very pretty day, in which the season seemed so confused that it had a mind to simply dazzle everyone who watched with this strikingly brilliant display of color.

The rain lasted only an hour--enough to wet the ground, but not enough to build a puddle. An hour of bright sun in the middle of the day cooked all the moisture off the surface of the earth, and now all is dry.

Last evening I watched a crow and red-tailed hawk fight at length in the sky. I would imagine somebody has been spying on the nest of the other. The two were of about equal size and flying capability, but the hawk was more nimble when making sharp turns. They went at each other beak-to-beak, until the hawk flew away from the heat of the battle, and the crow settled on the top of the tallest tree in the forest beyond my house.

The carpenters tell me they see those same two fighting it out every day. We never used to have crows here. They're noisy and seem pushy. The hawks and other smaller birds must be irritated with these newcomers trying to take over the air space.

Half of a moon also floats through the sky tonight. I would go out and build a warming fire to sit by, but I find myself yawning incessantly, so will save the stack of lumber scraps for another night.

It's mid-May. April seems so close behind, but the distance is no closer than the span of time from now til June.