Before 9:00 yesterday I had pulled two buckets of weeds, trimmed the mini lemon tree, netted the dead bugs, and guided Creepy.  It was already hot, of course.  Tom spent much longer outside, mowing the Back 40 and around Alex's, having to do it in 'layers' since everything was so tall and thick.  He also mowed out front, along the street (and as long as he was 'in the neighborhood' he mowed Joy & Dick's street strip) and finished up with some weed-eating.

Joy called last night to thank Tom heartily for mowing that strip, which is on a considerable slant.  She was mowing their front yard yesterday (there's been a steady sound of neighbors mowing after all that rain we got) but hadn't gotten around to the strip.  She was also grateful that Tom weed-ate around their mailbox, saving her from doing it with hand clippers, which made me laugh - and then she laughed as I said to her, what was he going to do, weed-eat everything except their mailbox?  We agreed we are both lucky to have such helpful neighbors!

Yesterday afternoon I worked a little on the puzzle (it's a real slog now, and we get pretty excited with each piece we get in) and also did some sewing while I watched some mindless movies. With only the final two borders (already pieced, measured, and cut) to sew on today, I'll soon be ready to hand in another charity quilt.

Alex spent yesterday at the lake with friends, and last night showed up with a friend's BIG boat; they're going back to the lake today, so it didn't make sense to schlep the boat all the way to Scottsdale, right?  Tom went out to help guide him into the backyard, but that didn't work so it spent the night out front.  This morning, when I went out to sweep up after Tom's mowing and weed-eating, I snapped a couple of pix.

Hot and sweaty from the sweeping the driveway, it was a good time to check on Creepy (who again had cooperated by starting up just fine this morning.)  I was in the shallow end of the pool, netting drowned bees and flies and gnats, when I noticed something swimming along the edge by the diving board.  For a split second I thought Brownie had fallen in, but immediately realized it wasn't large enough to be him.  With just the nose poking up it looked like a rat, and (even though we don't want them around) I couldn't let it drown. But when I went over to scoop it out, imagine my surprise when I discovered what it actually was!

I toweled it off, and once it was reasonably dry came inside where it just lay still on my chest, seemingly sleeping; I only knew it was still alive because it occasionally opened its eyes - though when I moved a bit and it started to roll off my chest it did nothing to break its 'fall'.  Not sure what I was going to do with it since it seemed awfully small to be out on its own.

After an hour of not moving I decided to make it a 'nest' in a shoebox along with some milk in a jar lid, hoping that would help.  At that point it finally 'woke up' and tried to scurry away.  So I took it out back to the hedge (of course Brownie wanted to come along to "help", but not this time!) thinking that was where mama possibly had her nest.  When I set the little guy down in the grass/weeds it didn't move, so I gave it some space and left to go reset the irrigation gate.  Finally, when I came back near the little bunny it hopped into denser brush.  Guess I've done all I can do.