The dust is pocked with rain drops, but it’s only a tease.  It seems the winter rains, which were so “promising”, will fail us this year and meanwhile the daily temperatures are in subtle, upward swing.

Saltweed is three to four inches tall already: green, purple, and gray.  They’re not the only thing that is brightening: first-winter Gray Flycatchers are losing now their olive wash and taking on the much clearer gray plumage for which they’re named.

A Leaf Bug the likes of which I’ve never seen sits on an irrigation hose, its body a perfect brown leaf, curled up around the edges and even presenting a central vein–and what look like formidible retracted fangs!  The tiny dark grasshoppers are back on those hoses after an absence of a few weeks; they’ve been waiting out the cold somewhere.