Breezy, cool, overcast back porch morning coffee muses.

Upper forties and breezy with no sun in the sky to warm up this cold back porch will make for a short coffee muses.

I had a big blue heron fly through the backyard just now. While they are common around here, you very seldom see them flying low through the yard.

There are a couple of flocks of small birds wheeling out over the woods. Isn’t it funny how I still consider them by that name, even after most of the trees and all of the underbrush has been gone for going on three years or more. A quarter century of habit… hard to break.

There’s a lot of seagulls moving through this morning in small groups. Not the big v’s we see so often of a morning.

The weather this morning reminds me of the winter I spent in south Texas on my grandfather’s ranch. Well, we called it the ranch, all 213 acres of it. It was cool and overcast a lot that fall and winter. Grandma, like grandmas everywhere, was always cold so she kept the house warm. Me, much like I am still, was always warm and spent a lot of time outside. Not Too far from the house was a piece of ground that hadn’t been cleared in a long while. Thick south Texas brush… I would find myself wandering into the thickest part, finding a place to sit and start a small sqaw wood fire and meditate an hour or two away. The brush was so thick very little wind blew through while you could hear the wind just above your head blowing across the tops of the plants.

Sitting there, huddled over a small fire, I would sometimes be joined by a small bird or two. Little balls of feathers, sharing the warmth from my fire. Sitting on a branch, sometimes within reach, communing. A warm spot amongst the cold.

Speaking of cold, that’s what my hands are… heading in.