May 1, 2023

Daily Diary, Day 972: We certainly had April showers, and as I took my walk today, you could see the result with lots of May flowers. Is a cloudy day, with very slight chance of rain for the next 3 days, but with a forecast of 80% chance of rain by Thursday. I do feel bad for those people in the region facing flooding.

Still no proofed copy yet, so I have continued to work on my mini-biographies, having now done ones for Jamie Hewitt, Ian Hennessey, Emmaline Fournier, and Georgie Meyer. This afternoon I will start on a relatively new character, Minna Stein, Esther Stein's daughter who is unmarried and is now living with Hetty and Georgie. I am excited about this character, although her role in this short story won't be large, but I have some ideas about how she can possibly play a role in the next full length novel in the Victorian mystery series.

We are continuing to enjoy the Diplomat, as well as Candice Renoir in the evening, and I have been listening to an audiobook of Faye Kellerman mystery. Her mysteries with Peter Decker and wife Rina were favorites decades ago, and I am enjoying this recent one. Before bed I am reading a science fiction anthology, keeping my hand in with both genres!

Time for lunch, but first I need to figure out which flowers from the walk today I need to feature. Also going to spend a few moments to watch the birds. The squirrel had been here once, and we noticed a large gopher mound showed up under the bird feeder this morning, so obviously we are now feeding birds, squirrels and gophers! Oh, and I just saw a male house finch sitting in the bougainvillea next to the feeder who was feeding a juvenile! I had been noticing a couple finches doing that fluttering in the air that I associate with babies, but since the juveniles look very much like females, I wasn't sure. But this was definitely an adult feeding a juvenile, although they were both nearly the same size. Much fun!