A team of plumbers out front is finishing up their two-day task of installing cleanouts. Their efforts will make future removal of tree roots (a constant problem) in our pipes easier. Today was jackhammer day, when they cut through the driveway. I took a heavy-duty aspirin after three hours.

Just now, there began a terrible pounding, vibrating the whole house. I took a quick look. One guy is holding up a large piece of plywood against the garage door while another is pounding on it with a mallet.
Mercifully, I think they have finished.

The water is turned off. This is less a problem today than yesterday, when we went the whole day without. Yesterday, one of the workers was washing his hands in the deer scare pot, something I will discourage today.

No, this is not an account of the one attacking the other. High up in the oaks at the moment, a squirrel is doing a great imitation of a red-tailed hawk’s scream.

I took the laptop outside, and played this for the squirrel. It moved a little farther up the tree, but is still out there screeching away.

On the other hand, all the birds have vanished from the feeding table and the yard.

Despite the gloomy morning skies on Monday, it was brighter somehow. More sky showing. Overnight, a neighbor seems to have put up a new addition to his house. Either that or some mature landscaping was removed.

This particular neighbor, the one we refer to by his ex-wife’s first name, as in Mr. Maria (not her real name), seems normal. Until you try to have a conversation with him. Then Mr. Maria becomes Mr. Strange. But I digress.

All that sawing we heard Sunday night, thinking it was the solar guys working overtime - that must have been Mr. Maria. His driveway has the remains of a very large tree, which must have toppled over in one of the recent storms. We did hear a really loud ‘POP’ one night that sounded like a balloon in the next room.

So being the man he is (I should mention that he is also the guy who goes around with a tank of pesticide killing ants, one by one, it looks like, when he sees them on his driveway), he must have felt the need to deal with the tree before morning.

Most weekends will find him working on or washing his car. I shudder to think what his reaction would have been had the tree fallen on the car. He probably sits bolt upright in the middle of the night when he also thinks about this narrow miss.

One of the neighbors hired a couple of guys to put in solar today. I can see the roof from my desk. At 5:30 p.m., it was getting dark, but they continued. We could hear the power tools still going as we got ready to eat supper.

At 7:00 p.m., the whine of the tools could still be heard. I hoped they weren’t still on the roof, which was black. The only light came from the atrium, and I’m going to assume they were prepping boards and such for tomorrow on the ground.

She’s not the first to plunder this long-abandoned nest, which is about two feet from my desk. Had to try and get a shot. This is a low-res frame from footage.

A Townsend’s warbler showed up yesterday, and while it has taken a liking to the suet, one of the dark-eyed juncos inevitably appears to escort it off the premises. I was worried it would be scared off, but it keeps coming back, and submitted to having footage (which yielded this blurry frame) taken this morning.

Not too many brightly-colored birds come by, other than the blue jay, robins and the woodpeckers. The jay, I discovered, is a very smart bird.