Interesting Morning

I woke up this morning and made some coffee and headed out to our porch to sit and read for a while and wake up in the early morning sun. Joel was already up and after saying good morning told me that we have a new stream running through our yard. "Stream of what?" I asked, picturing a parade of ants or chickens or one of the other ubiquitous pests here. (One morning Ann and I both heard what sounded like a heard of cattle go through the front yard at 3AM. They were probably actually out on the road, but that still doesn't explain why someone was herding cattle at 3AM.) I emerged to the porch and indeed, there is now a stream of water running through one corner of our yard. It didn't rain tremendously last night so we are speculating that someone must have opened a gate somewhere uphill from us. In investigating the stream, I also found a small avocado lying on the ground. I picked it up and followed the stream to where I discovered an avocado tree in our yard loaded with ripening avocados. They are small, because the tree is small, but I bet they will still be tasty. Finally, later this morning a large bird (maybe the size of a Canadian goose) glided into the yard landing near the stream. I told Joel that there was a large water bird in the yard and he said "Oh, yeah, that's the heron that comes to visit sometimes." So in 2 hours this morning, I experienced 3 new features of our yard - the stream, the avocado tree, and the heron.