Boxing Day walk

For much of my life, "Boxing Day walk" has meant a muddy excursion onto Wimbledon Common - with luck, with a sunset reflected in a pond, but more normally, sidestepping puddles and indeed downpours.  It's rather different in Eldorado - indeed, some rain, or snow, would be very welcome - and there are many fewer trees.  Alas, it isn't quite dark enough here to show the extraordinary holiday light display that our up-the-road neighbors spent hours - days - stringing together (these are the same people who came to the realization, at Halloween, that inflatable ghosts, wind, and cacti didn't really mix).  Of course, since the US doesn't Do Boxing Day (despite their willingness to make official holidays at all kinds of other times), the concept of a Boxing Day walk is a thoroughly foreign import - and in any case, our circuit was the same as it often is (and as it was this morning, albeit clockwise, not anti-clockwise).  But monotony is always averted by the skies; the counting of Houses that Seem To Have Visitors with Out of State plates; the hopeful scanning of high walls and rooftops for bobcats; the endlessly shifting collection of other wildlife; and the occasional sensation - a U-haul!  A new mailbox!  A freshly painted garage door!