Summer at last...

It is almost October, and FINALLY it is summer in the San Francisco Bay Area. In my particular micro-climate, the temps have been in the 50’s and 60’s most of July, August and September, except for a couple of days here and there. I don’t like that kind of weather. I was beginning to feel that I was lucky to have spent June and part of July in Florida and New York State.

Now I can have my windows and sliding glass doors open until almost bedtime, and I hear my hummingbird a good share of the day as he flits into the garden from where-ever. He likes a lot of the flowers that are in bloom now, so he has a banquet when he is here during the day. Quite often when I hear him, I quietly slide the screen door open and stick my head out so I can see him. I was standing on the porch at one point today, and he was sharing a blossom with a butterfly. A bee was buzzing overhead. I am thrilled. I can have nature right here in my six-foot wide “garden”.

Yesterday, when I was watering the plants with the hose, there was a roar like a bomber or helicopter, or a huge bumblebee, over my head, and that little guy was almost in my hair. He loves the purple passionflower because he can drink for a long time at one blossom. The vine has been prolific this summer. Every day there have been ten or twelve blossoms on it. Hummer also loves the lavender, the purple and rose colored salvia, pink jasmine, and other vines I have growing up the porch posts.

I have been worried about him, because there are two cats who have decided to sleep in my yard. They belong down the street at another trailer, but somehow they like it here now. I don’t feed them, because Sarah, my neighbor does that. They are from the same litter and are teenager cats. One is a tabby type, all spots. The other is a Siamese mix, very light colored – white in areas.

The Siamese is sleeping, even now, in a baby bath type plastic container that was supposed to be a litter box. I got tired of it in the house, because the sides and ends are rounded and the litter was always being shoved out of it. In the spring, I liberated it from that occupation, bleached it, put plant dirt in it, and grew the poppy seeds I had harvested last year. It is quite large. The tabby had decided to sleep in it when it was on the table outside, after the plants had died. He liked lying in the dirt. I decided that was far too close to the humming bird, as some of the blossoms of the passionflower drape across the table on a section of their vine.

I took the “bed” off of the table, emptied it, then put rags in it (such as worn out flannel pajama top), and put it under my huge ferns, on a styrofoam slab for insulation from the cold pavement. Well, it has become the Siamese cat’s bed, instead. He (I guess it’s a he) sleeps there all day. Spotted Kitty, definitely a boy, now sleeps on a barstool beside my neighbor’s trailer, where I can see him out my kitchen window. He watches me when I work at the sink.

I don’t think Siamese Kitty pays any attention to the hummingbird. Spotted Kitty had been starting to take notice of him when he was still sleeping on the table, and I had visions of losing Hummer, so I actually got out of bed one night and took the “bed” off the table. I had a premonition of losing my bird the next day, before I could get out there.