Red

It's a cool morning with a touch of mistiness about it. The unicorn meat eating cats have given up sleep, and are out hunting. Even Max, the spaz dog, is awake. He has to have total darkness to sleep and I have left the bedroom light on...

The cicadas stopped singing some while ago, and it's only the quieter crickets you can hear now in the morning. The zinnia are attracting all kinds of butterflies, and the lavender is home to some large, fat, bumbling bees.

I have been jumping on the computer the moment I wake, and have been forgetting to listen to the 'silence' of summer mornings. I pay for it in the long run, so I devoted my blog hour yesterday to listening.

Late summer mornings always seem to hold their breaths, waiting for fall. The grass still needs mowing, and the pool still needs cleaning, but the very air has changed. I pick tomatoes in a feverish hurry, as if the bounty will end tomorrow. One or two trees on the hillside have put on their colors, even as the roses still bloom.

There is such an air of expectation in the fall, which ends with a sigh in winter. And I love winter. In this area of the world, and climate change, we don't get many deep snows anymore. Although the wind can blow mighty cold in January, down in this little valley.

But it's the bones of winter that I love. The trees and bushes abandon modesty, and stand naked. Some have touches of green, or berries of red or yellow or gray. But there they are, in all their glory. The fields turn gold, and the lavender turns silver. The creek becomes clear again, and the slate and shells at the bottom are set against the stones and the darker moss.

The sun turns pale, white against the bluer sky, and the air feels cleaner. I love the days when your breath and the grass is tipped silver. The leaves crackle underfoot and have a moist, earth smell. The grass near the creek stays green, and the little waterfall plumes over the rock, sending up it's own scent.

This is what I dream of when the day gets too moist and hot now. Or what I think of when I am tired of all the green, and want something red to think about and it's too hot to think of red, except in tomato form. I'm going to enjoy the coolness of the day while I can.

.