Summer in Tucson

Mama Lion licking her cub

Tucson, May 22  very early morning 

Summer on the desert has arrived. The loveliness of this early morning time is pure joy. It is oddly simple. Just the call of the morning dove filling the air, that deep penetrating call. Some faint twittering coming from nests.

And this amazing light. Who can describe 5:30 in the morning summer desert light. It is a pearl light but not milky like a pearl. The color of pearl but crystal clarity.

I know what it is like! It is as if you were looking thru something and suddenly it came into perfect focus.

You hadn’t realized it was slightly blurry, slightly off, till suddenly it is perfect focus. And it takes your breath away. Because the sublime beauty is in the perfect focus. It makes everything you look at beautiful.

The way you can see the detail. The curlicue leaf on the desert tree right out my window I see is made up of tiny green horizontals with space between each one.

Not only do I see all the little horizontals but I see the minute space between each one. The air shows thru it. They are almost like see-thru leaves. No wonder they can take the great heat of our summer. Most of the leaf is air. Air blows thru every part of it.

LOL it is like a leaf in a string bikini. Hardly anything is covered up. They can take the great heat of our summer because the leaves are all dressed in their string bikinis. The air blows around them and thru them at the same time.

The golden light of the sun is coming in now.  Turning the leaves green.  My backyard is no longer the pearl color of dawn, that grayish pearl. 

The tree out my window has turned a luminescent green.  It is lit up from a ray of the sun.  In the back of yard it is still shade, the leaves are all dark green now. LOL forest green. But they too will turn chartreuse when the sun’s light reaches them.

I bet the tree and their leaves love bathing in the sun’s light when it is the gentle light of early morning. The light is gentle and golden and air is still so cool.

I do not know how any living being can withstand the heat and brightness of our summer afternoons. But the trees are just like me delighting in this early morning loveliness, lovely in every way.

Not only the trees and their leaves but the huge pigeons in my backyard. Even my so very naughty cat, Cupcake. Hiding in the tall grass around the tree eying them intently. It is so suspenseful when Cupcake is in the yard, not moving a muscle patiently intently watching them. I know she is up to no good.   

O my darling birds. No wonder only the huge pigeons come into my yard now. Who would ever want to come into a yard where Cupcake is out to get you.

O she finally got up and is walking across the yard.  She walks like a tiger in the jungle. O she headed into that cactus underbrush on the side of the yard.   LOL I think she thinks she will have better luck finding small birds in that area.

Nothing about Cupcake is normal. On one hand she is the biggest scaredy cat in the western world, she won’t even let me pet her. 

Which makes no sense. She was born right here.  She still lives with her mother. Other than being taken to the vet to be fixed after she had her first litter of kittens, all she has had is life on a silk cushion. It has been a peaches and cream life. 

I wait on her hand and foot. But the closest she will come to me is to sit on my windowsill sometimes while I sleep.

Sometimes she will let me sneak in one pet when she is eating her kitty treats. She loves her kitty treats. And each time I get up she races to the table so I will pour out some more of them for her.

But she has those wild eyes. I notice them when I am passing on the patio from my bedroom to the kitchen and she is lounging in the hot afternoon in the shady spot of my patio on top of the washing machine. She looks up when I pass and I see her wild eyes.

She is always wary. 

O here comes a sweet young morning dove. He is hopping up my tree.They hop from branch to branch  And then fly off.

Well morning has started. It is no longer dawn’s early light out there. It is no longer perfect quiet and that sweet hush. I can hear the city starting up in the distance. 

O NO!  I saw bird feathers on the floor near the table in other room. Killer Cupcake has been up to it again.

I knew last evening when I passed by that table and I saw her crouched in the corner watching me with such secretive look on her face. As if she were hiding something and didn’t want me to take it away. 

You don’t realize how expressive cats faces are till you live with them.  Everything which is going on shows all over their face.