On Stage

There are roofers working on the house next door (4 feet away) so I will wait until they leave before I put my new plants in the ground. When I walk my dog through the city I am on stage and public, but I am private when I'm in my garden. Don't get me wrong, the roofers are perfectly nice guys and I am not afraid of their jokes. In fact I give it right back to them when I am out on the street with Lily. I shout "I'm the age of your momma!" And we all laugh. But my garden is a sacred place.

I still have a large tin of cat food from when our house cats OJ and Powie were alive. I've put some of it in the big orange plastic pumpkin head in my garden, and I've tilted the hole to the side so the outdoor cats can step in to eat but the rain can't get in. I've also placed fresh water in a blue ceramic bowl placed snugly into the soil. It's all for the four teenage cats that now live in my jungle garden and yard. There are two orange Tabbies, a cow kitty (black and white), and an all-black one. This morning it smelled like skunk in the garden. Mr Skunk may have found the pumpkin head with the cat food inside and a scuffle may have ensued, but there's still some food left. At our mealtime when we open the kitchen curtains to the view of the garden and sit down to eat, we watch the cats come on stage and perform their cat show. They'd better watch out! The newspaper said there's a few black bears loose around town.