Out of the corner of my eye I caught ZZ the cat zigzagging up and down in the screened-in porch. How cute I thought. But it wasn’t. With some fear for my fingers, I snatched from his clamped and salivating jaws a very checked-out looking finch. It had come into the porch through a door the wind had opened.
I screamed "No!" over and over and so loudly that Susie came running, thinking I must've been captured by Pipe Creek pirates. I handed her the poor, startled, fainted creature and collapsed to have a good cry. Susie took the little bird to a flower pot in the garden where it would be safe from ZZ who was locked up in the porch.
I slowly made my peace with the circle of life in Zee Zee the porch kitty's kingdom. I waited ten minutes and went outside to check on the bird and heard loud bird calls of alarms from the trees. I thought they were warning the little fallen fellow about me. Meanwhile, ZZ, who had found an unattended door and had gone to look for its lost lunch was hiding in the bushes. Suddenly the little bird flew low past me, and this time, and only by a few inches, escaped ZZ, who surprised us both, and flew in the direction of the trees.
I hope the little guy is safe for whatever is left of the rest of his life. This one half hour was rough enough to last anyone a lifetime.
I secured ZZ in his porch and the little side garden where the life and death drama took place was peaceful again. I marveled at the way the place had changed. It had been a stubborn eyesore for years. After a trip to Hill Country African Violets and Nursery in Boerne, we spruced up our neglected garden. Our friends, Tony Reyes and Tony Villarreal, who is a landscape designer of some renown, helped to inspire us. We planted Copper Canyon daisies, ground sage, iris, pink salvia, red shrimp plants and, most importantly in our drought, we ran the sprinkler on a timer for 5 minutes every day.
The place went bonkers. Our wild onion and dollar succulents loved the hydration. We added a small fountain with colored lights that I rigged with a champagne cork in an old planter. Susie added bluetooth-controlled colored lights on the porch. Then she installed two finch feeders and tray feeders by the fence and studio door. Things got very interesting. Especially for ZZ, who got to reign over the bees, birds and butterflies of his African savannah from behind a porch screen.
The cold weather has not dropped to freezing yet, and everything is still blossoming and growing and blooming. Some colors are faded. In this year of firsts in our lives, this long neglected garden reminds me that we need our health more than anything. Past that, even during a drought, life and beauty are sustained by the basics, and little cariño.
