The beans are growing, the geraniums are blooming, the sun is bright and hot, and I remember a certain sweet gray kitty who spent every available moment on the brick patio next to my garden, summer and winter, and each time Mimi and I head out there I remember how Moses enjoyed the little brick patio. Other kitties would come and go during the day as the heat and their interest waned, but Moses was serious about her outdoor time.
But she had the solution. One day as I worked in the garden, she came to the basement screen door. Once Moses came indoors there was no turning back, and she didn’t even look outside, acting as if “out there” wasn’t there at all. But she’d been lying in the sun coming in the basement door and followed it across the floor as it moved…out the door. Well, what was a kitty to do? She looked at me hopefully with that lovely gray tabby face, and gave me one of her sweet, silent meows. I could deny her nothing, my eternally gentle and humble little bodhisattva, and under the spell of her soft green eyes I opened the screen door and let her walk outside. She stepped out the door, let me close it, and laid down on the sun-warmed concrete slab, which was where her sun had gotten to. Through the day, as I weeded and trimmed and transplanted and harvested, she moved along with the sun, sipping now and then from the water bowl I’d brought out.
I have a series of similar photos of her in my boxes of prints from years gone by, and I’ve been sorting through them to find these wonderful vintage photos I’d nearly forgotten. Once I find all the negatives and scan them, this will be one of the series of four I call “Moses’ Summer in the Garden” with photos from June, July, August and September. You’ll see these soon as notecards and other paper products and some housewares.