As I sat in my backyard, slow-grilling chicken, I noticed a dove near the back fence. She was rooting around in the chard and apparently had not yet seen me. Maybe I'd dozed off; in any event I hadn't moved in quite a while.
The smoke from the chicken held traces of lemon, garlic, other herbs, "tequila lime" and the other components of the marinade I'd rubbed into it. Nobody had arrived yet. So it was just me. A large blue and white bird flew into the plum tree, which has long since dropped its fruit (much of which made it into my plum jam collection), and conducted surveillance on the nearby apple tree.
Once he'd spied the individual fruit he wanted, he disappeared into the heavy foilage and put his beak to work.
I looked back where the dove had been and spotted a young sunflower stalk waving back and forth in the breeze. It was quite a breezy day, so apples were falling on the basketball court -- plop, plop, pop.
Overhead the sky was its bluest blue. To the west, a creamy layer of thick fog was making its daily advance. By the time my guests would arrive, it would an indoor dinner party for sure.
My young neighbor came out on her porch for a smoke. She was wearing black slippers, very short red-plaid shorts, and a white halter top. She crossed her bare legs, coughed, and blew smoke rings into the air.
Next door, an older man who's been friendly to the kids was raking his lawn, gathering leaves of a dozen variety of trees from neighboring yards. In the far corner of the yard next to his, a sprout of blackberries had pushed over my fence, hanging there seductively.
Two yards down in the other direction, a woman's loud voice pierced the still. No other voice was audible. Cellphones.
A while later, everyone had disappeared and I was alone, blessedly so, again. These moments are among my favorite, when anticipation hangs in the air, along with the rich smoky scent of home-cooked chicken.
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