I walked out into the garden. The sky still foggy pale but the air warm. A pumpkin had appeared overnight - or did I just now notice it - among the giant squash leaves. And beans! all of a sudden it seems. And a lone red pepper. Butter yellow cone flowers waved in the slight breeze, stalks as high as an elephant's eye. Insect activity embroidered the air. A fat yellow-faced bee on an orange dahlia. Tiny fly-bees zoomed about. A pale green swallow-tail caterpiller perfectly matched the feathery fennel upon which it dined. Roses were making their encores - one at a time: Kathleen Harrop in fading pink satin; Rose de Roi in deep magenta; Indigo in bud; pale Pax and the butterscotch blooms of Buff Beauty arch above the Lemon Tree border where tiny blue asterisks have appeared--the early asters. The velvet red lips of lobelia cardinalis algow in the shade of the generous oak. And the multicolor mulleins, impervious to heat, clay soil, and bugs. The lavender is fading. And the harebells are spent. The Peruvian lilies have set seed and the hybrid yarrows have turned from glowing yellow to burnt brown. But the alabaster umbrels of the natives are gleaming in the sun.
All is well and perfect in the garden this early July morning. The flowers and trees neither notice nor care that just over the fence red paper notices are tacked to the trees. In the distance, down the hill and across Park Boulevard, brontasaurus-size machines groan and beep as they move small mountains of dirt. A jackhammer rumbles. It is a harbinger. The signs say the trees will be "removed". Hundred-foot tall cedars, broad-crowned live oaks, black acacias, an Indian laurel. Someday. When the permits are received and the contractors hired and this still July morning is a lost memory.