JOY ALONG THE WAY: WAIT JUST A MINUTE, AUGUST

First things first of a cool August morning, the perking of the coffee pot. Despite the modern conveniences of instant coffee,drip coffee or no coffee, I cling to the percolator. Its cheerful little tune is almost as pleasant to me as the pre-dawn call of a red rooster. As the city grew up around me the rooster's call vanished, literally westward into the sunset. The percolator S put.

Although we have different time zones across America, I've wondered if all the sounds of all the morning percolators could be gathered together, how big would the decible be? Like the hearbeats of a thousand dinosaures? Who knows how loud a heartbeat was that of a dinosaur?

After the coffee has perked, I leave it on hot while I fill the bird feeders, clean the bird bath and refill with fresh water. After that, the coffee, toast and morning paper from my observation post, the porch swing.

The swing is an especially pleasant place to be these days as the ultra fragrant white clematis is in full lacy bloom

all roundabout. You don't have to wait for a breeze to stir its fragrance. It is there in the air as if someone has a finger on the atomizer all the time. Makes it hard to vicariously argue with the Congressmen over the crime bill, the health bill, etc., worry and wonder about the folks from Cub andi-Haiti.

Finally a hummingbird has come to embroider my mornings, one little lone hummingbird. After finding my feeder full of sweet nectar, I thought it would go away and fetch its cousins, but no such luck yet. The tiny bundle of energy comes about every twenty minutes to have a sip, then goes swiftly away, straight up, down or sideways, makes no dfference to it.

The blue jays have developed a phobia. A friend was with me when we first noticed. The jays would fly near the birdbath as if to get a drink or take a dip, but when near would suddenly fly upward, squawking, then down again to almost but not quite land on the bowl's rim, then up again swiftly and noisily. This would go on for half a minute until the jay would fly away, only to come back and give a repeat performance. I thought there must be something in the water that was scaring them, so went to look. I picked out a few molted feathers. That wasn't the problem. The jays kept repeating their weird gymnastics.

This went on for about three days before they resumed normalcy and before I came up with a possible cause. I had scrubbed the bowl of the birdbath, which tends to get filmy black at the bottom, with Comet and a wire brush until it was slmost the original gray concrete color. I think the jays were

seeing their reflection in the water and were ready to fight for water rights if only the coward would come up out of the water and engage in a good, blue-feathered fluttering fray.

The August day moves along and I bestir myself to get after the usual chores. While making up the bed I actually consider dragging the mattress outside to bask in the sunshine for a day, a thing that used to be routine at least once a summer, but my back screeches, "You'll be sorry!" So I let that go and substitute an opened window with the blinds and curtains pushed aside so that the fingers of sunshine can play on the mattress for at least a few hours.

There are other August things to do er t hurries into September. My notebook says: 1. Get some crabapples and make some jelly. 2. Remove the wasp nest from under the petunia table. Spray with bathroom cleaner first to incapacitate the wasps. 3. Cut a huge hank of mint to hang upside down from the porch ceiling to dry. 4. Keep a lookout for the first migrant onarch butterflies. 5. Tie the goldenrod clump so that it will have the appearance of a shock of wheat. 6. On a clear

night, step outside to see if the moon is in the phase the calendar says it should be. Check on the constellations

to see if they are in place. That bump on Jupiter may have jolted them too, disturbed the gravitational pull. Not to worry, though. ven old, pudgy Juipter didn't move. Probably said to a sister planet, "Did a wild goose hit me?"

REJOICE!