The crickets are increasing in numbers, though. I hear three or four nearby, though none are in my yard. The neighbors who don't have cats still have crickets, but I don't. I wonder who I should blame for that? I'd rather that the cats do something about the spiders hanging around the back porch. This is the time of year they start building webs, and this evening I walked into one. I hate to tear them down after the spiders put so much effort into building them, but I really hate getting web on my face, especially in the dark when I can imagine that an enormous spider has come with the web and is crawling toward my eyes.
It's likely that the jasmine will bloom within a few days. The buds are there, but they haven't begun to open yet. I'm really looking forward to the perfumed nights. I might even invest in a pint of green tea ice cream, which I recently discovered that Safeway has in stock. It's expensive, but I haven't had any since I left Los Angeles, where it was widely available. It has a flavor that is almost like a fragrance, and I'm thinking it might be a nice complement to the scent of the jasmine. If I can have enough exoticism in my back yard maybe it will be easier for me to imagine I'm someplace not so dull.