Image with a pool and Stay Vacation sign. 

    

           Do you have any trips planned this summer?

         My favorite vacation destination is my own backyard. Guests come as they are, no invitation needed. Night or day. Day or night.  

Vroom.  Hummingbirds are the hungriest. Fast and feisty too. I mix their specialty drinks and am rewarded with their luminescent presence. Rarely do they sip and stay awhile.

Buzz. Bees share all the gossip they overhear by hanging on every petal in the neighbor’s gardens.  

Monarchs. They are baacck. Queen of their species, dressed in brilliant orange and shiny black they linger for several days. Couples flirt in the bushes, chase one another around the fence, and feed on the milkweed.

Dragonflies. Blues, greens, or black and white – they provide free aerial entertainment and spiritual guidance if one knows how to ask. 

Moth hummingbird. Surprise! An eccentric lobster-bodied, winged creature claiming to be related to the hummingbird. Maybe, a third cousin removed, so the bees say. 

In the heat of the day, while I read in the shady, a chorus of cicadas serenades me. Each summer they perform their top tunes. They drown out the birdsong whose chirping, tweeting jukebox plays my favorite requests.

A single groundhog suns himself in the grass, after having gorged himself on our neighbor’s garden veggies.

Splash! Frogs leap from the bush, into the pool. He shows off his superb swimming skills, and is the last one out of the water. 

Quietly circling overhead, the bats come seeking a snack. Dizzy, dare-devil flyers, only the insects need fear. 

Blink. Blink-blink. Blink. Fireflies arrive at dusk to play hide and seek in the bushes.

Whoo-hoo. Whoosh. Owls are the last to arrive. I suspect they are shy.

All nature neighbors are welcome because truthfully, it’s not my backyard but theirs.