6 P.M. ON THE BACK PORCH : ‘Before It Gets Black and the Crickets Singing in the Country Bring Out the Moon’

he sun rides only four feet high over the west lattice fence. The same old down-drooping redwood slat waits, as it has for seven years, for me to nail it up.

Here is where the strongest light comes, from the lowering sun. You could not look at it were it not filtered through the different greens of different leaves.

Nearest the sun, although just on the other side of the hedge, are leaves of bamboo, palest watery green, small spattery leaves thrown like green Oriental confetti. Then the juniper bush advances, its leaves really smaller than the bamboo, but such a calmer, darker green that they seem less fragile, as though they would not melt in the sun but would stay a while. Nearer is the still darker green of the camellia bush. Odd how an ordinary green camellia bush holds so much black in its leaves, as though all the undersides had suddenly been painted black by the descending sun.

Closer we have the redwood porch railing, and in front of that is the effervescent, almost silly green of the asparagus fern, working ceaselessly to strangle the 6 x 6 redwood porch post; its tiny green balls glisten. (“Watch me now, in another month I’ll be red.”) And right next to it, in that blue and white Mexican pot is that plant--I don’t know what it is; some bird dropped it. I have never liked that sparsely leaved, rangy thing, but what is one to do when it has persisted in living there, so ridiculously robust, for more than 15 years?

As the leaves screening the sun grow darker, the highest leaves of the big camphor tree glow with a brighter, more translucent frothing, arching upward to catch the latest direct rays of the sun.

The birds are silent, except for a few early-sounding turtledoves, cooing down from the eucalyptus trees. The scrub jay, of course, flies in every 20 minutes or so to squawk the time and claim his territory.

There are also other things to look at. The sun chinks in the back of the old wicker chairs, for example, or the brown shingles of the back porch wall. Nothing is more conducive to thought than a good, long stare at brown (stained, not painted, because painted shingles prevent thoughts from penetrating) 1909 redwood shingles.

Through the panes of the French doors, you should be able to look into the dining room, but you can’t, because the glass, being also of 1909 vintage, is wavery, reflecting back all the green of trees and bushes as if it were a darkling stream.

The only thing you can see inside is a block of light coming through the green stained glass guarding the front door. It shines through like “an aquarium of green sky,” as Colette wrote; I’d give anything to have written that phrase.

The lattice fence has turned from brown to black now, as the sun goes down, and the twisted trunk of the juniper bush is black too, a coaxing, gnarly intricacy.

Smashing dead wrong into this whole pastoral picture is the glaring white-enamel thermometer hanging on the shingle wall next to the French doors. It is quite big and very ugly, but it has lived on this house far longer than I have lived in it, so what right do I have to take it away? Anyway, every proper Pasadena porch has to have a wall thermometer, ugly or not. This one’s a 10-inch Taylor Utility, made in U.S.A., registering--imagine--86 degrees Fahrenheit at this particular moment.

This is the prime porch hour of the day, 6 to 7, before it gets black and the crickets, singing as though they were in the country, bring out the moon.

Is that all there is to be said? Indeed, no! We have not even begun to discuss the back porch in the morning.