Keeping City WIndows Open

One of the nice things about having the windows and doors open, as a result of our foregoing air conditioning the whole house, is that you hear the neighborhood. For instance, there are a surprising number of tweetie and singing birds, even though we are essentially in a busy city neighborhood. This is because the city finally trapped all the feral cats that were decimating the birds so I think the bird population is up a bit beyond the pigeons and sparrows. Also the rat population was nicely assassinated by the city and I think that helped though I'm not sure rats eat birds (?). We did spy a very tiny little humming bird sized tweetie on a neighbor's tree at dinner tonight when we ate on the porch. Earlier in the spring every morning there were cardinals flashing about the front garden and I swore there was a blue jay or two hiding in the privet hedge. We also hear the children play, cars going by with rap or gospel or talk radio or pop music. And we hear snatches of conversations from passersby or people talking to themselves (on their cell phones, most likely). In fact, sometimes our conversations drift out the window and someone will join in. Hubster in the kitchen was calling out to me in the living room about how cute the home grown tomato was and a neighbor outside heard him and she called from her back yard saying "ooh that tomato is so cute;" very funny! Sometimes of course there are some dratted dogs in the neighborhood that set up a barking cacaphony but heck, with the windows open, you can just yell "SHUDDUP" real loud a few times and it seems to work. What an interesting world God has given us~