In The Wee Small Hours....

It was too chilly for crickets to sing much  last week, but this week has been warmer. Autumn warm, not summer warm.
Summer warm is thicker, heavier and the sunlight denser but autumn light is light and its warmth is not like the summer blanket that spreads out over you on hot summer days and nights.

Tonight I am up very late in the wee small hours. 
But I am not alone.
There is a cricket who is perching somewhere outside my window singing as if spring had just arrived. He stops only when the light rain begins to fall again as it has sporadically now for a few hours.
In between the bouts of sprinkles,  the clouds are scudding across the nearly full moon creating ghostly shadows across the lawn. Then, when the clouds come together they stop just long enough to sprinkle the lawns and move on again. The moon makes another appearance  and the cricket begins his song again.
In the smaller  front yard pond I can hear the waterfall trickling into the dense parrot feather plants that hide the fish  from the birds. Happy fish to have such green safety. The frog rests on his plants(they are his you know) and occasionally I hear a "plop" as he takes a moonlight dip in his pool.  His courting songs are behind him now as autumn brings chills with it.
But the cricket, he doesn't care what the frog or the fish are doing as long as he can sing his song into the night.
He is on the alert in his  yard. Singing to the fish and the frog and me.
What a happy, comforting and soothing sound floating in on the night air.