In a couple weeks — April 5-7 to be exact — Morro Bay produces another Citywide yard sale. It has become a big deal since it began at least eleven years ago. Tourists visit to discover treasures or trinkets they can’t live without and some even bring trailers to take home furniture or larger items. Local use it as a time to spring clean and make a few extra bucks. There is a gentleman from Ventura, I think, that comes by every year and asks my husband if he has coins to sell. He offers a fair value and we make Bob buy the family dinner that night…or used to before the crab feed!!

The city garage company waives fees for hauling big items away the week after the yard sale. So everyone wins. And now groups are piggy-backing on evening opportunities for tourists to stay and play in Morro Bay.

Speaking of crab feeds!!! Morro Bay Rotary has an “all you can eat” crab feed with all the fixings on Saturday evening April 6. Proceeds benefit community groups needing a boost of cash. Morro Bay Tourism recognizes this event as a true tourism opportunity so pitches it to visitors.

Only a $60 a ticket and almost sold out!! But then where else can you get a dinner among friends and lots of crab from Tognazzini’s Dockside? My son-in-law consumed 6 crabs last year and we all ate our share. And Rotarian servers even break the parts up enough so lazy-pickers like me can enjoy.

The Community radio station The Rock also has a big night. They offer lots of good songs dancing and adult beverages at the Morro Bay Veteran’s Hall. Have to work off a big crab dinner someway!!

So why am I promoting here besides a couple good causes to enjoy? I’m getting ready for the Citywide Yard Sale. We’ve decided to help out Garden House of Morro Bay this year. Garden House is a a wonderful home a couple blocks from us that helps senior residents with all kinds of dementias. Our Aunt Stella spent several lovely years there and now my good friend Kasey Watson owns it and my mother’s granddaughter Jody is her administrative assistant. Just as Mom found her new satisfying life in Cayucos, Jody has found another career utilizing all her best talents. Mom would be amazed and so proud Jody has found her career-feeder!

Looking through my stuff I found a Hallmark birthday card to me from my mother, Pat McKaye. She moved to Cayucos when she was 80 and was totally involved in her adopted community. She ran the thrift store and coordinated the Cayucos Senior Volunteers, which donated so much back to the community. She made wonderful friends and found her new home away from home — a haven to feed on. She was also proud of me that I had found my first love — the career I wanted in high school. I was writing for the local newspapers. I had forgotten she had given me this story idea.

Mom was excited Jody and Mike were back permanently from Louisiana. He was from there and she was in school back there, but that’s another story. Somehow she linked that with  the Hummingbirds she loved to watch from her patio-slider door. At our house we would watch out of our kitchen window where we once saw a family of hummingbirds build a nest, birth their children and fly away. Having the kids close was a joy although she never hovered — visited, enjoyed the nectars offered and flew away…then back again another day.

She thought of names like Holly because it was close to their last name of Hollier. The villain bird or was it the hero bird was Anne, the middle name of both my daughter and I. She did mention another bird, a red necked bird who tried to steal the nectar from the feeder, but as you will see Anne protects it for her own.

Birds are jealous of each other, she wrote. “They love to sit on the feeder and chase each other off. They are very curious and love to play especially when the water hose is on. They also like things to stay the same.”

She told how once she got a new feeder and they refused to drink from it or play on it. She returned the older feeder to its roost and they were back again — playfully. Another time a storm was blowing hard even for her protected patio. The wind and the rain knocked over a large gardenia bush. “They flew in and around and around and chattered as if to say, ‘What’s wrong'”

Another time the wind was blowing the feeder sideways to and fro up and down. The hummingbirds would fly around and around begging it to stop. When it wouldn’t stop they finally took a risk and flew onto the branch. They rode it like a bucking roller coaster. When the feeder was empty they would fly to the window and hover as if to say, “We are out. We need more. We want to stay.”

One time a bird hid in the bush near the feeder or maybe it was refuge in the fallen gardenia bush. Whenever another bird would fly to the feeder, the stalking bird would fly out and chase it away. Contrary to popular belief, he or she would sit there for hours protecting his/her feeder from marauders.

Mom thought Anne was a good name for the bird who captured her favorite place and guarded it as if her own. After a time Anne was the only one using the feeder and one day Mom wrote she came out and there were all kinds of hummingbirds of smaller sizes and variations of green — lighter to darker green — feeding all at once from the same feeder. She wondered if Anne drive them away. Then she saw Anne. It looked like she would try to make them leave the feeder, but instead she joined them and flew around them. Mom thought she is protecting her own. Anne was saying, “Feed my babes. I have captured our safe place for them and you can help me nurture and grow to fly away to make their new home.”

This is the story Mom wanted me to tell — the circle of life — the love of a mother for her own. I’m sure Mom thought the story would most likely in a children’s book at the Cayucos Library and Coalesce Book Store in Morro Bay, but…..

This was about nine years ago when Mom flew away. She found her safe haven or heaven. Who then would have really understood blogging is also meant for storytelling.

And so it goes…..Thanks, Mom.