March 9th, 2007
Where’s Waldo?
2007-03-09. Can you find the anole hidden among the plum blossoms?
Saturday morning the designer from Floribunda is coming over to assess whether we can afford his services to design and construct a screened-porch house to replace our falling down shed. After booking the appointment, I looked around my yard and panicked. I haven’t mown the lawn yet this year and the weeds are about a foot high. Garden tools and hoses are scattered about giving witness to my short attention span. Only the imaginative eye can discern the wildflower garden hidden in the among the dandelions, thistle and chickweed.
And inside the shed! Of course he’ll have to go in the shed to measure and check the foundation. Myself? I haven’t been in the shed in over a year. During our kitchen remodel we just kept stacking boxes and torn out pieces of house in there until it was impossible to get one more thing in. Last summer the paper wasps took over and we let them have their way with it.
So, I spent the day trying to make the place look less like we lived here and more like “important clients whom you might want to include in your portfolio” lived here.
I didn’t get much done though because I kept getting distracted by spring. I spent a lot of time taking photos of the Narcissus ‘Hawera’ in bloom. Then I had to lie down on my belly and admire the Muscari racemosum (or is it M. neglectum?)
Grape hyacinth aka starch hyacinth aka M. racemosum aka…
I found one bluebonnet bud that had finally blued up and opened. And lastly when I was watering the magnolia (which you might notice is not cleaning the shed) I saw another anole, the third this week, basking itself among the Mexican plum blossom. Trying to get a photo of the anole ate up a good portion of an hour. (Mostly I just sat and talked to it.)
I stopped and looked at everything so the garden doesn’t look like much of anything–I did manage to build a garden sculpture out of bricks I found in the shed. I’d been meaning to do that for several years now.
by M Sinclair Stevens
March 10th, 2007
I love your pictures. The anole one is probably one of my new favorites.
March 10th, 2007
I’ll be interested to hear a report of your conversations with the Floribunda guy. I loved that building at the shop on South Lamar, the wide openings to the outdoors. And I love that screened porch on their website. We’ve got some land out in Hays County where we’d love to build a screened building to supplement the pop-up camper that we camp out in and that porch on their site is an inspiration.
Ivan came over this morning and he is very personable, easy to talk to, and full of ideas (while at the same time listening hard to get a sense of what we had in mind). I liked him a lot and I’m looking forward to seeing what he proposes. I’ll start a new category for the garden room project soon with lots of “before” pictures. — mss.
March 10th, 2007
And more about the conversations with the anole! I wish we had anoles–or more lizards. Once in awhile I’ll unearth a truculent alligator lizard, but they prefer to be buried in aloe litter. One of my goals in de-lawning the front yard was to have more lizards and insects in general. We probably have double the lizards, which means we have two.
A monstrous raccoon ambled down the driveway last night. Bad news for us because they eat turtles. We’ve got everyone secure but this (pregnant, I suspect) gal looks like a one-critter SURGE.
Yikes! Just as the tortoises were waking up to spring; talk about a rude awakening. I have at least three different types of lizards, toads, and several small snakes. I’m always happy to see them because we had so few critters in the kinds of places I grew up in on base. The anole was male and whenever he thought I was getting too close with my camera, he’d puff up his dewlap which is bright red just to show me I was in his territory. — mss
March 10th, 2007
It’s been a long time since I played around in the garden talking to creatures. What a well spent couple of hours!
I hope the quote for the project is reasonable.
March 13th, 2007
Good luck with the new construction. I felt so much better after reading about the contents of your shed. We still have piles of stuff all over the house – we moved it from place to place trying to keep it out of harm’s way during the remodeling. Everything is still in the last place it was moved to, but almost nothing is where it belongs.
We have another few weeks to go before we see any local plum blossoms.
I think my entire life has been spent moving things from one pile to another. Wait until I post some photos–then you’ll see the real horror. — mss