Weird and Wonderful Around the Neighborhood

So. You think there's reason for paranoia? You get the feeling somebody's watching you? You don't trust the government anymore?

In Phoenix, they disguise cell phone towers and security cameras as palm trees, big metal sculptures, some realistic looking, some artistic looking... but here in Wichita, we have a more... homegrown.... application.

WE use maple trees. Real ones. And we're blatant about it.

What's that? Can't see it? Take a closer look.

Somebody please pass me my tinfoil hat. Oh, and you can relax; this antenna's aimed at my sweet friend the Doglet Groomer, down the street. Maybe the CIA needs to use dog-lish spies now? lol!

Coming back towards home now. Say, do ya like this fancy garden bed alongside our complex? These lovely lil lavender daisies grow all over this neighborhood--like the violets in the grass--just weeds underfoot, most of them no bigger than two inches. But this plant here is special! It found itself some space in a garden bed!

Yeppers, that's right... it's SIX inches tall, growing in a crack of the sidewalk covered with a quarter inch of dust and dried leaves!

Life... it's everywhere! *grin*

Of course, sometimes life gets a bit confused... check out the lil five petal white blossom at the top center of this photo.

And then... oh yes.... a bird's nest in this young tree! They didn't waste any time; the tree was just planted in front of our complex this summer! (You can see the blossom better if you follow the curve of the branch in front of the nest.)

Ahhhh, here we go, the marigolds by our front door. Those irises in the background were glorious this past spring, and the marigolds have finally taken root and prospered this fall. They brighten everyone's day!

Tis so good to be home! Kick off your shoes, have a sea----er.... what's this? Oh! It seem the Self-Installing Cat Accessory, Module Three, is running the "Adorable Foldy Feets" Application on the Optional Chair Platform.... and I see she has installed the Optional Camera Flash Eye Enhancement Application as well!

Oh well, we didn't need to sit down anyhow, did we? lol!

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Hello! Today is Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, and since the gardener who hosts it is 0ne of the people who inspired me to start gardening again, I thought I would participate. Here is a link to her post. http://maydreamsgardens.blogspot.com/2008/06/garden-bloggers-bloom-day-june-2008.html

My garden is a baby garden right now, only days old. I concentrated on herbs since I am completely new to the Wichita, Kansas climate. I admit, the hailstorms day after day in June have kinda taken me aback and I hesitated to plant anything... but the flowers all around the apartment are doing fine despite the lashing gulley-washers and their bonus rounds of hailstones, so I gathered my courage and took a chance. This is my lil garden, perched on the grate that covers a basement window. The apartment manager had covered the grate with an unused area mat and offered me the space. It isn't pretty, but it will do!

My one and only actual flower was in with the half-price herbs at the grocery store; it has a lovely enticing scent and I'm wondering if it might be heliotrope. I love the deep purple. Each bloom is only about half the size of my baby fingernail; they grow in clusters like verbena--and yanno, it's been so many years since I gardened anywhere but the desert that it could be a verbena and I wouldn't know, lol...

Tis growing in a pot with Italian Parsley and Golden Marjoram. The parsley was mislabeled as triple-curled, but it's obviously flat-leaf.

In keeping with my only-the-best-will-do ethic (lol!) my new plant stand was fished off the top of the laundromat's dumpster. It was a newspaper and leaflet stand in its former incarnation. I cut off the cardboard box that made the top, dusted the stand off, and voila! A folding plant stand to hold my herbs! The pot on the top has Greek Oregano and French Tarragon--tarragon is one of the very few plants I ever pay full price for without complaining much--and I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the oregano had already tried to bloom. I pinched the stems back---but hey, if I hadn't, I would have had Greek Oregano blooming for GBBDay, too. *grin* The pic looks a lil wonky cuz the camera tilted a lil... I have that problem with my hands, lol.... but also because the shelf is slanted towards the back of the frame, so the green pot is tilted backwards. Oh well, a definite slant makes for better drainage, right? And certainly herbs need good drainage. *crosses fingers and hopes on that one!*

The big pot has my spinach, Mesclun mix, and butternut squash seedlings. It's about a week and a half old, and the seedlings were up in four days. That surprised me!

The lil pots were the herb pots. I can never leave well enough alone *sheepish smile* I had leftover potting soil and so I planted more seeds--parsley, basil, basil, dill, and cilantro. Yes, when you have five pots and four packets of seeds you end up with things like basil, basil. It works for me, anyhow. Hope you have the same good luck! *cheeky grin*

One of the things I didn't expect was the amount of shade this lil bitty garden is going to get. Squash was probably not the wisest choice. At the time, I didn't believe that anything on the south side of a building would be shady in the summer, but there ya have it... I'm TOTALLY directionally dyslexic and this is the north side of the property.

Not to mention the east side of the building.

*chagrined look* Ooops, lol... So, um, I'll keep ya posted on whether or not the morning sun is enough to grow real squash. Here I thought I had a southern location with a hive of wild bees only a hundred feet away... well, I have the wild bees, at least till honey starts dripping into the building's walls. (Sometimes apartment managers who are new don't reeeeally know as much as they think they do when they decide something is not a problem, eh?) Here's hoping the bees don't sting anyone; we have a couple tenants who are allergic. But in the meantime... well... I planted squash!

Here's the view from the back door of the apartment building, out to the side of the property behind us. The daylilies are so nice! I didn't even know they were there until yesterday, since the (huge) yard is kinda overgrown and the foliage didn't show. This is the same yard that had the clematis hidden beneath another vigorous vine--no idea what the bully is, something with five leaflets--and I'm not sure, but I think I might be the only one who saw it bloom a couple weeks ago. The first blossom was the size of my hand and deep purple; after that they were progressively smaller (the same color) and the secret show was over in less than a week. The roses have all gone by in this neighborhood now, and the irises as well; even the peonies are done... so it's daylily time. I love it!

.........is that why they call them pinks??

We had a bag to mail, so we went out on Tuesday (Gryph's day off this week) and wonder of wonders... guess who remembered the camera! Then, of course, I forgot all about having it in my purse until we were on the way back to the bus station. This inspired me to remember!

We passed these and all of a sudden I realized... so THAT'S why they call them pinks! I never could figure it out before! Aren't they gorgeous? Just a lil teensy corner bed at the edge of a parking lot...

Nearby is a lil bed of Mexican evening primrose, which blends just beautifully with the pinks, because... well, because. *grin*

I put the camera away for most of our trip back home, but just had to pull it back out when we got to the canal.

They call this "the canal route" because the freeway parallels this canal for quite a way. I love to stop here and see what birds may be seen; usually tis only starlings, but quite often we are surprised by herons wading in the water--both white herons and blue-gray herons wade here. They're gray herons are small enough that I am not sure whether they are young, or a different species from Great Blue Herons. We also see ducks sometimes; mallards, last time. And during this lovely spring, we have even been lucky enough to hear frogs croaking in the evening.

Of course, on Tuesday it was not evening but the middle of the afternoon, and something else soon caught my eye.

I love the contrasty colors of these shrubs! The weeds surrounding the street sign are a grass that grows wild here, all over this neighborhood. I believe it is a wheat relative, but not foxtails--these have a much softer seed head. Other weeds also caught my eye along the way.

There is just SOMETHING about dandelions that has always captivated me! They are so cheerful, and sooo yellow!

Field bindweed is another of my favorites. Ironically, this is as close as I got to morning glories when I was growing up in Phoenix. I always treasured them for their similarities, but it was those very similarities that made morning glories illegal there! Farmers struggled with field bindweed so badly that the legislature mistakenly outlawed morning glories in an attempt to control the spread of bindweed seed. The two are actually not related plants.

Ahhh... the statue in her "quilt star" lol.... this reminds me of the quilt pattern called Star of Texas.

When I was very small, I think four years old, my grandmother convinced my mother to let me spend a weekend at her house in Phoenix. It was a huge and anxiety-filled adventure for me, but I went and it turned out to be better than I expected. Two things stand out for me. One is trying catfish for the first time and discovering that I liked it--my grandfather and uncle had gone fishing early that morning and my grandmother fried the catfish up for breakfast--and the other is seeing my grandparents' garden all wilty in the heat of the day. My instant reaction was to water the marigolds, but Gramma said that if I did, the plants' roots would cook to death in the ground because it was so very hot. We had to wait until evening, when it cooled down.

When it was time for me to go back home, Gramma gave me a marigold planted in a dixie cup for my mom. *smiling*

This is the fountain at the high school. We like to sit on the benches in front of the fountain and rest for a while, listen to the frogs if it's evening, watch the birds if it's afternoon. The entire front of the high school/middle school grounds is landscaped like a park, with lovely mature trees/shrubs and expanses of green, green grass. It's a lovely peaceful place to sit and enjoy the day...or to rest, if one has walked all the way from downtown!

Sometimes, individual shrubs or trees will catch my attention. This one is SOO round it reminded me of a "lollipop tree" that's been pruned practically into a circle.

Wait! What's that?? Look closer....

NOW my day is complete, oh yes!! A BUNNY.... awwww... ahhhhh... *grin* I love bunnies so very much!

And now, my dears, tis time to scamper away for dinner. Blessings to us all!