Sometimes the best part about being at this Park is the sound. I wish I had an easy, surefire way to capture the sounds with high fidelity, to share with you when words aren't enough. There is so much I could add to my stories. But the sounds are hard to predict, and they would be assuredly impossible to capture properly. Today I had one last day to sit with my feet dangling in the mah jongg master's pool, while her very silly dog did anything except her business, and I listened. Our sister developments are carved out of thick, swampy woods, and while my Park has a busy road separating me from the wilds, her house backs up to dense overgrowth. I often hear birds of prey, woodpeckers, squirrels, and other animals creating quite a ruckus, when I'm back there. Today the tree frogs were singing the song of their people. I love being in the audience to these concerts, although I am not ever tempted to rush the stage. I have noticed that there is an inch-thick swinging vine dangling from one of the tall trees behind her house, and I'm suspicious that it is poison ivy. That alone is enough to keep me from wanting to explore, if I were the type to be tempted. The woods are heavy around here, a barely contained jungle just waiting for us humans to turn our attention away for a second. I have no doubt, if the population of humans here disappeared tomorrow, the woods would swallow this neighborhood back by next spring, like we were never here. (Except for all the plastic.)
I have started in on the front beds again, chopping down suckers from the crape myrtles and yanking out weeds. I was diligently applying my energy to the rose garden off the end of my porch, when a commotion caught my attention. It was a bumble bee defending its home against a wasp above my head. A couple years ago I hung a birdhouse shaped like a comical beehive with a bear on top of it, in the crape myrtle closest to the house. My hope was that birds would take up residence and drive the cats crazy as they watched through the front windows. I haven't seen many birds near it, but today I got the impression that a real bumblebee has taken to it. It was upset that the wasp wanted to see inside of it, and it had choice words for the intruder. (All some variation of "buzz you," I'd guess.) It wasn't easy to get my hands close enough to get a good picture, without one or the other thinking I was in the way of their domestic squabble. I think I did well enough.
While I was down there, I also startled a bright green frog, possibly the same one who so sweetly posed for me on the other side of the fence, three feet from where I found him today. And while I was taking his picture, I noticed that the weeds right next to the fence were covered in sawdust. Leaning closer, I heard a distinct chewing sound. I shall be calling Terminix in the morning. I don't know how I'm going to manage to have them there without damaging the bees, but I draw the line at insects eating my damned house.
We must have had another lizard bloom, because the cats are going crazy outside again. I saw an enormous fat tail while I was pruning the roses up front, but I could never get around to finding the front half of that lizard. It was most definitely not an anole. And out back, my giant huntress spent about twenty minutes torturing a stripey blue skink, completely ignoring my demands that she drop it, stop chasing it, stop hiding it with her belly because she wasn't fooling anyone, and leave it alone or I would spray her with the hose while I watered the garden. She ended up damp, and I think the skink ended up dead. She just wouldn't listen.
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