the yard finally called, more like shouted really

I've been working on the lizard with 10 petal anemone model just about every day last week since I posted a picture of my progress. All three flowers are firmly attached and the void spaces filled in and a first pass of the detailing and cleaning up done.

By my best reckoning I've got about 20 hours in it already. Probably need at least 5 more to be done. Hahahahahaha. Always the optimist. I wonder if these would take less time if I did them in clay. I've bought clay several times with the intention of trying it again but it always gets used up in mold making before I ever find myself working with it. It would probably just as frustrating as wax, just in different ways.

It has finally been dry and partly sunny enough days that it has dried up some. Three days ago I was using a floor squeegee in the garage because it was so wet it was creating puddles from the humidity and the rapid rise in temperature.That concrete is so smooth that when it's wet like that, it's slippery. So, Friday afternoon and yesterday afternoon I started the winter's-over-yard-clean-up. I worked in the Little Backyard getting that back in shape raking and sweeping and cutting stuff back and putting the small pots back on their racks and setting things where they belong. 

I cut back stuff in the yard at large working in the front...yellow bells, beauty berry, lantana, turk's cap, night blooming jasmine all cut to the ground, cut back most of the roses, cut suckers off the crepe myrtles which I haven't done for years. The mountain of rose cuttings was trundled over to the burn pile, the rest is still scattered about. I don't think I'm going to do a garden this spring. The yards, home and shop, need so much attention after the flood and then this very cold winter.

These warm few days, even hot as today first I shed down to my tank top and then finally I had to go in and put on shorts! I kid you not. Shorts. In February. That's just not right, even for down here. These dry warm few days and finally the anemones opened (they don't like cold, wet, and overcast so I forged on without them) and the yard is speckled with small white flowers. 

The woodland violets also exploded into bloom (both are quite invasive and seem to have multiplied exponentially from last year).

This was taken in the old garden now a 'let's see what grows here' flower bed, besides the woodland violets, the feathery things are love-in-a-mist or rocket larkspur. They are very similar at this stage. Also a few of the rounded leaves of baby-blue-eyes (as in lower left) and upper right some oxalis, some henbit lower right.

And what the fuck! Why is it my brain thinks one word and my fingers type something else?

It is spring but I don't think we will have any of those glorious days of warm dry clear weather this year. Maybe never again. This year has been one extreme or another. It is spring and the mock dogwood is covered with tiny green sprouts of leaves. The daffodils are way up but so far only one bud. It was 80 fucking degrees today. Last week, it was cold. I don't know if the satsuma I planted last spring is going to survive even though it was well covered. It looks pretty bad. The main trunk is still green...for now.

Did I mention we went to the movies Friday morning? We went to see Black Panther. It is as great as the reviews say it is for all the reasons they say. It is visually gorgeous and empowering for women without diminishing men, gorgeous men.