Dead Zone...

A peon working for environment and conservation...a peon environmentalist working for environment and conservation...in a roundabout way...one of the little people that in my own small way keeps the wheels of everyday management at this park well oiled and moving smoothly.

I'm one of those people who alters the environment, you know, A GARDENER.  I try to cram everything that grows around me into mini ecosystems, so I can enjoy it all in my one fourth acre suburban lot.  No one alters the environment more than loggers, builders, farmers and gardeners...no one.

I'm sensible in my approach.  I use only what is already here.   I'm a native lover through and through.  No herbicides, no pesticides, no fertilizers - nature's the overseer of my domain, the controller of the good and the evil, and I'm her assistant; but still...I'm a gardener, and I alter the environment.

In my office, staring out my window...yes...I actually do have a park office with windows on two sides...I'm watching the maintenance worker, or what this state calls a "conservation worker".  He's finished weed whacking around the pond area...the dead zone.  It's a dead zone because...well...it's void of all permanent life.

Higher powers thought nature looked trashy, and ordered the removal of every single pond plant and the butterfly garden surrounding the pond.  If you enjoy dreamily gazing at green tinted murky waters surrounded by nothing until your eyes glaze over, then you're in paradise.  If you would rather see blossoms, butterflies, dragonflies, and tadpoles then you're in hell.

I'm watching this worker pull out his three gallon pressurized sprayer, and proceed to empty the herbicidal suicidal contents on every green speck of life remaining in his surroundings, including the rocks that contain the pond.  He blankets it all, spraying in front of him, walking across the wet surface as he goes...dolt.

I'm pining away, anxiously waiting that magical moment I transport myself over the horizon towards real paradise...my gardens.

Daylily 'Green Eyes Wink'

Spider Daylily 'Fellow' 

Daylily 'Red Autumn'

Phlox paniculata 'Laura'

At base of American Hornbeam Tree

Daylily 'Orange Vols'

American Beautyberry

Giant Coneflower - Rudbeckia maxima

Wild Petuna Ruellia humilis

Lily speciosum 'Album'

Clematis glaucophylla

Daylily 'Yesterdays Memories'

Daylily 'Magic Dawn'

Clematis pitcheri

After the rains

Echinacea purpurea 'White Swan' with friend

Hot Diggitty Dog...it's that time of the year when all the noise deprived residents have an equal opportunity to blast off a few fork, knife, and spoon clasping digits; and reduce a few of the neighboring rooftops to cinders...wahooooo.  Tents popping up like weeds on corners of outer suburbia, encouraging the spending of money for noise.  Pets will be cringing, crawling under beds, whimpering and whining.  I will be spending the day after with a noggin slightly sleep deprived, those noise craving munchkins don't sleep; and collecting burned out debris from gardens and pond, because their junk never ever no way in any lifetime now or in the future ever ever ever breathes its last spark and gives up its ghost on their property...never.

All you sweethearts who have actually made it this far into my post, thank you.  I'm doing my happy dance, tippy toe tap tap!  I'll be escaping from blog land for the holiday to find out if there is actually a carpet still underneath all this clutter that has mysteriously appeared out of nowhere throughout the place I rush to when escaping THE JOB; and weed whacking my way through that jungle outside to see if the stone pathways are still somewhere underneath it all.

May you have magical skies bursting forth in endless shimmering colors twinkling softly towards the earth.  There's something truly awesome in those magnificent explosions coloring the sky.  Fireworks every 4th of each month sounds like a plan to me.

  HAPPY 4th!!!