Flora, Fauna & Aminals (2)

So now we muddle at the middle.

Continuing with my walk down the street, we come to the house exactly two doors from the one with the funky landscaping. Its funny (and just a little bit sad) to see how some houses have changed over the course of the decades on this street of mine. I actually spent my childhood and parts of my young adulthood and adulthood growing up and living on this street. With this particular house, the current owners did a magnificent job on the landscaping and remodeling. This particular tree is a recent newcomer (by recent, I mean within the last fifteen years or so) to this house and even though you can only see the red door just off to the left of the car, the garage area was converted into a common room.

As we walk down the familiar main drag that is featured in a good percentage of my shots throughout the past year and half, you can actually see a rarity just off to the right in front of the fence: a non-family member. I try very hard not to get any other people beyond family members in my shots. I figure when I'm taking pictures the very least I can do is respect someone's privacy and not include them (an exception to that rule will pop up sometime in the fall, when I post pics from our townwide celebration called "The Extravaganza" held on 7/19/10). Anyways, this tree is the green version of the pink/white one that was featured as a header about a year ago or so.

Tulips, of the yellow and red variety. We have three major housing complexes and one apartment building for senior citizens/disabled people located in town. These tulips are located directly in front of the apartment building. I figured that these flowers have such a spotty blooming record here, that it would make very good sense to get a few shots of them before the summer time heat took them out of picture.

Same tulip bed, but a more complete view of them. This bed starts about where the previous shot was and stretches to where you see that Sovereign Bank building just off to the right.

Unfortunately, same bed, just further down a piece. As you can see, Mother Nature did it's required torching of the bed, leaving nothing but one or two flowers in its wake. Sun usually hits with full force on this side of the building and there usually isn't much in the way of shade that can save the flowers. Or the grass for that matter, as you can see a little bit of the browning that has been currently gripping our state for the better part of a couple of months now.

But....there is hope. Amongst all of those wiped out flower stalks, I found this single solitary flower, majestically and defiantly poking its head out from the floral carnage that surrounds it (sorry, been reading "To Hell And Back" by Audie Murphy this week. fantastic autobiography. if you liked the movie, you'll love the book. reissued by Henry Holt books)

And finally, two solitary white tulips. Standing majestically and proud, these bad boys were the one sign that this particular day was going to be a good day. Fortunately, the day turned out well. Unfortunately for the flowers, about week later, Mother Nature decided that they would be better off someplace else. The parking lot directly behind it, is connected to the apartment complex. That tree you see in the distance, marks the beginning of what a lot people feel (including myself) was a big waste of money by the town. The town chose to blow about $2 million dollars on repaving and redesigning the downtown public parking lot. But we'll nip that in the bud and save it for a future post elsewhere about small town politics.