I find photo-worthy things in both neighborhoods (and only live in mine by accident of desperately needing to buy at a time when houses were still affordable because the landlord where I was renting wanted to sell the house and I was newly widowed and needed change ASAP. I still feel like an interloper here, because I am much more like the folks in the neighborhood next door). But in the less wealthy neighborhood there more more signs of wear and tear....unwatered lawns, abandoned houses. You can't tell that some of the houses are empty if you drive by, but it becomes more obvious when you walk by and see that nothing changes from day to day. A few houses are occupied by elderly people who can no longer keep them up. Decay is largely gentle, but present.
So on my walks I've been taking photos of pretty flowers, but also photos of places where the gophers seem to have staked a claim and won. Here is the pretty: morning glory vine looking up to the sky. Glad the neighbors are growing it, because the flowers are impressive, but I wouldn't let this little devil loose in my own yard, it would take over.
Plumbago, also an upward view.
I like this photo below because it catches the flowers in all their various stages....bud, starting to unfurl, open, starting to close back up. I imagine each flower only lasts for a day.
Trumpet vine, deadly but beautiful.
And now for a real tough customer....one of the abandoned houses (perhaps with a squatter, perhaps with a DIY fix it up owner) has a bamboo hedge. Several feet away it is sending up it's stalks through a small hole in the sidewalk.
Another yard has a collection of what looks like portions of old mansion columns scattered across the front yard. Along with random potted plants and other finds. Everything is always a little bit crooked, like a graveyard scene that people set up for Halloween, only this is year round. I always smile when I see this yard. It's not tidy, certainly no professional gardeners come to mow and blow, but it looks happily lived in.
A month ago the neighborhoods were filled with large, blousy pink "naked lady" bulb flowers. Now they are filled with these seed heads that look like sacks of marbles before they open. I am secretly borrowing a few of these seeds that hang over the sidewalk and putting them along the outside fence of a neighbor who does nothing else with that part of his yard. So far I've guerrilla-planted an aeonium and some scabiosa in the 2 inch space between his fence and his retaining wall (as there are no houses actually facing our house on our street). I doubt he knows, or cares, that I am doing this, but his gardener knows and never cuts down those things that magically appear. So this year I'm adding a few more things that need no water and come up from seed.
And here we come to gopher damage. I've never seen them so bad. They are most obvious in dry yards, but I'm not sure are they there because they are dry or are the yards dry because the owners have given up. Perhaps they are there in well watered gardens as well but it's not as obvious? There is one who visits my back yard, but I don't notice it all the time. I'm not sure what it is in the process of killing, I see nothing as dramatic as lettuce plants being sucked down into the soil. But there are places where my soil is very loose and when you stick a trowel down the plant something it goes down into the hole.
I often have a cheering section on my walks....."murders" of crows who gather on the wires above and scold. Someone told me they are being fed, so perhaps they are just asking for a handout. But they also control who comes into their neighborhoods. I have seen them harassing ravens and hawks. The hawks just hunch down and promise quietly to get even one day. Since the crows have arrived, I see a lot less of the more peaceful birds, like robins and tohees. There are still hummingbirds and blue jays, but these are by no means peaceful animals. The blue jays have a nest in the back neighbor's tree and the parents come to our yard to teach their child how to bath in our bird bath and how to complain about things. I think they have mastered this second skill.
Back to the gophers. The crumbly soil is often spread across the sidewalk.
A thin strip of grass where the gophers have won.
Then we come to the chairs. There is this one yard with 4 chairs, often arranged differently when I come by each morning, so I know people use them. They are old, each chair has it's own padding, and I just imagine 4 people, each with their own favorite chair that suits their sitting needs. For a while they have been arranged facing the front porch. I wonder if someone has brought a TV out there in the evening and people watch games. I love these chairs so much more than I would a yard full of new chairs, all looking the same and properly expensive.
I played with the colors and simplified the texture to make them look even more nostalgic.
The other evening one of the chair sitters was out there, doing just what I imagine this household doing, escaping from the heat in the house and enjoying an evening breeze. I got to tell her how much I like her chairs.
This is a window in a house that may, or may not, be abandoned. I took this photo from sidewalk distance, fearing that an angry person would come out and tell me to respect their privacy. This would make such a great stamping pattern!
There is a place where two fences are back to back....one thick white slats and the other chainlink. I simplified them and did a reverse image.
After walking through the neighborhood and featuring things not-so-perfect in my neighbor's yards, I must make public that my own yard has plenty of dereliction to spare....the kids decided some dining room chairs were needing to be thrown out due to cat shredding of the seats. But they didn't cart them off anywhere, they just left them. I admit I don't quite want to destroy the chairs, because I love the woven backs. So I have "arted" them up a bit to capture their essence. or something....
After I turned loose several filters on them I took little bits and blew them up.
And recombined them in different ways. There is a lesson to be learned in these chairs, or at least patterns to be exploited.
Here is the weave from the back. This is caning, and I believe this is called "madweave".
I will leave you with rust patterns at the bottom of a fence.
And now it's time for another neighborhood ramble before the parents start dropping their kids off at school and become a local hazard.
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