Wish List for the Yard

Blue Dragonfly ; Azure Hawker ?, originally uploaded by tibchris.

I woke up this morning and spent a few moments - it felt like half an hour, but I imagine it was less than 3 seconds - figuring out where I was and what day it was. This was a process of elimination - it's ot Sunday, is it? Check...Not Tuesday? Check. No, Monday, first day of a new camp for Eric and a day when, weirdly, nothing is expected of me except to hang with the kid.

I've been really focused on work lately (FINALLY, after a near-disasterous period of chronic distractibility and a few weeks of family/socializing time...) and so this whole day just felt like a bonus, an extra day in the week.

Ian and I trotted off to Lake Elkhorn, where we took a short walk, saw about a zillion dragonflies (mostly small and blue, a couple gigantic red ones) plus ducks and barn swallows but happily no snakes. (Howard County trails all have ENORMOUS posters with pictures of snakes on them, since they had a couple poisonous snake bites within the last few years. This cuts into my enjoyment of the outdoors significantly.) Ian also got to spend some time in the giant sandbox (no snakes there either) while I knit in the shade (also happily snake-free.)

Very, very pleasant.

Being at the lake, and seeing the houses that look out over the lake, gave me lots of ideas for how to make our backyard more livable. I expect the barely-80-degree weather did, mostly...last summer's heat, humidity and God help us, those trendy new Asian Tiger Mosquitos definitely made me want to stay far away from the back yard. (Plus, um, snakes, though nearly every snake I've ever seen at our house has been around the front foundation plantings.)

Anyway, I have had good luck in the past announcing my wishes on my blogs - my very first blog entry, on LiveJournal, mentioned that I needed cargo pants and some genetic material (which is to say, a chance to get knocked up) and I eventually ended up with both.

So I hereby announce to the universe: I would like some outdoor seating - just simple park benches, and some daylillies and hostas for the border. Oh, and a couple pots of bamboo for the deck.

I would like to get all those things for free.

And I would like more 78-degree bonus days this summer.