Some greenery

I went back to my home town for the Fourth of July weekend for some nostalgia, dropping in on family, and of course, skinny dipping. It's hard to believe that it had been almost eight years since I had last been swimming, and over ten years since I had owned a bathing suit. But I managed. Somehow.

My camera is having issues with it's memory card, so I was unable to take as many pictures as i would have liked. I had to therefore focus: quality, not quantity. I'm not very practiced at photographing things, so the quality has has to be in the area of the subject, rather than the photo itself.

I took a lot of photos of my dad's jungle - I mean, back yard:This is the fence he built to annoy his neighbor. We both agreed it had a pleasing, artistic, rustic effect. (Keep in mind, this is Northern California, not L.A. We do pleasing rustic.)
My dad's pond, which I believe is an old tank he welded in half and implanted in the ground. He used to have goldfish in it but the skunks kept eating them. You know how it is.
If you look closely in the center of this photo, under one of the leaves of grass that comes across the photo from the right, you can just barely see my dad's toad eying me suspiciously from beneath a leaf on the other side of the pond. My dad says he came to the pond as polliwog and stuck around. This toad is about the size of my fist, and he was determined to wait me out.
Birdhouse and rambling roses. Mendocino County has a lot of rambling roses, and so does my dad's yard.

The well. With a redwood burl on top of it for some reason. This was the least of the mysteries of the labyrinth that is my dad's yard. Mine is not to reason why, but merely ask where he got these things and what it's called.

For instance, I have no idea what the object in the background is. A stump? A disintegrating dishwasher? I have no idea.
This, however, I can identify. Nature's Toilet Paper, a.k.a. a thimbleberry bush, which is not under any circumstances (or at least, it is to be fervently hoped) to be confused with the stinging nettle, a plant which has the unfortunate tendency to grow with thimbleberries. Thimbleberry leaves are large and have a pleasing peach-fuzz texture. Stinging nettles do not.

Last, but not least, we have rocks and old bottles.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as collecting goes in my dad's house, and evidence once again of the importance of a convenient LYS. If my dad knit, this could have been yarn.