Artsy Abroad: The great backyard

I awoke in the middle of the night to an intense storm passing through, one with almost constant lightning (would this be considered an electric storm?) and unusually strong winds. Either the wind or the extremely loud rain battering my bedroom skylight woke me up, but something about the noise and the intensely swaying trees outside my window clued me in that it was a little stronger than what typically rolls through. Turned out my feeling was right; there are trees down all over this morning, and a large percentage of the area was without power for a while, and still may be.

First, the damage:

Luckily for us, the biggest tree that went down was in the woods, affecting only other trees. As for the rest of our little street, large branches came down, but no one seems to have had any serious damage.

I used this turn of events to get outside again, into one of my favorite places on earth: my parents' back yard. After a rain is my favorite time to enjoy it because everything is outrageously lush and green, and it's the sort of back yard where some effort is put into keeping plants at bay, and managing certain areas of particular plants. But it also has a tendency to get wild, and that might be what I love about it the most. So in photographing the downed trees this morning, I decided to make a point to capture just a couple of the things about the natural life here that I love so much.

(Can you tell I'm starting to think about not being here for much longer?) ;)

Someone (ahem, dad) let Porter out of the house again. We had a small standoff, but I eventually caught him and put him back inside.

One of my favorites:

Perhaps because they are easy to take care of, or more likely that they're just awesome, succulents are everywhere here. It's always been this way, but as the years go by, they spread and multiply, and varieties are added to create a sort of mosaic of succulent carpet in some areas, dotted with little potted varieties that are pulled into the house in the winter.

Little ant just escaped my lens. I like to imagine what it must be like to see everything from his perspective. The stone wall would be more like a cave, and Mr. Spider in there somewhere would probably be the equivalent of a grizzly bear. The more I thought about it, the more I like the idea of the stone walls outside being a series of little caverns.