Camera Obscura

I was taking pictures of the garden tonight (because I happen like having 4,327 pictures of the same garden slowing iPhoto to a crawl) and trying to block out the houses across the street while at the same time get a picture of my cool new driftwood arbor. I like this arbor and I really like the fact that I built it with my very own hands, even if it did cause my 80 year old neighbour to come tottering across the lawn to ask if he could do the drilling (apparently I looked "unsteady"). Even if it did cause Richard to cackle on the front doorstep, while eating his lunch, and ask me if I needed help. Then hover behind the screen door where he thought I couldn't see him, worrying about the shocking treatment his drill and its bits were getting (turned out I had a concrete drill bit and didn't know it - the HORROR of it all). Even if my other neighbour did come over the next day while I was planting some cucumbers and scarlet runners at its base, to tell me that he had some "funky bits" to hang from it if I wanted (?). And punctuate his remark with a cavalier laugh.

The nerve of some people.

We can't all be handy. Some of us have to be lower on the Handy Person Bell Curve than others. And I, I bear my inability to build sturdy things like arbors and trellises (or is that trelli?) like a true Jane Austen heroine. My creations may not endure, but I am stoic. Philosophical, even.

Well, until things blow down. Or break. Then I resort to less noble behaviours.

Not that I'm going to get into that here.

Anyhow, all this posturing and crouching and leaning to exclude the less than aesthetic visions opposite reminded me of the time an acquaintance came to visit. She must have seen this blog at some point, because the first thing she said to me was "Uh, this is your garden? The same one I saw pictures of?" I wish I had Sound-O-Vision for this remark, because it was garlanded, nay, festooned with surprise. There was disbelief. A touch of shock. And a smidgen of confusion. She obviously thought she had the wrong place.

But really, does anyone thing I'm going to show pictures like this?
My messy hoses? The newly shorn nectarine, sitting nakedly against the wall? My grubby potting bench, built from scrap wood in California and dragged all the way up here to BC because I had a sentimental attachment to it? Oh boy, reading that makes me realize what a dingbat I am (note to self: don't mention how you brought your compost over on the ferry when you moved here).





I'd like to say I'm an amazingly gifted photographer, but then that would bring us back to my yard not really looking like this, wouldn't it? So let's just say that I am a selective photographer. Why show views of ugly stucco boxes houses like the one I live in when I could show pictures like this (minus the houses lurking just inches away from here).











Here's another shot. Richard says that I live in a little world of make-believe and sometimes I have to agree with him. This is way better than what you aren't seeing: cars parked on the road and more stucco boxes.

(sheila waves her smelling salts under everyone's nose)

There, there, this is so much better, now, isn't it?