An opportunity almost lost

Last year the Garden and Arts Center had one of its plant sale fundraisers and I picked up what looked like a small iris bulb. The volunteer told me it was a Blackberry Lily, which I had seen pictures of in one of my gardening magazines but had never seen in person. It was a steal for $3. Well, after a long year wait, I discovered it had started blooming already. Seems I missed the other three blooms and got to see the last one. That's what happens when you're so busy that you forget to stroll the beds to see what's bloom! Hopefully I won't miss the full show next year.

I Spy

About three weeks ago I came home to find someone waiting for me on my front stoop. Well, in the floor bed by the front door to be exact. A tortoise was munching on some scraggly pansies and, upon seeing me, froze and tried to blend in. I was going to ignore him and leave him alone until I thought about the neighbor kids getting ahold of him or worse him getting run over. So, just grabbed him and placed him in the back yard. He could have his own garden of eden of sorts. I've no idea how you tell a male from a female tortoise so I'm just gonna call it a him and named him Yertle the Turtle. Isn't he cute? Hopefully he'll earn his keep and do bug patrol. I did learn later after some research on the net that Yertle probably was in my front yard munching on a few stray bits of cat food I had left out for the neighborhood stray. Yertle confirmed he loved cat food after I put a small pile of it in front of him and he immediately pounced on it.