Who Cares?

For the first time ever my poor, pitiful, grocery-store orchids all have flower stalks on them and here is the first one to bloom. They are just so crazy, aren't they? And pretty, yes, but their designs, colors, and patterns are like a mathematically inclined lunatic artist's dream. Can I say lunatic? I love the fact that it comes from luna- the moon, based on the belief that the moon in its changing phases can cause intermittent insanity. 
But you knew that. I feel a deep connection to that belief in name and in the effect. 

It rained all night last night. I woke up a few times to hear thunder and see our room become suddenly bright with lightening. Ah, I thought, as I woke up this morning, I won't be taking a walk today, but later on the rain stopped and so I figured- why not? What harm would it do me if I did get wet? And I put on my incredibly stupid-looking walking shorts and shirt and headed back to the wild azalea. I think it would be some sort of sin to not admire it as often as possible during it's brief blooming. I nodded my admiration to it, turned around and headed back to "downtown Lloyd". 

Here's another old house that has lost its people and which is falling in, if not exactly falling down. It's just a very short walk from my house. 

I've posted pictures of it before. It's the house I was trying to take pictures of when the woman who lives across the street from it came out of her tiny, tiny home and told me that I was trespassing and to get off of that lot and so on and so forth even though there are zero "No Trespassing" signs and she has no more right to tell me to stay off that property than Maurice does. 
Still, I do stay off of it because she so obviously has some pretty severe problems and why would I want to rile her? Also, she's the person who put up the little community library and I love her for that, no matter what. 

The whole area across the street from the GDDG is way, way flooded while the store sits there high and dry on the lot they spent so much time and energy on building up with imported dirt. The water drains from there to the south and then through the culvert under the road to the property across the road and there is no doubt that it is affecting that piece of wildness. But hey! Who cares? This is just Lloyd, Florida- not even a town! Hardly a village! No one's using that land except for the trees and plants anyway, right? 
Yeah, motherfuckers. You are so correct. Not one damn thing using that chunk of earth except for pine trees, cabbage palms, palmettos, blackberries, oak trees, and so forth. Not to mention the coons, armadillos, tortoises, and every other creature who lives there. People will be fishing from the sidewalk before you know it. 

I passed the fally-down house. Its progress towards becoming one with the earth is accelerating. The pictures don't really show the inevitable collapsing of it as much as just seeing it does. The first time I wrote about the house was in 2008. 

Here's what it looked like in 2016. 

And here's a picture from 2015 (I think) when Steve Reed visited and wanted to go see it. 

That's him, taking a picture inside the house. It would be impossible to walk into it now. And that's little Owen, probably about five. He still remembers that day, that walk with Steve Reed, which I find remarkable. You never know what a child will remember. 

One more thing that I took pictures of on my walk is this Crimson bottlebrush tree in bloom.

You can see where they get their name. That tree is planted on the corner of Main Street and Old Lloyd Road in front of a trailer that no one's lived in for years and never will again. It's part of an ancient trailer park where only a few of the trailers are being lived in. It's right across the street from the post office and the My Gypsy Soul Boutique and yes- that's how tacky Lloyd is so why worry about a Dollar General Store's effect on the wetlands? 

Don't ask me. I have no idea. 

Meanwhile, it is raining again. In fact, it started raining right after I got home from my walk and has been raining on and off all day. I did get a little less than an hour to work on the old kitchen yard again. Slowly I am making progress. I noticed that Maurice now has access to little paths between the wild phlox clumps that she can meander when she comes out to check on me. 

Off to make dinner. 

Love...Ms. Moon