WILD LIFE AT OUR SENIOR PARK

Our new home is set in a beautiful park for 'manufactured homes'.  Heaven help you if you call it a Mobile Home Park!!

The park itself is beautiful and contains about 450 homes.  There is a Home Owners Association which    has been doing a great job over the years.  Because we have lived in Carlsbad for about 40 years, we have known of the park for many years and known many people who live there.  It has a fine reputation as being a good place to live.  The HOA makes sure the grounds are kept immaculate and also regulates the appearance of the homes, from the colors painted to the appropriate landscaping.  There are lots of trees and small garden areas throughout.

It is not stringent in its requirements.  I went through and read all the board meeting minutes from the past five years before we moved in and found them to be very accommodating with the residents.

At least there is no 'wild life' among the residents!  However, the park is divided by a small creek and narrow woodland area and thus encourages some wild life.  Sorry, I have hardly any photos, but here is a description of our first encounter with wild life.  

Not long after we had moved in,we were woken in the night by loud yipping, yapping and yowling.  Our neighbors to the north spend six months of the year elsewhere, and the coyotes had moved into the back of their yard, which like ours, overlooks the creek.

PROOF!

It is pupping season (there's probably a different name for that for coyotes, but I don't know it), and they had made a fine catch for dinner.  This has happened twice since we've been here, but the neighbors moved back for a while and cleared out the coyotes.  The neighbors have gone again, so maybe we will be visited once again.

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I'm told there are racoons but I haven't seen any, but I have seen rabbits and evidence of rabbits, who are eating the new shoots on some of our shrubs.

As can be expected, there are plenty of birds -- house finches, house sparrows, song sparrows, grossbeaks (a beautiful bird in spite of his name) orioles, goldfinches, western phoebes, woodpeckers, mourning doves and crows.  We also had a of pair beautiful Townsend Warblers, who are bright yellow with a black triangle over their eye.  They were only stopping for a while as they were on the move north to their summer haunts.

Now that the birds are fledglings we are also being visited by a red tailed hawk, who finds a baby crow much to his liking.  The crows defend their nests with great vigor and noise.  When I hear he crows I know the hawk is nearby.

In the creek, there are many mallards with quite large broods of ducklings, a pair of egrets, (beautifully white against the greenery of the bank).  It is funny to watch the mallards come flying in at great speed, using the creek like a runway. We also have a blue heron who flaps lazily along the creek and I think is roosting in one of the large pine trees that line the creek.

 Sorry this is such an awful photo, but it was dusk and he was a good way away and my hand shakes too badly to take a good photo without something to lean on.

Up in the lake by the club house there are a great number of coots.  We have been warned about rattle snakes but haven't seen or heard about any so far.

With the hawk and the coyotes we're pretty vigilant about keeping Scruffy inside.  I can't remember if I told you about Scruffy's one escapade outside, so here it is again, just in case.  We hadn't been in the house very long when it happened.  Scruffy is greatly tantalized by the lizards he can see from the windows (ceiling to floor).  We are blessed to have great natural ventilation, so when the weather is warm I open the front and back doors.  What I didn't realize at the time was that the front screen door does not always latch.  So one day I was working away on my lap top, presuming that Scruffy was sleeping in one of his favorite places.  I don't know how long he was outside, but I heard the screen door go and Scruffy came running in looking as pleased as punch with a 6 or 7 inch lizard in his mouth, which he then proceeded to drop in the middle of the living room floor.  Of course the lizard ran, but Scruffy quickly caught him again.  I decided to let Scruffy play with him a bit until the lizard got tired
and then I could catch him.  They can move pretty fast.Then I grabbed a bowl, put it over the lizard, slid a piece of cardboard under it and disposed of it back into the yard!

We have now fixed the front screen door much to Scruffy's disgust!

ABC Wednesday tomorrow.  See you then.

FUNNY AND CLEVER

Here's something I found in the newspaper last weekend.  I thought it was very ingenious.

I'm glad they gave the translation!!

U is for UNDERCOVER

What does it take to sell a house?... Well for one thing it means going undercover!  For my British friends this may seem very strange.  No the circus has not come to town.

Termites are the scourge of Southern California.  Before you can sell a house you must have a termite inspection and termite riddled wood must be replaced.  We were fortunate not to have much termite damage.  Our neighbor has just spent a fortune replacing termite damaged parts on his house and he is not even selling it.  We decided to have our house tented as most people do, because we didn't want inspectors going through the attic and crawl spaces and perhaps doing further damage. 

So here it is from the front and back.  The house is tented and then a poisonous gas is infused.  You would think that in this very environmentally conscious area (Southern California) there would be someone out there protesting, but I think this has to be done, by law, if you are selling a house.

The tenting is up for 24 hours and then it is OK.  Since it is completely empty no other precautions have to be taken  --  thank goodness.

The house was listed for sale last weekend and already we have had two written offers.  I think after this weekend, since no one has been able to view it for two days this past week, we will hopefully be able to accept one of the offers and then --  whatever will we do with all our time and attention that has been so focused on selling the house?!

So now that we are out from being UNDERCOVER we are really on the final step.

This post is my contribution to ABC Wednesday for the letter U, a project founded by Mrs. Nesbitt and continued by Roger Owen Green.  I f you would like to see more contributions illustrating the letter U please click HERE

UPDATING DOODLES

I'm kind of 'doodled out'.  During all the busy-ness of the past couple of months, I didn't do much art except doodles, which are easy to do, relaxing and don't take a lot of planning. So here are my latest ones -- my lack of creativity showing up in the rather bland names.

I'm a little surprised at how much all the extra activity and decision making has actually affected how much I can concentrate on my art.  It's not that I didn't have some time to do something, it's just that my brain was too preoccupied with other things.  Physical activity results in the body feeling tired, but  I didn't realize that over-working the brain also brings about mental fatigue -- something I don't think I've experienced before in quite the same way. Must be old age catching up with me!

Rainbow Leaves

Shrimp and Frogspawn

Scarlet Pimpernel

Manta Ray

Paisley

Night Shadows -- Leaves on Glass

This last one is not actually a doodle.  It depicts the shadows on the lower glass of our front living room window, which I often see at night when I can't sleep.  I sit in my arm chair without any lights on, but the light from the lamp outside reflects the shadows of the leaves of a small bush outside the window.  The orangey-green is the background light from the lamp on the glass.  It's not such an outstanding rendition, but I like it because it is very familiar and peaceful.

ABC Wednesday is next on my blog.  See you then.

MOTHER'S DAY FLOWERS

How long ago was Mother's Day?

Here in the States it was three weeks ago.

Take a look at the flowers which arrived here from my son three weeks ago.  They are Freesias...very beautiful and very long lasting.

The day they arrived.....

One week later...

Two weeks later...

Three weeks later!!!

Wow!  They really lasted a long while.  Think I'll add some more water and see what happens.

CREATIVE TUESDAY -- CANDY

I am hoping to join Creative Tuesday on a regular basis from now on.  Every two weeks a topic is given and we who like to think we are creative post our interpretation of the theme.  This week's theme is, 

CANDY.

Being a bit of a sugar freak this topic was right up my street, so here is my rendition of one of my favorite candies, Reese's Peanut butter cups.  Mmmm!

Please visit CREATIVE TUESDAYS at this LINK to see what others have submitted for their interpretation of candy.

PHEW !!!

My brain has been on overload for the last four months -- what with buying a new home, moving, garage sale, fixing up, and now selling our old home, I used up all my creativity and had none left for blogging.  We have been in our new home for two months now and it feels like two weeks!  Still have to finish putting up pictures.  Moth is sorting out his workshop/tool shed so he can find where everything is and I would like to make a couple of changes in the back yard when that's done.

I still love our new home.  It is bright and airy and everything is so convenient  -- and all on one level. The flowers have been coming out in waves.  When we first moved in back in April, the vibrant purple ice plant was in full bloom.....

FRONT.....

...and BACK

The darker green plants behind the little Mexican man in siesta mode, is the vibrant purple ice plant. The light green on either side of him and far right is the next wave of ice plant in more of a lavender color like this...

I caught this lizard resting on top of the flowers taking a shower, as it was a hot day and I had the sprinklers on.

As the purple ice plant in the front of the house began to die back the red ones started to bloom. The spreading palm on the right was a bonus.  It was just a stump when we moved in and I thought it was dead, but after I started to water it, it shot up in about two weeks to this pretty palm.

After the red ice plant died, the rather odd shaped tree next to them suddenly broke out into full bloom with masses of flowers that were both red and yellow.  I think it is a lantana bush.  The bees, butterflies and humming birds love this bush.

So now we are holding our breath to see what will come up next!  My plumeria made the transition from the old house quite well, but now I see it has little orange colored specks on the leaves, so we are keeping an eye on it.

Next time I will tell you a little about the wild life (non-human!) that is around here.

I have also decided to join Creative Tuesday since I've been stuck in the zentangle mode for too long and haven't tried any 'normal' drawing for months.  I will soon post this entry and also the tangles I have done over the last month.  

So now I think I'm back to blogging more regularly, you must come visit and see what new things are happening in our lives.

We are so thankful to the Lord for the way everything has gone so smoothly -- if a bit busy and somewhat stressful.  It hardly seems possible that we have done so much and now feel so settled in our new home.  The Lord is good -- all the time.  Now we are praying for a buyer for our old house.  It was only listed this Memorial Day weekend.

See you soon!