It is my Blog's Anniversary!

How quickly a year can pass! This week I am celebrating one full year of blogging. I want to say thank you to everyone who has visited my blog over the last year and left kind and encouraging comments. I have enjoyed visiting each of your gardens in turn. It has been truly wonderful to get to know each of you. I think of you as friends.

Today I thought I would repeat an early post- a favorite story from the vault-one that only a few people saw in the infant days of my blog. It seems appropriate on this anniversary to choose a story about another first- my first ever garden:

Reptiles in a Canadian Garden???

                                                                       

In contrast to the starkness of the other townhomes in its row, our back garden stood apart from the rest because of the tangle of growth that threatened to burst at the seams of the rough wooden fence. 

This small, contained pocket of green was my own private paradise. I fussed over every square inch; indulged and spoiled every plant. And as it turned out, I was not the only one who appreciated the jungle-like lushness of my garden! 

Heading into the back garden one spring morning, I noticed that my wisteria vine was hanging down awkwardly, having become unmoored from its supporting trellis. Standing on a chair I dragged out from the kitchen, I reached up to adjust the vine. As I approached the branches, pruners at the ready, there was a sudden movement in the tangle of branches. I hesitated. Was my imagination playing tricks on me? Was it just the wind or did something just move in there? Stretching forward to take a closer look, I was shocked to see an eye starring right back at me. I gasped, lurched back and almost lost my footing.

Alarmed, I ran into the house to share what seemed to my husband like a very tall tale. Imagining I must have had discovered a possum or raccoon, my husband went out to the yard to investigate further.

When he parted the branches to take a look for himself, he too was surprised with a glassy-eyed stare. Frightened by the disturbance, the startled creature shifted its position and my husband lunged backward just as I had done, almost falling off the chair.

It did not take long for us to put two and two together and figure out the true identity of the interloper. We knew our neighbour two doors down kept various reptiles, including snakes as pets. Their pet iguana could regularly be seen sunning himself in the window of their spare bedroom.

Unfortunately this isn't Iggy. I wasn't able to get a picture of him that day, but this is pretty much what Iggy looked like as he sat hidden inside the branches of my wisteria vine.

It turns out that “Iggy”, as we later learned was the iguana’s name, had escaped by chewing through the window screen several days earlier. 

And where would an iguana on the lamb choose to go to but the garden/jungle paradise conveniently located just a few doors down?

We were not foolish enough to make any attempts to try to catch the iguana on our own and went immediately to get his owner. Our neighbor quickly lured the iguana out into the open with a treat. When the iguana climbed down onto his shoulder, we were able, for the first time, to grasp the true size of our uninvited guest. Iggy’s pale green body stretched some 5 feet from his nose to the tip of his tail. On each of his feet was a set of 1" claws. 

The lesson learned that day? A garden has a way of never ceasing to surprise you!

Hey, at least it wasn't one of the snakes that got loose!!!